A webhook bot is an integration you or a partner connect to your Unified Inbox. You give Bookboost a URL, Bookboost calls that URL whenever something happens on a ticket, and your bot decides what to do about it. They are managed under Messaging > Inbox Settings > Bots, and they are not the same thing as the Bookboost AI Agent.
A bot can be given access to a whole team, so it keeps following a conversation after a human picks it up and can offer a draft reply while your operator works. Without team access, a bot sees a ticket only while that ticket is assigned to the bot itself, and goes quiet the moment an operator takes it over.
The two ways a bot gets access
A webhook bot reaches a ticket in one of two ways, and the difference decides what it is allowed to do.
Through a team. Add the bot to a team and it gets read access to every ticket assigned to that team. It receives new messages on those tickets, including after an operator has picked one up, and it can propose a draft reply. It cannot send.
Through direct assignment. Assign the bot to a specific ticket and it can also send messages to the guest on that ticket.
What the bot can do | Added to the team | Assigned to the ticket |
Read the ticket | Yes | Yes |
Receive new messages on it | Yes | Yes |
Propose a draft reply | Yes | Yes |
Send a message to the guest | No | Yes |
Sending is deliberately held back to direct assignment. If every bot on a team could send, several bots could answer the same guest at once.
What the bot receives
A webhook bot only receives the kinds of message you have selected for it under Webhook Events. There are two, and the platform shows each with its event name in brackets so you can match the setting to what arrives at your URL:
User Messages (
Message) — messages from guests.Operator Messages (
OperatorMessage) — messages your own operators send.
You can change this later. The selection is not fixed at creation — open the bot and use Edit on the Info block to tick or untick either event.
Operator Messages is what makes team access worth having. A bot listening only for guest messages sees half a conversation and has no idea what your team already told the guest. If you want a bot that keeps up after a handover, it needs both.
Who the guest sees
Every webhook bot sends on behalf of an Operator, created alongside the bot and named after it with (Bot) on the end — so a bot called Concierge appears as Concierge (Bot). That is the identity attached to anything the bot sends or drafts, and it is what appears in the ticket and in the Colleagues list in the Inbox.
The Operator is shown on the bot's settings page, with a link out to the operator settings page if you need to change it.
The bot's two secrets
A webhook bot holds two different credentials, and each is shown to you only once: an HMAC signing key issued when the bot is created, which your bot uses to verify that a webhook call really came from Bookboost, and one or more API keys you create yourself, which your bot uses to call back into Bookboost.
Both matter before you build anything. See Webhook bot credentials: the signing key and API keys.
What this does not do
A team can have at most three bots. If you need a fourth, remove one first.
Team access does not let a bot send. A bot on a team can read and draft. Sending requires direct assignment to the ticket.
A bot cannot reach tickets outside its remit. It sees tickets assigned to its own teams, and tickets assigned to it directly. Nothing else.
Adding a bot to a team does not assign it anything. Team access is not assignment.
A bot cannot decide on its own to take a ticket. Assignment happens by hand or through an assignment rule.
Common questions
Is a webhook bot the same as the AI Agent?
No. The AI Agent is Bookboost's own product and it answers guests itself using knowledge you give it. A webhook bot is your own or a partner's software, connected to the inbox through the Bot API. Both appear in the same list under Inbox Settings > Bots, so you will see them side by side, but they are different things and adding a webhook bot to a team has no effect on the AI Agent.
Who builds the bot?
Either your own developers, using the Bot API, or a partner who supplies one. If you use a partner's bot, they handle the technical side and you handle which teams it has access to — and which credentials they get.
We only have the AI Agent. Does any of this apply to us?
No. If you have no webhook bots, nothing here changes anything for you. Note that the Bots list holds AI Agents as well, so seeing entries there does not mean you have a webhook bot.
What to do next
To set one up, see Creating a webhook bot and giving it team access. If you want the bot to send rather than only draft, see Letting a webhook bot reply, not just draft.
Getting help
Open Help at the bottom of the left menu and choose Talk to Us, or email support@bookboost.io.