Send user data

Provide your bot with data about the current user.

You can use Webchat to easily provide your bot with information about the current user. This is useful if your website stores user data (like with a customer login) and you want your bot to have access to that data.

Sending user data to your bot allows it to:

• Address the user by name
• Have immediate access to their contact information
• Streamline their experience

You will need:

• A website with an embedded bot
• Familiarity with HTML and JavaScript

Update user data

Use the window.botpress.updateUser method to update user data after your website has initialized Webchat:

window.botpress.updateUser({
  data: {
    firstName: newFirstName,
    lastName: newLastName,
    email: newEmail,
  },
})

The updateUser method is only available after Webchat has been initialized. To avoid errors, consider listening for the initialization event before calling updateUser.

Initialize with user data

You may want to provide some user data while initializing Webchat on your website. This allows your bot to deliver a more personalized conversation experience from the start.

To provide user data as soon as Webchat is ready, listen for Webchat’s initialization event and call window.botpress.updateUser as soon as it fires:

window.botpress.on('webchat:initialized', () => {
  console.log('Webchat has been initialized. Loading user...');
  window.botpress.updateUser({
    data: {
      firstName: newFirstName,
      lastName: newLastName,
      email: newEmail,
    },
  })
});

Access user data

You can also retrieve the user data your bot currently has access to:

In Studio

Once you’ve provided Webchat with user data, you can use the Get User Data Card to access it in the Studio:

In the User ID field, enter {{ event.userId }}. You can store the user data in any variable you’d like.

On your website

Use the window.botpress.getUser method to access the current user data programmatically:

async function getBotpressUser() {
  const user = await window.botpress.getUser()
  console.log(user)
}

getBotpressUser();