Until now, your AI setup leaned on a single Primary Bot. One bot did the heavy lifting, and everything else worked around it.

That's changed. Now any bot can be assigned directly to specific channels and respond on its own. You decide which bot handles what, right down to the channel and the contact.

What's new

The Primary Bot requirement is gone. Instead, you assign bots straight to the channels you want them on - SMS, Email, Facebook, Instagram, WhatsApp, Live Chat and Web Chat.

You can route far more precisely than before:

• By channel - one bot for Email, another for Facebook, whatever suits you.
• By account or number - handy if you run more than one Facebook Page or Instagram account.
• By contact tags - for example, send your VIP-tagged contacts to one bot and everyone else to another.

When assignments overlap, the more specific one wins. A "Facebook + VIP tag" assignment takes priority over a general "Facebook" one. And you can't have two bots sharing the exact same channel, identifier and tag setup - so there's no confusion about who replies.

Splitting traffic with tags

This is where it gets useful. Two bots can share the same channel as long as their tag filters differ. Assignments can include both include and exclude tag filters, so you can point your VIPs at one bot and route everyone else to another on the very same channel.

What happens to your existing bots

You don't need to rebuild anything. Once the feature is on, migration runs automatically - give it about five minutes before you start testing.

Your current Primary Bot is preserved and gets assigned to the channels it already supports, so it keeps responding exactly as it did. Any bots that weren't the Primary Bot keep their settings too, but you'll assign them to channels yourself using the new controls.

One thing worth knowing: the "first bot is automatically primary" idea is gone. There's no automatic primary anymore. To get a bot replying, you simply enable the channels you want it to handle.

Facebook and Instagram with more than one account

Each connected Facebook Page or Instagram account now counts as its own channel identifier. After migration, your existing bot responds across all of them by default.

If you'd rather handle them separately, assign a specific bot to a specific Page or account. Each connected account can be run by a different bot.

A note on snapshots

What happens to a loaded snapshot depends on when its bots were built. If the snapshot came from an older setup, the bot that was the Primary Bot keeps responding automatically - it gets its supported channels assigned for you on the first incoming message, no setup needed. If the snapshot came from a Channel Management setup, its bots arrive without channel assignments, so you'll need to assign each one before it responds.

Either way, it's worth reviewing each loaded bot's channel assignments before you go live, just to confirm conversations route the way you want.

Workflows, transfers and assigned contacts

The "Update Conversation AI Bot and Status" workflow action still works, and it's now channel-agnostic. A bot assigned through that action responds for the contact across any channel, with no separate channel assignment needed.

Transfer Bot keeps working too - a transferred bot can reply to a contact even without a pre-set channel assignment. And your sleep or pause behaviour is preserved: a manual reply still pauses the assigned bot for its set duration, whichever bot is handling the contact.

A bot assigned directly to a contact still takes top priority, regardless of channel. Previously, if that channel was disabled the bot wouldn't reply. Now, as long as the bot is in autopilot mode it will respond, while still honouring your other settings like sleep time.

One important point: with this feature on, any bot assigned through "Update Conversation AI Bot and Status" will respond on all channels. The old Supported Channels setting is no longer used to decide where a bot replies.

If a bot isn't responding

Check three things: that the bot is assigned to the right channel, that it's pointed at the correct account for Facebook or Instagram, and that its tag filters actually match the contact. Nine times out of ten, that's the fix.

Worth mentioning: managing channel assignments through the public API isn't supported yet, so use the in-app controls for now.

Once you've had a play, you'll find routing your conversations is far more flexible than it used to be. Take a few minutes to check your assignments and you'll have every channel handled exactly how you want.