Customization

Autopilot > Customization decides how the widget looks and what it says on its own, before the agent answers anything. A Product holds several named themes, exactly one of them Default, and every theme opens on a full-screen canvas where the widget is drawn at real size beside the settings that change it.

Before you start

• You need the admin role to create, edit or delete a theme. A member reads the gallery and every sheet without a save bar.
• The theme canvas needs a screen at least 768 px wide. On a phone it shows a note and a way back to the gallery.
• What the agent says in its answers is Persona, not this page.

Themes and the theme canvas

New theme creates a theme from a name of up to 100 characters. Each card in the gallery previews a live conversation. Its menu offers Make default, Rename and Delete. Delete is unavailable on the default theme and on the last theme, so a Product always keeps one.

Opening a card leaves the dashboard behind. Six sheets hold everything you can change, one open at a time: Colors, Texts, Sizes, Effects, Starter flows and Settings. The state switches render the widget as a visitor meets it: bar only, welcome screen, conversation, recent chats, flows, settings, pinned, and a running flow. With two or more locales enabled on Localization, a Language switch previews the panel in another language. That preview changes nothing and is not saved.

Three facts the sheets do not say on screen:

• Width and Max height are percentages of the visitor's own screen, and the open bar always takes the panel's width. Resting bar width is in pixels because there is no panel to line up with.
• The welcome icon size also sizes the pinned button a visitor can shrink the widget to, because that button is the same image.
• The web fonts are served from ARCY's own servers and load only when the chat opens. Latin Extended is covered, so Turkish renders.

Texts

The Texts sheet holds the three lines the widget says by itself, shared by every theme: Welcome headline and Welcome message, 100 characters each, and Input placeholder, 80 characters. Leave the message empty to show no greeting.

Each is written twice, on the Identified and Anonymous tabs. Neither copy falls back to the other. One save writes both, and each tab shows how many unsaved edits it holds. On Identified, type {{ or press Insert attribute to reference an attribute. Write words around the tag: a visitor identified without that attribute gets nothing where the tag was, and a placeholder that renders empty falls back to ARCY's own hint. On Anonymous a reference typed by hand is refused on save. Every other Liquid construct, page conditions included, works on both tabs.

These six texts are translatable on Localization. The rest of the widget's own wording is ARCY's and arrives already translated.

Starter flows

The Starter flows sheet lists up to 5 flows a visitor can start from the welcome screen before typing a word. Tapping one runs it and spends no chat. Identified and Anonymous each hold their own list, and one save writes both. Put anything that needs an account on the Identified list only.

• Add a flow opens a picker of your existing flows. A flow needs a public name first, because that name is the label a visitor reads.
• The picker never offers a flow this tab's audience cannot reach. A flow whose audience was narrowed after you featured it is marked in the list. Remove it.
• The lists are set once per Product. Publishing stays per environment, so a featured flow not published in the environment you are looking at is marked as absent there.

Settings

The Settings sheet holds the values a theme may not vary, shared by every theme.

Three uploads, each saved the moment the file is chosen: Chat header logo, Welcome screen icon and Chat bar icon. PNG, JPEG, WebP or SVG. None falls back to another and none is your Product's own icon. With nothing uploaded, the header shows your Product's name and the other two show ARCY's default marks.

Visitors can attach images, off until you turn it on. A visitor then attaches up to three PNG, JPEG or WebP images of up to 5 MB each to a message, from a button in the bar or by dragging them onto the widget. The agent reads them and they appear with the conversation on Pulse. Before you turn it on, set your privacy policy URL on Consent. The switch warns while it is empty. How long images are kept is on Data retention, and how many a period allows is on Billing.

Visitors can move the chat bar, off until you turn it on. The resting bar grows a handle and a visitor can drag it anywhere. The position is remembered in that visitor's browser only, the panel follows the bar, and phones are unaffected. Turning the switch off puts every bar back.

What it changes

• A theme is saved, not published. One save bar covers the theme and all six sheets, and Discard puts all of them back. There is no draft and no per-environment state.
• A visitor's widget reads its theme once per page load. A save reaches them on their next page, not in a tab they already have open. Refresh your own site to see a change.
• Under 640 px wide the widget ignores the width settings: the bar is full width and the panel is a full-screen sheet.
• Recent chats in the panel are scoped to the visitor's browser, not to the id your Product passes to identify(). A visitor who signs in on another device starts empty.

When it goes wrong

• The Identified tab warns that identity checking is off: anyone can call arcy.identify() with another person's id and read that copy with their attributes filled in. Turn it on under Identity verification before you write anything private.
• A starter flow row says it has no public name: give the flow one on Flows, or visitors never see it.
• Leaving the canvas asks whether to discard: you have unsaved changes. Stay and save, or leave and lose them.

See also

• Persona
• Flows
• Localization