Setting Up Communication Channels

Why Communication Channels?

While you can always interact with your AI Employee through the built-in chat on the platform, communication channels let your team (and optionally customers) interact with the employee through the messaging tools they already use. This means your sales team can message the AI Employee directly in Slack, or your customers can reach it via Telegram — no need to log into the ianai platform.

Supported Channels

• Telegram — The most popular channel. Easy to set up with BotFather.
• Slack — Connect to a Slack workspace for internal team use.
• WhatsApp — Reach customers on the world's most-used messaging platform (requires WhatsApp Business API).
• Email — Your AI Employee gets its own email address and responds to incoming messages.
• Web Chat — Embed a chat widget on your website for customer-facing interactions.
• SMS — Text message integration for simple, direct communication.

Setting Up Telegram

Telegram is the fastest channel to set up. Here is the complete process:

1. Open Telegram and search for @BotFather.
2. Send the command /newbot and follow the prompts to name your bot.
3. BotFather will give you a bot token — a long string of characters. Copy it.
4. In ianai, go to your AI Employee's Settings tab and find the Channels section.
5. Click "Add Channel" and select Telegram.
6. Paste the bot token into the token field and click "Connect."
7. ianai automatically registers the webhook with Telegram. Your bot is now live.

To test, open Telegram and send a message to your new bot. The AI Employee should respond within a few seconds.

Setting Up Slack

Slack integration requires creating a Slack App in your workspace:

1. Go to api.slack.com/apps and click "Create New App."
2. Choose "From scratch" and give it a name matching your AI Employee.
3. Under "OAuth & Permissions," add the required bot scopes: chat:write, app_mentions:read, im:history, im:read, im:write.
4. Install the app to your workspace and copy the Bot User OAuth Token.
5. In ianai, add a Slack channel and paste the token.
6. Configure event subscriptions in Slack to point to the webhook URL shown in ianai.

Setting Up Other Channels

WhatsApp, Email, Web Chat, and SMS follow similar patterns: obtain the required credentials from the respective platform, then paste them into the channel configuration in ianai. Each channel's setup page includes step-by-step instructions specific to that platform.

How Messages Flow

Understanding the message flow helps with troubleshooting:

1. A user sends a message through the channel (e.g., types in Telegram).
2. The channel platform sends the message to ianai via a webhook.
3. ianai routes the message to the correct AI Employee based on the channel configuration.
4. The AI Employee processes the message, uses tools if needed, and generates a response.
5. The response is sent back through the same channel to the user.

This entire flow typically completes in 2-10 seconds, depending on the complexity of the request and how many tools the employee needs to use.

Managing Multiple Channels

A single AI Employee can be connected to multiple channels simultaneously. It maintains separate conversation contexts for each channel and each user. This means your Sales Rep AI Employee can handle Telegram conversations with your field team and Slack messages from your office team at the same time.