What is a Facebook Messenger chatbot and how you can create one for yourself?

Chatbots have specific tasks and most of them work on some of the tasks requested by the user and for which they were developed. For example, there is a chatbot developed to perform simple tasks such as knowing the weather or the outcome of your favorite team or ask them to view a video from YouTube or search for specific emoji. This is done through text chat like you are talking to someone else and in a language closer to humans. There are also bots designed for complex tasks such as ordering a taxi, sending money, booking flight tickets, send a bouquet to someone.

Chatbots have evolved quite a bit in the last few years due to the great development in AI research and machine learning. The bots nowadays are more closely related to human language due to the development of natural language processing techniques and are better able to understand what human beings write or ask for. A Facebook Messenger chatbot is a mini-application designed for conversations with humans to work inside the Facebook Messenger application.

How to create a Facebook Messenger chatbot?

We will be using the ChatFuel platform for this tutorial. ChatFuel is a platform that enables you to create a chatbot that runs on Facebook Messenger without any coding skills.

1. Create an account on ChatFuel

Go to ChatFuel.com and register a new account using your Facebook account, once the account is completed you will be redirected to the control panel where you can move to the next step.

2. Create your first application

After you have registered a new account, you will be transferred to the control panel that enables you to create your first application, choose the name of the application and the appropriate template from several available templates.

3. Learn the basics of the user interface in Messenger

Before you start creating a chatbot, you should familiarize yourself with some of the basic components of Facebook Messenger or the user interface that will enable you to learn about the infrastructure of Facebook Messenger.

Normal or simplified messages – Messages that we use while messaging with friends are simple messages written directly without additions, pictures or emoji.

Cards or Bot Cards / Box – It allows you to send messages with the Insert Images, Emoji and Text feature.

Animated Banners Card Slider – It is a card that enables you to make Slide Show inside the application where you can create cards that move horizontally and you can put out texts and is useful in the case of the presentation of products and is an innovative means of shopping

4. Create a welcome message

By default, ChatFuel generates a welcome message that is sent to users each time a user starts a new chat. You can change the default welcome message by choosing from several available options. You can also add multiple links through the welcome message by clicking on the URL box which also lets you add other buttons that perform different functions.

5. Add new blocks

You can add new blocks to your application by selecting add block from the sidebar. Once you click on this option you will find an empty box on the right side where you can add text, images and software extensions available in the options gallery below the box.

6. Deploy the application

After you have developed your application you can then deploy the application, you will find two options after the completion. The first option allows you to try your application and troubleshooting before publishing and the second option is the deployment option where you will publish the application on Facebook and you can try it through Facebook Messenger.

That’s all. You have successfully created your very own Facebook Messenger chatbot. You can consider this as a quick guide to get started with creating a simple chatbot for your Facebook page. For a more advanced bot, you will need coding skills.