Channels and web chat
Students reach the assistant by texting your institution’s number or through a chat widget on your website. Both are deployments, managed under Administration → Channels. The Channels page in the sidebar shows every channel, whether it is configured, and recent redacted conversations.
Before you start
Section titled “Before you start”- Managing deployments needs manage channels.
- Answers to anonymous visitors come only from knowledge-base sources marked public. Mark the right sources before going live; see Integrations overview.
- Decide whether replies should wait for a person (Calibration, the default) or go out directly (Auto). See Contact policy.
Add a deployment
Section titled “Add a deployment”- Select Add deployment.
- Choose the Channel: SMS number or Web chat widget.
- Enter a Name.
- For SMS, enter the Phone number in international format. Unifuse provisions the number with its messaging provider during onboarding.
- For web chat, enter the Allowed origins: the sites the widget may load on, up to 20.
- Optionally enter a Greeting, up to 500 characters, shown when the widget opens. The default tells the visitor that a person reviews the assistant’s answers.
- Select Add deployment.
The table lists each deployment’s channel, name, address, an Active toggle, and for web chat Copy snippet and Rotate key. Deployments can be deactivated but not deleted. Every change is recorded in the audit log.
Embed the widget
Section titled “Embed the widget”Paste the snippet from Copy snippet before the closing </body> tag of each page. Your
site’s content security policy must allow the Unifuse origin in script-src and frame-src.
The widget is a chat button fixed at the bottom right of the page, isolated from your site’s styles, which opens a panel titled “Chat with us”. It respects reduced-motion settings and resizes on small screens.
Rotate key issues a new key and stops the old snippet immediately. Use it if a snippet has been copied somewhere it should not be.
What visitors experience
Section titled “What visitors experience”- The panel header shows your institution and the deployment name. In calibration mode it shows Answers reviewed by a person, and a pending line while a reply is in the Review Queue.
- Messages are limited to 2,000 characters.
- Rate limits apply per visitor and per deployment; a visitor who exceeds them is asked to wait a moment.
- The conversation lives only in that browser tab.
- A visitor who matches a student record must verify with a one-time code before the assistant looks anything up about them.
- Texting STOP opts a number out; START opts it back in.
Other channels
Section titled “Other channels”The Channels page also lists Email (outbound only; inbound email is not a channel yet), Microsoft Teams, Slack, WhatsApp and Voice. These show as not configured unless Unifuse has set them up for your institution.
Related
Section titled “Related”View this page as Markdown for use with an AI assistant, or read the whole site at /llms.txt.