Channels

A channel is a way people reach your agents: a chat on your website, Your page on hiy.ai, Slack, email or WhatsApp. Channels belong to your workspace, so any agent can use any channel, and many agents can use the same one.

The channel list

Channels lists every channel, grouped Web, Messaging and Voice. Each row shows Used by, the agents on it, and This week, its chats in the last seven days. Pick an agent in the Agent filter to see only its channels.

Open a channel to see where each agent runs it, how it’s doing (Live, Not seen lately, Not set up, Needs attention or Off), and whether it follows the channel’s defaults. The menu beside the page has a row for each channel you can use, then Templates.

The Channels list: Web, Messaging and Voice groups, each channel with the agents that use it and its chats this week — Channels

Add a channel to an agent

Open the agent's Channels

Open the agent, go to Settings › Channels and press Add a channel.

Pick a channel

The list shows the channels this agent can use and doesn’t use yet. A draft agent says Publish first.

Say where it runs

For the Chat widget, Chat bar and Support page, enter the Site address (the Page address for a Support page) and press Save site, then copy the snippet. For email, WhatsApp and Slack, the setup opens.

You can also start from a channel: open it and press Add an agent. The sheet ends with New agent, which shows how many agents your plan has room for. Slack answers with one agent at a time, so picking another agent asks you to confirm the switch.

The Chat widget's page: its agents, where each one runs it, whether it follows the defaults, and its chats this week — Channels › Chat widget

Set a default, change it for one agent

Open a web channel and choose Defaults: the look, welcome and chat settings its agents start on, with a live preview. Save draft, then Publish. An agent added to the channel starts on them.

To change something for one agent, press Customise on its row. Each section says where it comes from, such as From Workspace, until you edit it, then Edited here with Reset, and Edit for all agents goes back to Defaults. A row shows Default, or how many changes the agent holds. See Style.

What an agent says, its sources and when it hands over are set on the agent and are the same on every channel. The WhatsApp and Book a call links on the handover card are set on each agent’s Handover.

See where chats come from

Under the list, Where chats come from shows, for each live agent, the websites its chats started on this week, when it was last seen there and how many chats came from each. A website where two live agents were seen is tagged Shared: visitors reach whichever agent’s snippet the page loads.

To change which agent answers a site, add the new agent to it, set it live, then take the old one off. hiy never blocks two agents on one site.

Good to know

Live means hiy has seen it load, or a visitor chat there, in the last 30 days. A Vercel preview address or a local network address doesn’t count. Not set up means hiy hasn’t seen it yet, even if your snippet is already in place. Needs attention means it was set up and stopped working, such as Slack asking you to reconnect.
An agent’s owner, and your workspace’s owners and admins, can add sites and customise an agent. Only an owner or admin changes Defaults and Slack.
With no websites listed under Allowed websites, the Chat widget and Chat bar open on Any site. List yours there to lock them.
Web chats from before sites were recorded show No site recorded. Slack, email and API chats aren’t listed here.
Trying questions in a preview never counts toward your messages or Insights.