How-To: Automatically Open the Terminus Chat Frame via Playbook Targeting Rules

When you are editing a rule on the “Targeting” tab of a Playbook, you will see a toggle labeled “Auto-Open Chat Frame”.

To automatically open the chat frame for certain playbook targeting criteria, simply turn on this toggle.

Once toggled on, you can set whether you want the auto-open to occur immediately or after a time delay.

When Auto-Open is set to “Immediately”, the chat frame will open automatically once the conditions are met. This leaves no time for a proactive message to be displayed. The Proactive Message section will disappear.

When Auto-Open is set to a time delay, you can optionally input a proactive message. As a best practice, consider the length of the time delay when you are writing a proactive message. You don’t want the message to be too long for your visitor to read before the frame opens!

Important Considerations When Using The Toggle to Automatically Open the Chat Frame

• Auto-open does not apply to mobile site visitors (anyone with a screen smaller than 768 px).
• The auto-open toggle will be grayed out and cannot be enabled for any playbook targeting rules that specify mobile users.
• To protect the visitor experience, auto-open will only trigger once per visitor session (across all playbooks).
• Auto-open will trigger as soon as the respective playbook targeting condition is met. Most often, this occurs immediately upon or slightly after page load.
• Once auto-open is triggered, the playbook targeting rules are “locked” and will not process any further throughout the time delay (unless the visitor navigates to a new page or an API is called).
• Auto-opening the chat frame will automatically start a chat conversation. 
• In Chat Views, you can add a filter for “Visitor Participated” to filter out any chat conversations where the visitor did not interact with the chatbot.
• An interaction means the visitor has typed and sent a message, provided a data ask, or selected a visitor answer option.
• A chat started via auto-open will automatically end if the visitor leaves the page before interacting with the playbook.
• Processing of playbook targeting rules will restart on the next page.
• Visitor actions supersede the auto-open toggle. 
• If a visitor opens and closes the chat frame within the time delay period for the auto-open setting, the auto-open will be canceled.
• If a user has auto-opened and closed the chat window on a previous page during the same session, the auto-open will not trigger.
• The auto-open API supersedes the auto-open toggle.
• If a javascript event (such as a button click) triggers the auto-open API, the actions defined by the API will cancel the auto-open toggle settings.

We recommend only using the auto-open toggle for specific, high-intent / high-value targeting rules.