Deploy & channels overview
Deploy puts one Bookbag agent everywhere your customers are — a website widget, email, WhatsApp, Slack, Instagram, and Facebook Messenger — all answering from the same knowledge.
View as MarkdownA Bookbag agent isn't tied to one place. Once you've trained it, the Deploy tab lets you connect it to every surface your customers use — and the same agent, with the same knowledge and guardrails, answers consistently on all of them.
Open any agent and go to Deploy to see the All channels gallery. Each card is a channel you can turn on: the website widget and a hosted help page are first-party surfaces you can enable instantly, and the rest connect to outside platforms with a short setup.
The website widget is the fastest path to a live agent — one script tag and you're done. Add messaging channels once the widget is working. See Website widget.
Available channels
Channels fall into three groups by how they connect:
| Channel | Type | How it connects |
|---|---|---|
| Website widget | First-party | A <script> embed you paste into your site. Live instantly. |
| Help page | First-party | A Bookbag-hosted page at a path you choose. No code. |
| Messaging | Inbound email is forwarded to a webhook; the agent drafts a reply. | |
| Messaging | Meta Cloud API webhook + access token. Real two-way messaging. | |
| Slack | Messaging | Slack Events API webhook + bot token. Answers in channels and DMs. |
| Messaging | Meta Graph webhook for Instagram DMs. | |
| Facebook Messenger | Messaging | Meta Graph webhook for your Page inbox. |
How messaging channels work
Every messaging channel follows the same pattern. You point the platform at a Bookbag inbound webhook, Bookbag normalizes the incoming message into the shared chat runtime, the agent generates a grounded reply, and Bookbag sends that reply back out through the platform.
- 1Bind the channelEnable the channel on the Deploy tab and save the platform's credentials (bot token, access token, etc.). This creates a channel binding on the agent.
- 2Register the webhookCopy the inbound webhook URL from the channel card and paste it into the platform's developer settings. Meta and Slack send a one-time verification request that Bookbag answers automatically.
- 3Bookbag runs the agentWhen a customer messages, the platform POSTs to your webhook. Bookbag matches it to the right agent, retrieves the relevant knowledge, and composes a reply.
- 4The reply goes back outFor asynchronous channels (WhatsApp, Slack, Messenger, Instagram) Bookbag pushes the answer back through the platform's send API using the credentials you saved.
Inbound webhooks live at https://app.bookbag.ai/channels/<type>/webhook — for example .../channels/whatsapp/webhook. The channel card on the Deploy tab shows the exact URL for each platform.
One agent, consistent everywhere
Because all channels run the same agent, you only maintain knowledge and guardrails in one place. A change to a Q&A pair or the system prompt updates every channel at once — there's no per-channel copy to keep in sync.
- Same knowledge — every channel retrieves from the agent's sources.
- Same guardrails — the system prompt and fallback behavior apply everywhere.
- Same actions — lead collection, escalation, and custom actions work on every channel.
- Unified inbox — conversations that escalate land in the same Help Desk, regardless of channel.