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Creating a Digital Messaging channel

Updated on June 1, 2023

Expose your essential business services to users through a chatbot on multiple messaging platforms by defining a single Pega Intelligent Virtual Assistant™ (IVA) for Digital Messaging. As a result, you provide users with additional ways to communicate with your application, which improves the overall user experience.

For example, you can create an IVA for a travel agency application. As a result, customers can instantly book their flight by interacting with your chatbot on Apple Messages for Business, Facebook Messenger, and other messaging platforms.
Note: Due to changes by Twitter in the API and the licensing model, direct integration with Twitter is no longer supported in the Digital Messaging channel interface.
Before you begin:
  • Configure Digital Messaging channel security settings. For more information, see Configuring Digital Messaging channel security.
  • If you translate text into another language, for example, for a response command, the system creates a new language-specific ruleset only if the ruleset does not already exist for the language. If the ruleset already exists and is locked, to translate your text, ensure that you first unlock the ruleset in your application.

You can define custom IVA responses to fit the business needs of your organization and to extract the intent of users with natural language processing (NLP), decisioning, and text analytic capabilities. In the preview console, you can test whether the configured Digital Messaging channel works correctly before moving the channel to a production environment.

If you used a language other than English in Pega Platform 8.6 or earlier, for example, Dutch, you can remove all languages from the supported languages list and then add the Dutch language as the first language in the list in the system updated to the 8.7 version, so that it acts as the fallback language. By default, English appears as the first language in the supported languages list when you update to Pega Platform 8.7.

Note:
  • The languages that you configure for the Digital Messaging channel also determine the languages in which users can interact in the Web Messaging widget.
  • After you update Pega Platform or Pega Customer Service, to use the latest Digital Messaging Manager features, save your existing Digital Messaging channel.
  • Digital Messaging Service is a component hosted on Pega Cloud services that enables an encrypted and secure interaction between a customer's Digital Messaging channel and your application. For more information, see Digital Messaging Service overview.

For relevant training materials and to test this feature on a virtual Pega instance, see the Getting started with Digital Messaging module, the Digital Messaging channels module, and the Configuring a chatbot with Digital Messaging challenge on Pega Academy.

  1. Create a new channel interface in Pega Platform:
    1. In the navigation pane of App Studio, click Channels.
    2. In the Create new channel interface section, click Digital Messaging.
    3. In the Details section, in the Channel interface name field, enter a name for your channel.
    4. Optional: To describe the purpose of the channel, in the Description field, enter a short description of your IVA.
    5. In the Supported languages list, select the languages in which the chatbot can interact with users.
      For each language selected, the application can perform text analysis and provide automatic responses in that language. The first language in the list is the default language, which is the fallback language for the chatbot if no translation is yet available in another language. If no translation is yet available in another language, the system displays placeholder text in the fallback language. To learn more about the localization wizard that you use for translation of chatbot conversations, see Localizing your application.
    6. In the channel, click the Connection tab.
    7. In the Template operator ID list, click the name of an existing Pega Platform operator to use as a template.
      The system uses this operator as a template to create all further accounts. Each account has a unique channel identifier set as its ID. The selected operator must at the minimum have the PegaRULES:User4 access role, taking into consideration the application settings, for example, providing access to the application's cases. For more information, see Template operator for IVA channel.
    8. Click Save.
  2. Configure a Digital Messaging channel for a social messaging platform:
    You configure specific settings for a social messaging platform on the Connection tab using Digital Messaging Manager that is displayed on a separate page.
    For example:

    The following figure shows the available connections for a Digital Messaging channel:

    List of connections in Digital Messaging Manager.
    The available connections in Digital Messaging Manager.
What to do next: Define conversational channel behavior for the IVA, for Digital Messaging. For more information, see Defining conversational channel behavior.
  • Previous topic Implementing an Intelligent Virtual Assistant for a conversational channel
  • Next topic Digital Messaging channel overview

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