Tutorial - Create a flow for FAQs

This tutorial will step you through building a simple flow for answering frequently-asked questions, introducing you to several of Mavenoid's useful capabilities along the way. It is expected to take about 10-20 minutes.

You will need:

• An account with the "modify flows" permission.

Create a new flow

1. Navigate to the assistant builder by clicking the hamburger menu in the top left and selecting "Assistant builder".
2. Click the "CREATE A FLOW" button. This will be in the center of the left pane if you don't have any flows; otherwise it will be in the top right.

3. Choose to start from a template.

4. In the future, you may wish to start from one of the populated templates. For the purposes of this tutorial, you should start from from scratch. Select "Blank" on the top of the list and click "CREATE FLOW" in the bottom right.

5. Your new flow is created.

6. Click the settings icon in the top right toolbar to open the flow settings panel.

7. Name your flow as desired. This guide will use the name "FAQ".

You now have a new flow ready for building.

What flows start with

Your brand-new flow already has a few automatically-created nodes.

1. Start node. This indicates where the flow begins. Whatever you connect to the start node will be the first thing the assistant shows to the user. (You can learn more at Understand the types of nodes - Start.)
2. Success jump target. This determines what the assistant should do once the user indicates the flow has solved their problem. By default, it connects to a feedback node and then a flow end. You can disregard it for now. (You can learn more at Understand the types of nodes - Success.)
3. Out of solutions jump target. This determines what the assistant should do once the user indicates that none of the flow's solutions solve their problem. By default, it connects to a feedback node and then a flow end. You can disregard it for now. (You can learn more at Understand the types of nodes - Out of solutions.)

Navigate the canvas

As you add nodes to the flow, you may need to reposition them or change your view.

1. You can move nodes by clicking and dragging them around the canvas.
2. You can pan around the canvas by clicking and dragging the background.
3. You can zoom in or out using the mouse wheel.

Start building

By adding nodes, you can control what the assistant will show to the user.

Create categories

FAQs generally organize questions into categories. This flow will start by asking the user what category their question is in.

1. Click on the small circle on the right side of the start node. This circle is called a connector, and clicking on it will allow you to create and connect a new node.
2. In the flyout menu, select "Choice list".

3. This will create a choice list node, which allows the user to select between multiple options. (You can learn more at Understand the types of nodes - Choice list.) In this case, the choice list will present a list of question categories for the user to choose from.
4. Enter a question for the choice list to display to the user, such as "What is your question about?"

5. Click the connector on the new choice list to create a new node.
6. In the flyout menu, again select "Choice list".

7. This will create a second choice list, which will correspond to a category of questions. It will be displayed as an option in the first choice list, and if the user picks it, they will then be shown a list of questions in a particular category.
8. Enter a question for the choice list such as "I have a question about node types". This text will be displayed to the user as an option in the first choice list.

9. Click the connector on the first choice list to add another connected node.
10. In the flyout menu, again select "Choice list".

12. Enter a question for the choice list such as "I have a question about building flows for troubleshooting".

13. As a reminder, you can reposition nodes by clicking and dragging them around the canvas. You may find this useful to keep the flow readable as you add more nodes to it.

Preview the category list

Whenever you are editing a node, you can preview it to see what it will look like in the assistant.

1. Click the first choice list node to select it and open its edit panel.
2. Find the eye icon to the left of the edit panel's title bar.

3. Click the eye icon to open the node preview.

Any time you want to see how a node will be displayed to users in the assistant, you can use this method to preview it.

Add questions and answers to the first category

Now that the FAQ has categories, it's time to populate those categories with questions and answers.

1. Click the connector on the "I have a question about node types" choice list.
2. In the flyout menu, select "Question".
3. Enter a question for the node such as "What are message nodes?".
4. Update the first option label to "This was helpful"
5. Update the second option label to "This was not helpful (restart)"
6. Enter a description that answers the question, such as "Message nodes are for conveying information to the user and requesting acknowledgment. These nodes are created with one default response, 'Continue', but any number of responses can be configured with any desired text."

Note that if you want these answers to be counted as solutions for the purposes of your analytics, you should also check the "Step is potential solution" checkbox for each one. See Understand potential solutions for more information.

7. Click on the question node to ensure it has focus.
8. Hit the keyboard shortcut for "Copy" for your OS (Ctrl+C for Windows or Cmd+C for Mac).
9. Hit the keyboard shortcut for "Paste" for your OS (Ctrl+V for Windows or Cmd+V for Mac).
10. This creates a copy of the node. You'll still need to update its question and description, but the options will already be updated (as will the "Step is potential solution" checkbox if you checked it).
11. Enter the question "When should symptom nodes be used in troubleshooting flows?".
12. Enter the description "Symptom nodes are used to represent an observable problem a user can encounter with a product."
13. Click and drag a connection from the "I have a question about node types" choice list to this new question node.

Add questions to the second category

1. Click on either question node to ensure it has focus.
2. Hit the keyboard shortcut for "Copy" for your OS (Ctrl+C for Windows or Cmd+C for Mac).
3. Hit the keyboard shortcut for "Paste" for your OS (Ctrl+V for Windows or Cmd+V for Mac).
4. Update the question on the new node to "Is full coverage of all product issues required before making a flow visible to users?".
5. Enter the description "This is not necessary. It's generally better to add the most common symptoms and their solutions, make the flow visible, and then continue to improve it based on usage."
6. Click and drag a connection from the "I have a question about building flows for troubleshooting" choice list to this new question node.

7. The second question in the first category - "When should symptom nodes be used in troubleshooting flows?" - applies to this category as well. Click and drag from the "I have a question about building flows for troubleshooting" choice list's connector to the that question.

Users don't always know which category their question belongs to. To help make sure users get the answers they need, place questions in all relevant FAQ categories.

End the flow

Now that all the questions have answers, it's time to wrap up the flow by adding the behavior that occurs after the user has seen the answers.

1. Click the "This was helpful" connector on the "What are message nodes?" question node.
2. From the flyout menu, select "Jump" -> "Success".

3. This creates and connects a Success jump. Users who select "This was helpful" will be taken to the Success jump handler.

4. Click the "This was not helpful (restart)" connector on the "What are message nodes?" question node.
5. From the flyout menu, select "Flow Control" -> "Restart".

6. This creates and connects a Restart node. Users who select "This was not helpful (restart)" will be taken back to the beginning of the flow to ask a new question.

7. Repeat steps 1-6 for both of the other question nodes.

Preview the flow

In addition to previewing individual nodes, you can preview the overall flow to see how it behaves based on the user's responses.

1. Find the eye icon in the upper-right toolbar.

2. Click the eye icon.
3. A preview will open displaying the assistant, starting with the list of question categories.

4. Make choices as desired to test out the flow's behavior.

Make the flow searchable

If the user knows exactly what their question is, they might prefer searching for it instead of navigating through lists to find it. You can allow this by starting the flow with a search node.

Add a search node

1. Right-click the connection between the Start node and the first choice list.
2. Select "Delete".

3. Click the connector on the start node and select "Advanced" -> "Search".

4. Update the search label to "What question do you have?"
5. Update the placeholder text to "E.g. what are message nodes?"
6. Update the skip button label to "Show me the question categories"
7. Drag a connection from the "No match" option on the search node to the first choice list.

Now, instead of being shown a list of question categories right away, users will be prompted to optionally search for the information they need.

Make the right nodes show up as search results

You can determine which nodes are available as search results.

1. Click the "I have a question about node types" choice list to open its edit panel.
2. Check the "Searchable" box.

3. This makes "I have a question about node types" available as a search result. You can see this on the canvas from the search adornment icon that appears attached to this node.

4. Repeat steps 1-2 for the "I have a question about building flows for troubleshooting" choice list and all three question nodes.

5. Now all the questions and both categories are available as search results, but not the "What is your question about?" choice list, which would not make sense as a search result.
6. You can preview the flow again but this time either search for a specific question or skip the search and select a question from a category.