Preventing and disabling user typing

There may be occasions when you want to temporarily remove the ability for users to type in the chat while the chatbot is "starting" or "thinking". The user could become impatient waiting for the bot and if they start typing before the bot has responded, it can cause confusion.

There are three ways that this can be achieved:

Forcing the user to use buttons

Both Message and Question interaction types support disabling user input when Buttons or Quick Replies are used.

Select the checkbox Disable text input field (Web Client only).

For Messages, this checkbox can be found in the Buttons tab.

For Questions, this checkbox can be found in the Answers tab (if the Answer Type is set to Set up Button/Quick Reply Answer).

Preventing old message buttons being clicked

Once clicked by the user, buttons persist and can be clicked again even if new messages have arrived.

If, however, you use Quick Replies, it is not possible for the user to click old buttons because they disappear after clicking. If you combine this with Disable text input field, it forces the user to click Quick Reply to move forward.

Built-in spamming prevention

Chat Web Client supports an option called sendMessageDisabledTimeout. This specifies a timeout (in seconds) before the send button is re-enabled after the user sends a message, but the bot does not respond.

By default, this is enabled and set to 10 seconds.