Commonly know as Web Robots, bots can perform a plethora of tasks ranging from daily mundane tasks to monthly one-offf tasks. Bots are designed to give the power back to you and make them your little helper that can be configured, changed or stopped at any point by you.

Bots have grown dramatically within the platform industry and what bots can do for you is not only give you the vital time you need back but also keep costs down, effectively becoming a member of your team.

Array has devised a range of bots, some for simple tasks, others for more complex such as digests or summary of events. Depending on what information you want to see displayed right in front of you will depend on the bot that you require. It may be that you have more than 1 bot running perform as you want multiple bits of information all provided to you at different times throughout the campaign.

Throughout this doc, we will run through the elements in each bot and how they can be configured. Each bot follows the same style when setting up with some slight differences, each we will detail here.

Setup

Once you have decided what bot you need to perform the tasks in hand you will find yourself on the main Bot market page where you are presented with a range of different bots. Each bot has 2 separate elements, Internal & External. depending if the person you want o notify is a user within Array will determine if you are needing to notify someone internally or externally. All users within Array are classed as an internal whereas someone who is not connected to your Array account is External.

Once you have decided upon the bot for you, you may have already noticed by this point but, a bot on your account is an additional cost. Bots are additional for the reason that each bot could be a member of staff on your team and in fact, take the place of a team member processing all the data you collect. Selecting Install will instantly download the bot to your account and add the cost to your monthly/annual bill.

Once a bot has been added to your account you will be provided with the configuration page. As mentioned this will vary slightly with each bot depending on the use for the bot itself.

Setup Stages

This brings me to explain each stage of the bot setup and what each stage can configure the bot itself. Below is detailed the description of each stage of setup, not all bots will have this many stages to set up but below we have detailed all setup needed but each bot will include at-least 5/6 of these stages.

Choose Form: This is pretty self-explanatory. you will select the form in your account that you would like the bot to run upon. Each bot can only run one form each and if you want the same bot to run on different forms it will require you to add another, the same situation if you want different bots to run on the same form.

Choose Trigger (Optional): Selecting a trigger will tell this bot that it needs to run on this specific form. A trigger is an element on your form that needs to be completed for the bot to run. If this element is not completed on the form then the bot will not run or send a notification to the external client.

Choose Event Date Field: This will be the time/date field that is completed on the form that defines the date of an event to be reminded about. Here you will see all time/date fields on the form and you are able to select the one that you would like to define the date/time of an event to be reminded about.

Choose Email Field: (External Notification) This field will only appear for an external notification bot. Selecting an email field on the form will be the email address that gets notified. As this is an external Email bot it will ask you for an email address of someone to send it to. for an internal bot, it will give you the selection of users on your account.

Who Should Receive the Notification: (Internal Notification) This field will only appear for an internal notification bot. For an internal bot you can only send a notification to users within Array. Here you can select to send it to individual users or you can send to a whole team of people.

Choose Message Field: You will see here all the fields on your form that you would want to include in the notification message. Simply select eh fields you want to include of information you want to give your external client.

Set Event Notification: Here you can select when you want the notification to be sent. You can set it to send before or after the event. Array already has capabilities to send real-time notifications so this is not an option here. Make sure you make the correct selection of whether you want it prior or after the event date that has been selected on the form. On specific bot setups, you may have all 4 options whereas on others you may only be given 2 options here.

Include Message: This will be a message that is included in the notification. It can be a simple message from just a few words to a complete paragraph. This message will be included each time someone received the notification.

When would you like this bot to run?: Here you have the option to select how often you want the bot to run. You can set it to run hourly, daily, weekly or monthly depending on how often you want to be notified of the event.

Once you have all this information completed, you can select save to save the bot.

Bot Testing

Although your bot is now set up you will want to test it. To do this you will need to open the bot again and scroll to the bottom where you can save it. You will see here there are multiple options alongside Save and Test.

These options will only appear once you bot is saved. Your bot will be switched off as soon as you create it until you test and tun the bot on to use. To turn the bot on, simply click the enable slider and the slider itself will turn green.

To test the bot, select ‘send test email’. This will then send the user that created the bot a test example to ensure the bot comes through as expected. This is the same for both internal and external bots when sending a test and the test email will always go to the user who set it up/logged in.

Once you are happy with ‘Your Little Helper’ you would have added another member to your team. The bot will run on the schedule you have suggested as regimented as the sun coming up each day. If you have multiple tasks you need completing, each one will take an individual bot to perform but once completed they can run forever with minimal effort when changes are needed.