A new site answers visitors from the first minute, but the assistant can only be as good as your knowledge base. Fill the knowledge base first, put the chat on your website, then add colleagues, channels and the rest in the order below; the Setup block in the cabinet tracks the first steps for you.
What is ready on day one
When the cabinet assigns your site, these already work:
- the support panel at the address shown in the cabinet: the login is your registration email and the password is in the cabinet, so change it in the panel, see Signing in to the panel;
- the AI assistant, which answers visitors from the knowledge base;
- the chat for your website, with the code to paste into your pages;
- the team First line, which receives the conversations the assistant cannot answer, with you in it.
1. Write the first article about your company
Start the knowledge base with one article about your company: what you do, for whom, where you are and how to reach you. The assistant answers questions like "what do you do?" from this article, and while our models answer, the assistant's description, instructions and guardrails are locked, so this article is where general facts about you belong. Then add the rest under Admin > AI > Knowledge base with Add knowledge: files (PDF, Markdown, text, HTML), links, your sitemap.xml or a Confluence wiki. An article is used once its state shows In search. Give every question its own section with its own heading, worded the way customers ask: that matters more than how many articles you have. The Knowledge base step in the cabinet shows how many articles you have and how many still wait to be indexed. See Knowledge base basics and Writing articles the bot can use.
2. Put the chat on your website
Copy the chat code from the Widget on the site step in the cabinet, tab On a website, or from the panel: Admin > Channel > Inboxes, inbox Live chat, tab Setup, section Installation. Paste it before the closing body tag on every page where the chat should appear. Then type your website address in the cabinet step and press I pasted it, please check: the cabinet opens your page and looks for the code, so the code must be on the published home page. To keep the chat off other websites, list your domains in Domain list, section Security of the same tab. Paste the code only after your site has its permanent address, because the code contains it. See Live chat widget.
3. Add colleagues and emails to them
Add the colleagues who answer when the assistant hands a conversation over, see Agents and teams. On Lite and AI chat the one included agent is you, so check your plan first, see Plans, limits and billing. Then set up emails to your agents, either with your own mail or with the EPAV mailbox, so that they hear about handed-over conversations, invitations and password resets, see Notifications and the EPAV mailbox. If nobody on your side answers chats, switch the chat to AI chat without agents instead, so the assistant never promises a human, see AI chat without agents.
4. Switch the languages if you need to
A new site is in English. Three settings are independent of each other:
- the panel language and the system messages visitors get: Admin > Workspace > General, Language. The system messages switch at the next platform update; if you need them at once, write to support@epavdesk.com;
- the texts of the chat, such as the greeting: in the Live chat inbox, where one text can hold a line per language;
- the language of the assistant's answers: Admin > AI > Assistants, field Languages. Leave it empty and the assistant always answers in the visitor's language. One language there makes the assistant always answer in it. Several languages are a preference: the assistant still answers in the visitor's language, and the list decides only when that language is unclear.
5. Connect email, Telegram or WhatsApp
Connect these channels if your customers write to you there; your website chat works already. The Channels step in the cabinet is done once your site has any channel besides the website; it picks up a new channel with the regular collection of figures, every six hours. A channel you add later is not answered by the assistant until a rule routes it there. See Email, Telegram, WhatsApp and Routing a new channel to the assistant.
6. Choose your support address
Your site works at a neutral address under epavdesk.com, and changing it is optional. If you want your own domain, such as support.example.com, start early, because DNS records can take up to a day. See Your account and your site.
7. Decide which model answers
On the trial our free model answers, and you do not pay for it. After payment the cloud AI of your plan answers first, included in the price; the Model block in the cabinet shows how much is left and lets you choose what happens when it runs out. Our free model is shared, so its availability is not guaranteed: at peak times answers take longer, and when no model can answer, the visitor is told that a colleague will answer and the conversation goes to your agents (in an AI chat without agents, the visitor is asked to try again). If you want your own model, add your own provider under Admin > AI > Providers, together with a backup search model, or ask EPAV to set up your own model on your hardware for a separate fee. Voice message recognition is set up on the same page, in Speech recognition. See AI providers and your own model.
8. Test it as a visitor
Open your website, ask the chat a question that your first article answers, and check the reply. Then make sure the conversation appears in the panel. The cabinet does not ask the assistant for you: the chat on your own website is the real test, with the same path and the same waiting times as for your visitors.
9. Pay when you are ready
Until you pay, the site works in trial mode for 7 days from the day you confirmed your email; on day 8 the assistant is paused and on day 14 the site is deleted. Choose and pay for a plan in the cabinet, see Plans, limits and billing.
The full setup guide
The Channels step in the cabinet links to the Full guide, a step by step setup guide at https://my.epavdesk.com/guide. It opens without signing in.