Conversational channels

Conversational channels help organizations reach additional users of their enterprise applications. With conversational channels, users can seamlessly interact with a Pega Platform application to obtain help, request a service, and report or solve an issue by using Facebook Messenger, WhatsApp Messenger, Twitter, Apple Business Chat, SMS/MMS (Twilio), an embedded chat window, Amazon Alexa, or email.

A channel is the technology or an application with which a user interacts with your application. Pega Platform supports different types of channels. You add each channel separately to the system, and configure and extend each channel to fit the needs and requirements of your organization. For example, you configure an Email channel so that users can interact with your application by using an email bot. Users also interact with an application in a conversational way by using chatbots, the part of an application that runs natural language processing (NLP), decision-enabled analysis, case processing, and artificial intelligence.

Supported channels

You build Pega Intelligent Virtual Assistant (IVA) and Pega Email Bot as channels from the channel interface dashboard, to intelligently respond to users and run actions. A user can communicate with a Pega Platform application using one of the following integration components:

Email
Send email messages to interact with an email bot.
Unified Messaging
Send text messages with the integrated messaging platform using Apple Business Chat, Facebook Messenger, MMS/SMS (Twilio), Twitter, or WhatsApp Messenger. For more information, see Unified Messaging channel overview.
Web Chatbot
Send text messages in an embedded chat window on a web site to interact with an IVA for Web Chatbot.
Amazon Alexa
Use voice commands to interact with an IVA for Alexa.