Variables and Tags

One of the pillars of your chatbot flow with MyLINK Connect are Variables and Tags: while building your chatbot you will use both extensively to identify your users, store and display relevant runtime data.

Variables

Variables are entities defined through a name and value pair. Each variable has a name and an assigned value. While variables are defined globally during chatbot design, they all become bound to each conversation. For example if you define the variable favorite_color in your chabot design, all conversation will have it and each conversation may have a different value assigned.

MyLINK Connect manages both basic, direct valued variables and complex object variables. Direct valued variables are the most common as they just old simple values like favorite_color="red". Complex object variables hold an object instance and can be accessed in both raw JSON value or by property name notation. A variable defined as follows:

favorite_color = {
    "name":"Red",
    "value":"ff0000"
}

Can be accessed and automatically parsed both by referring to favorite_color, which will return the full JSON or by favorite_color.name, which will just return Red.

There are no limits to the number of variables your chatbot conversation can have.

Regardless of initial choice, variable names are forced by Xenioo into snake_case convention.

Default Variables

By default, the following variables are added to your chatbot runtime by Connect:

Name	Description
user_name	The username (or nickname) of the user, if available.
first_name	The first name of the user
last_name	The last name of the user
locale	The locale of the user in 2 letters iso format (e.g. EN, IT). On channels such as RCS, SMS and WhatsApp, this value is detected from the user phone number.
locale_alpha3	The country of the user in 3 letters format (e.g. ENG, ITA). On channels such as RCS, SMS and WhatsApp, this value is detected from the user phone number.
user_id	The channel based user id. This value is unique to the channel
x-token	Single use throw away token. The value changes every time it is used
bot_name	The name of your bot, as set in your settings.
bot_channel	The name of the current conversation channel (e.g. "WhatsApp" )
last_user_message	The last message the user has sent
last_command	The last command that was triggered by the user
detected_locale	The locale that MyLINK Connect has detected by NLP or scripting in 4 letters iso format (e.g. en-US)
input_fail_count	The last number of failed inputs
input_fail_triggered	Contains true if the last input has triggered a failure. Otherwise false
chat_state	Contains the current chat state according to the table below
first_contact	The full date and time of the very first contact your chatbot had with the current user.
first_contact_day	The day of the month of the very first contact your chatbot had with the current user.
first_contact_weekday	The full name of the day of the week (e.g. Saturday) of the very first contact your chatbot had with the current user.
first_contact_month	The month of the very first contact your chatbot had with the current user.
first_contact_year	The year of the very first contact your chatbot had with the current user.
last_actor	Contains a fixed value representing the last platform actor to interact in the current flow. It may contain "user" if the last interaction was from the user or "mylinkconnect" if the chatbot was the originator of the last message or the operator email, if the last message was from an operator.
last_contact	The full date and time of the last contact that your chatbot had with the current user. If the conversation is alive, this value is constantly updated after each interaction.
last_contact_day	The day of the month of the last contact your chatbot had with the current user.
last_contact_weekday	The full name of the day of the week (e.g. Saturday) of the last contact your chatbot had with the current user.
last_contact_month	The month of the last contact your chatbot had with the current user.
last_contact_year	The year of the last contact your chatbot had with the current user.
optin_message	If the channel requires an optin message (e.g. WhatsApp) this variable will hold the value of the very first message sent by the current user to the channel.
conversation_topics	The number of topics collected by the current conversation.
device_state	The device state retrieved by Connect IoT actions. May vary depending on device.
conversation_state	The current conversation state in extended string format. Can be either Chatbot, OperatorRequested, OperatorTakenOver or UserBanned.
online_operators_count	The number of operators online for the current chatbot. This value is updated on every user interaction. When not looking at a live conversation it may represent a stale value.
online_operators	The full list of operators currently online separated by a semicolon. Like for the operators count, this value is updated on every user interaction. When not looking at a live conversation it may represent a stale value.
operator	The operator email of the currently active operator. This variable is valued only if the current conversation is taken over.
operator_name	The full operator name (Account Name) of the active operator. This variable is valued only if the current conversation is taken over.
operator_group	The full group name of the currently active operator. This variable is valued only if the current conversation is taken over.
operator_interacted	True if the operator talked at least once with the user since take over. Empty otherwise.
streaming_offset	The current offset of an ongoing streaming action. It represent the position along the stream in milliseconds.
current_stream_token	The current unique token associated with the streaming operation.
previous_stream_token	The unique token associated to the previous streaming operation.
current_audio_action	The current audio action as requested by an incoming state change in any IoT device update.
message_type	This variable will hold the type of message sent by the user. This variable is empty if the message is of type text, otherwise will contain either "image", "audio", "voice" or "file".
last_receipt_value	This variable will be automatically updated by MyLINK Connect with the latest receipt value of the latest message sent to the conversation channel.

Default Tags

The following tags are created automatically by Connect during your chatbot runtime:

Tag	Description
NEW_USER	This tag is automatically added to a user if a previous conversation is not found. This tag is automatically removed when the user comes back to the chatbot after at least 30 minutes.

Chat State Values

The chat_state variable may contain the following values, depending on the current state of the chat:

Value	Description
Empty/Unset	The chat is in its default state. MyLINK Connect is controlling your chatbot replies.
operator_requested	An operation has set the request operator flag. The chat is waiting to be taken over by an operator
take_over	The chat has been taken over by an operator and its currently managed by a human.

Please note that, depending on the channel and depending on specific user related privacy settings, some of the above variables may not be available. Additional, specific variables, may be added automatically to your chatbot runtime depending on the channel used by the user. Refer to each channel specific information for a complete list.

Privacy Variables

Privacy variables are a special type of variables that cannot be altered in any way from outside or inside the chatbot runtime.

These variables hold the selected privacy preferences of your user and only a Privacy Opt-in Action can alter these variables.

Tags

Tags are single named entities that can be attached to the conversation to later filter or switch the flow based on their presence (or the absence). If you do not need to store a value but you need to represent a simple flag, Tags are generally better.

By default, your chatbot will have the following tags:

Tag	Description
NEW_USER	Automatically added to the conversation on the very first contact. Subsequent conversations with the same user will no longer have this tag.

Data Persistence

Both variables and tags are uniquely stored for each of you chatbot conversation. Every change you make to a variable or tag during your chatbot runtime is scoped to only the current conversation.

Every variable and tag is persisted in the conversation and kept available for any future contact or broadcast until you, or the user, choose to forget it.