Here is the list of all the steps available in the Bot Editor to send messages of different formats to your customers on the Apple Messages for Business channel.

First Conversation

This is the main entry point to your Apple Messages account: it is triggered when the customer sends their first message, and your bot should greet them with a welcome message.

For each subsequent conversation after the first one that triggered the "First Conversation" step, the "Subsequent Conversations" step will be triggered: so it's just as important to write a good welcome message in this case!

Following conversations

This step determines the bot's behavior during a new conversation, as opposed to its very first conversation in the channel. It is triggered when there are messages in Alcmeon that formed a previous conversation (in the Alcmeon sense) for this client, and this client sends back a new message that is the start of a new conversation.

Note: When all previous messages from the customer have been “anonymized” (special action for GDPR compliance), if the customer sends a message, then this step is triggered.

Unexpected text

This step is used to intercept messages typed by a customer in the middle of the decision tree, when they would be expected to click a button presented to them instead. It is triggered when ALL of the following conditions are met:

• the customer sent a message
• this message is not a click on a button or on another element of the scenario), it is therefore a message typed by the client himself
• in the same conversation as this message from the customer, there is a message immediately preceding it which is a message sent by the bot as part of THIS scenario
• This previous message from the bot does not have a "free message entry" or "default response" output, because in this case the script should follow that output, which takes precedence over "unexpected text".

Message with menu

This step sends a text message along with a series of "quick replies," which are buttons the customer can click. These buttons disappear when one is clicked. Once a button is clicked, the label on that button is the message sent by the customer.

In the Alcmeon bot editor, you can connect each button to another step, so that the scenario continues when the customer clicks on it.

The text message sent can often, depending on the channel, contain emojis or an image, video, audio file or attachment.

List Picker

This step sends a button to the customer. Clicking this button displays a list of options for the customer. These options can be separated into sections and can be simple text or text + an icon. The customer can choose one or more items from the list to send with their response.

In the Alcmeon bot editor, each option can be connected to another step, so the customer can continue the conversational experience after making their choice.

Rich Link

This step sends a beautified link to the customer: Based on the URL you configure in this step, the customer will receive a preview of the image, video, or map, along with a title. The customer can click this message bubble to access the URL in their web browser of choice, knowing in advance what they'll find.

Advanced Messages

The following message formats are all available in Alcmeon, but due to the complexity of configuring them, please contact our support team to add them to your scenario:

• Time Picker
• Apple Pay
• App Clips rich links
• iMessage App
• Authentication
• Forms

Message with choice

This step sends a message to the client and waits for a response described in the step, in the form of "1", "2", "3", etc.

In the body of the message, we automatically add the list of possible choices, so there is no need to add them in the text.

This step has been superseded by Apple's provision of "Messages with Menus" and is therefore only really useful if you need to ask the customer a question that they can answer in free text, such as their name, email address, postal code, or simply by typing a message. The step will then have the output "other response," which is the equivalent of "free typing" a message.