Why do I see the Answer Bot in the Chat SDK even though I don't have a subscription?

Question

I see Answer Bot when I start a chat with the Chat SDK, but I don't have an autoreplies subscription. How is that possible?

Answer

In Chat SDK v2, the Answer Bot in the conversation is a built-in chatbot that makes the chat feel more human. It replaces the pre-chat form. Zendesk won't bill your account for this feature.

The Answer Bot feature differs from autoreplies that suggest articles. To change the bot name, see the Android documentation and the iOS documentation.

To use autoreplies, see the Unified SDK docs, which can use the autoreplies engine to suggest articles: Unified SDK Android and Unified SDK iOS.

If you don't want to ask users questions, turn off the pre-chat form (Chat SDK v2 for Android and Chat SDK v2 for iOS) and set the .withPreChatFormEnabled option to false in the builder of the Messaging Activity. This starts the chat.

When your account is offline and .withAgentAvailabilityEnabled is set to true, keep this in mind:

When it's true, the SDK checks if your account is available and if at least one agent is online. If these conditions aren't met, the bot says the account is offline.

If .withOfflineFormsEnabled is true (default), you can leave an offline message. If not, the bot tells you the account is offline and asks you to try again later.

Attention: Zendesk has renamed our bot capabilities. "Answer Bot" is now "Zendesk bots", "Flow Builder" is "bot builder", and "Article Recommendations" are "autoreplies".