Creating Bot Users

In order to talk to your chatbot there must be a bot user pre-configured on the pimentaCHAT server.

Creating a User on the Server

An admin user is required to create the account for the bot to login to.

1. From Administration > Users menu
2. Select + to make a new user
3. Enter Name, Username, Email (tick verified) and Password
4. Disable Require password change
5. Select bot from role selection and click Add Role
6. Disable Join default channels recommended, to avoid accidental listening
7. Disable Send welcome email
8. Save

Your bot will be configured to login to pimentaCHAT server with the designated bot username and password by using these credentials in the bot’s environment PIMENTACHAT_USER and PIMENTACHAT_PASSWORD

Note that for bots email, a common workaround to avoid creating multiple accounts is to use Gmail +addresses, e.g. youremail+botnam@gmail.com. See this issue for more

Talk to your bot

Your bot will usually respond to all messages addressed directly to the bot user (depending on the particular bot framework). i.e. Messages prepended with BOT_NAME or a preconfigured BOT_ALIAS.

If the bot is configured to listen on Direct Messages (RESPOND_TO_DM=true), the prepend is not necessary (it’s automatically added internally) so the bot should respond to all messages in the DM channel.