Glossary

A collection of users, teams, named areas, conversation templates, configuration properties and the like. The account is the main entity to separate several tenants—​your organization’s various country subsidiaries, for example—​on the same Unblu installation.

It’s important to bear in mind that, in Unblu, the term "account" doesn’t refer to a user. Rather, a user belongs to an account.

The interface used to administer an Unblu account. Users allowed to access the Account Configuration interface have an entry labeled Manage account in the Administration section of the Agent Desk settings menu.

To access the Account Configuration interface, users must have the role SUPER_ADMIN, TECHNICAL_ADMIN, ADMIN, or SUPERVISOR.

For more information, refer to the Account Configuration interface guide.

The method by which Unblu routes HTTP requests to different accounts before it has authenticated the requests based on distinct host names and/or subdomains.

A role that grants users access to the Account Configuration interface and allows them to configure settings at the account level.

For more information about user roles, refer to User roles.

See Admin.

A registered user of the Unblu Agent Desk, usually a representative of the organization that offers collaboration services on their website.

Anyone in your organization who uses Unblu to engage with your customers—​call center employees, client advisors, relationship managers, support desk agents and so on—​is referred to as an "agent" in Unblu.

For more information about user roles, refer to User roles.

The web-based interface for users to conduct and manage conversations, calls, and collaboration sessions.

For more information, refer to the Agent Desk guide.

A code passed by websites instrumented with the Unblu snippet to identify themselves. The API key acts as a unique identifier and has a set of access rights and configuration properties associated with it.

API keys are commonly used to provide different configurations for Unblu in mobile and desktop web applications, or on different websites that belong to the same organization. They aren’t security-relevant.

For more information, refer to Managing API keys.

A graphical representation of an entity such as a user, person, team, account, or named area.

For more information, refer to Avatar configuration.

In the context of Unblu, a bot is a software application that takes part in a conversation with a human participant. Unblu supports two different types of bot: dialog bots and conversation-observing bots.

For more information, refer to Bot integration.

The web-based interface content managers use to configure, train, and deploy the Unblu Conversational Bot.

A canned response is a predefined text snippet that agents can use in chat messages. They help reduce the amount of typing agents have to do for frequently used messages and ensure recurring texts are error-free. Canned responses can also be used to improve the consistency of your organization’s communication with its customers.

For more information, refer to the sections on canned responses in the Agent Desk and Account Configuration interface guides.

The means by which conversation participants can view the contents of a website, a mobile app, or a document together.

For an introduction to the various collaboration layers, refer to Collaboration layers. For information on configuring collaboration layers, refer to Configuring and manipulating collaboration layers.

The main server component in the Unblu product.

The Unblu Collaboration Server is a Java-based application that:

The Collaboration Server can be scaled horizontally in an Unblu cluster deployment. For more information, refer to Cluster deployment.

A bot that can be configured to automate three common interactions that occur during a typical conversation: onboarding, reboarding, and offboarding.

For information on configuring the concierge, refer to Configuring the concierge.

The mechanism by which entities inherit the values of configuration properties from other entities. The configuration cascade is defined by Unblu and can’t be changed.

For more information, refer to Configuration property scope and the configuration cascade.

A property or setting defined on an entity which specifies a facet of the entity’s behavior.

The configuration properties are listed and described in the configuration properties reference.

Content managers are responsible for managing the Unblu Conversational Bot. They create intents and flows, train the bot’s prediction models in different domains, and deploy the models.

A channel to enable communication between two or more persons.

Conversations are highly flexible. The mode of communication isn’t fixed for a conversation, nor is its duration. The persons participating in a conversation can also change.

Since conversations are such a central part of Unblu, a lot of the documentation is related in some way or other to conversations. The articles The elements of a conversation and Conversation and participation life cycles are good starting points. You can then dive deeper into indidividual topics with the articles in the Conversations section of the Unblu documentation.

A conversation-observing bot is a bot that listens for webhook events in a conversation and joins the conversation when an event of the type it’s listening for occurs.

For more information, refer to Conversation-observing bots.

A person’s active connection to a conversation. A person may have multiple concurrent presences in a conversation, for example if they’re participating in a conversation with both their mobile phone and a web browser.

For more information, refer to the section Conversation presence in Conversation timeline.

The connection between the conversation presences of the participants in a conversation and the conversation in question. A session is started automatically once a person has established a presence in a conversation. When no participant has a presence in the conversation anymore, the session ends automatically.

For more information, refer to the section Conversation session in Conversation timeline.

The process of transferring a conversation session from one pod to another in the Unblu cluster when the pod it’s running on must be terminated.

For more information, refer to Configuring conversation session migration in on-premises cluster deployments.

A collection of configuration and text properties applied to a conversation when it’s created. Which conversation template is applied to a new conversation depends on a number of factors:

A framework for creating, training, and deploying dialog bots that doesn’t require any programming knowledge.

The Unblu Conversational Bot uses a natural language understanding (NLU) algorithm to determine what a visitor needs and respond accordingly. It’s configured and trained by content managers using an intuitive web-based user interface, the Bot Dialog Builder (BDB).

An Unblu installation exposing the Unblu server and your company website to the Internet separately. For example, your website may be accessible via https://www.mycompany.com, but your visitors access Unblu via https://unblu.mycompany.com/. This type of setup is common in Unblu Cloud deployments.

In on-premises installations, your organization’s internal and public URLs may be running on different domains.

For more information, refer to the section Cross-origin setup in Server positioning.

See also site-embedded setup.

An action users can invoke on a conversation, a person, or a message to trigger an API or webhook event. The event can be used to carry out one or more operations outside Unblu, such as opening a client’s portfolio in a CRM application or initiating a document signing process.

For more information, refer to Adding functionality to Unblu with custom actions.

A deputy is an agent or a team that’s notified when another agent receives a personal conversation request and doesn’t respond to it.

For more information, refer to Deputy delegation.

A dialog bot is a bot that conducts a one-to-one dialog with a conversation participant during the onboarding, reboarding or offboarding phase of a conversation.

For more information, refer to Dialog bots.

A collaboration layer that allows conversation participants to view PDF files and other kinds of files together. Participants all see the same copy of the document, so when completing a PDF form, for example, all participants can see what’s entered in the form as it happens.

For more information, refer to the section on document co-browsing in Introduction to collaboration layers and to Configuring the document co-browsing collaboration layer.

A technique used in embedded co-browsing to transfer the state of a visitor’s view of a website to an agent.

A collaboration layer that uses DOM capturing to allow visitors to share their view of an Unblu-enabled website with other conversation participants.

For more information, refer to the section on document co-browsing in Collaboration layers and to Configuring the embedded co-browsing collaboration layer.

The version of the visitor UI that you can embed in a website or single page application (SPA) using the custom HTML element <unblu-embedded-app>. The Embedded Visitor UI is particularly suited to contexts where the focus is on messaging.

For more information, refer to the Embedded Visitor UI guide.

See also Floating Visitor UI.

The set of criteria used to determine which type of conversation to launch. The criteria are:

For more information, refer to the Engagement types section of The elements of a conversation.

The part of the URL that an HTTP request is sent to which determines the level of trust required to access the resource at the endpoint accessed via the URL.

For more information, refer to Entry paths.

A third-party text-based communication channel that can be integrated into Unblu. This can be a messenger such as WhatsApp, an SMS text message service, or email.

For more information, refer to External messeger integration.

A system that sends files uploaded to conversations to an external system that checks the files before they’re made available to participants in the conversation.

For more information, refer to File interceptors.

The version of the visitor UI that can be integrated in a website without a custom HTML element.

The Floating Visitor UI takes up less of the screen than the Embedded Visitor UI and is therefore better suited to providing in-context assistance.

For more information, refer to the Floating Visitor UI guide.

An ordered succession of intents in a chat conversation between a visitor and the Unblu Conversational Bot. The Unblu Conversation Bot guides the visitor from one intent to the next using quick reply messages.

The process by which Unblu determines which entities marked for deletion should be physically deleted from the database and then physically deletes them.

The process is carried out by different jobs for different types of entity. The jobs run periodically, checking for entities that should be deleted.

There is a delay between the marking of an entity for deletion and its physical deletion.

Physical deletion is irreversible.

Record retention policies affect when certain types of entity become available for garbage collection. For more information, refer to Record retention policies.

A ghost or ghost participant is a user viewing a conversation without actually participating in it. The other participants in the conversation can’t tell that a ghost is accessing a conversation unless the ghost executes an action that the other participants are informed of.

The interface used to administer an Unblu server. Changes made here apply to all accounts running on the Unblu server.

Users allowed to access the Global Server Configuration interface have an entry labeled Manage global server settings in the Administration section of the Agent Desk settings menu.

Only users with the SUPER_ADMIN role have access to the Global Server Configuration interface.

The replication of a user’s identity from a system outside Unblu. Authentication, where required, is also handled by the external system.

ID propagation is one way to implement single sign-on (SSO) in Unblu. For more information, refer to the Authentication source PROPAGATED section of the article on authentication.

In natural language understanding (NLU), an intent represents the underlying meaning of a statement (also referred to as an utterance). Multiple statements can have the same intent. For example, all the statements below may have the intent I am thirsty:

The Unblu Conversational Bot determines the intent behind a visitor’s message based on its prediction model and then carries out the action associated with that intent.

The button displayed on an Unblu-enabled website to open the floating visitor UI.

A system to prevent messages that contain sensitive information from being displayed in chats. Unblu has built-in message interceptors that use regular expressions to detect sensitive data. It also supports external message interceptors.

For more information, refer to Message interceptors.

A collaboration layer that allows visitors to share the view of a mobile app that has Unblu integrated with an agent.

For more information, refer to the section on mobile co-browsing in Introduction to collaboration layers and to Configuring the mobile co-browsing collaboration layer.

For more information on integrating Unblu into a mobile app, refer to the articles in the Android and iOS integration sections.

A means of grouping parts of your website. You can then specify that Unblu should behave differently for different groupings.

A named area may be defined using either domains and subdomains registered in Unblu, or with an ID that you then add, in a meta tag, to the pages you wish to include in the named area.

For more information, refer to Managing named areas.

The branch of natural language processing in artificial intelligence that focuses on enabling computers to understand human language. The Unblu Conversational Bot uses an NLU algorithm to conduct dialogs with visitors.

For a brief overview of NLU, refer to the Wikipedia article on the subject.

The process a person must complete to leave a conversation. The process can be handled by the concierge or a dialog bot. The steps in the process are configurable and can be different for agents and visitors.

For information on configuring the concierge offboarding process, refer to the relevant sections of Configuring the concierge for visitor and agent offboarding.

For information on using a dialog bot for offboarding, refer to Dialog bots.

The process a person must complete to join a conversation. The process can be handled by the concierge or a dialog bot. The steps in the process are configurable and can be different for agents and visitors.

For information on configuring the concierge onboarding process, refer to the relevant sections of Configuring the concierge for visitor and agent onboarding.

For information on using a dialog bot for onboarding, refer to Dialog bots.

A user who has or had a participation in a conversation.

For more information, refer to the section Conversation participants in Elements of a conversation.

The time that a person is actively taking part in a conversation.

For more information, refer to the sections Conversation participation and Participation states in Conversation timeline.

The representation of a user in conversations. The user’s details, such as their name, are copied to the person. Changes made to the user’s details are reflected in the person that represents it.

Users who joined a conversation at some point in the past are represented by persons in the conversation. This is the case even if they aren’t currently present in a conversation, for example because they closed the browser tab with the conversation. When they open the conversation again, they’re represented by the same person.

Decoupling the representation of users in conversations from the users themselves allows for persistent conversations to be displayed with information about their participants even after a user has been deleted from Unblu.

A temporary identifier, typically consisting of several digits. The agent usually provides the visitor with the PIN over the phone. The visitor then enters the PIN to join the conversation.

A machine learning model the Unblu Conversational Bot uses to determine a visitor’s intent. Content managers must train the prediction model on phrases they believe visitors will use to represent the intent.

An ordered list of conversations that an agent may join.

The conversations in an agent’s queue depend on the filters the agent has defined for their queue. Suppose an agent is able to join conversations from two different named areas, but their queue is filtered to display only conversations from one of these named areas. In that case, the queue will only include conversations from one named area, and the agent will only be able to join these conversations.

For more information on the queue, refer to The queue and manual and automatic request dispatching.

The process a visitor must complete to resume an unassigned conversation.

For information on the cases where reboarding is possible, refer to Conversation and participation life cycles.

For information on configuring the concierge reboarding process, refer to the reboarding section of Configuring the concierge.

For information on using a dialog bot for reboarding, refer to Dialog bots.

A rule that specifies when an entity of a given type should be made available for deletion by a garbage collection job.

For more information, refer to Record retention policies.

An Unblu user with the role REGISTERED_USER. For more information, refer to User roles.

In Unblu contracts and licensing, the term refers to a user with the role REGISTERED_USER or above, that is, it includes users with the roles SUPERVISOR, ADMIN, TECHNICAL_ADMIN, and SUPER_ADMIN. For more information on licensing, refer to Licensing.

For more information on user roles, refer to User roles.

An application based on a Chromium browser running in headless mode.

The Rendering Service runs in a Docker container as part of an Unblu installation. It’s required for document co-browsing, universal co-browsing, and conversation recording.

For more information, refer to the articles in the Rendering Service section of the Unblu documentation.

Contents of the web page displayed in a visitor’s browser during an embedded co-browsing session that are transferred to the Unblu server so that agents have the same view of the page. The contents transferred to the resource history typically include resources such as images and CSS files.

For more information, refer to Resource history.

A means of classifying users. The purpose of a role is to define which users may access which features of Unblu.

For more information, refer to User roles.

An intent that can be selected by the Unblu Conversational Bot using its prediction model based on the user’s chat input and the training sentences associated with the intent.

Root intents can have subintents that are only accessible through the root intent.

Unlike subintents, root intents can’t be deleted.

A conversation that agents can set up to start at a given time in the future. This gives the agent time to prepare the conversation. Visitors can’t access the conversation until they’re admitted by the agent.

For more information, refer to Scheduled conversation configuration and the section on scheduled conversations in the Agent Desk guide.

The scope of a configuration property describes the set of entities the property may affect, depending on the level within the configuration cascade that the value of the configuration property is specified.

For more information, refer to Configuration property scope and the configuration cascade.

Screen sharing allows participants to share the content of their entire screen, not just a browser tab like embedded co-browsing. As with embedded co-browsing, Unblu screen sharing lets participants watch as another participant interacts with the screen.

For more information, refer to the section on screen sharing in Introduction to collaboration layers and Configuring the screen sharing collaboration layer.

The component of an Unblu installation that makes protected resources available for embedded co-browsing sessions via the resource history. The SecureFlow Manager can also be used to inject the Unblu JavaScript snippet when it’s required.

For more information, refer to SecureFlow Manager.

See Configuration property.

See SecureFlow Manager.

A variety of the Agent Desk to display a single conversation.

The Single Conversation Desk is commonly used to give agents access to a single conversation from another system, such as a call center solution or a CRM application.

An on-premises installation that exposes the Unblu server and you organization’s website via a proxy. For example, your company website may be accessible via https://www.mycompany.com, and your Unblu installation is accessible via https://www.mycompany.com/unblu.

For more information, refer to the section Site-embedded setup in Server positioning.

See also Cross-origin setup.

An intent that’s only accessible through a superordinate intent within a dialog flow. Subintents can have subintents of their own.

Unlike root intents, subintents can be deleted.

See Team.

A role that grants users the authorization to configure settings at the account and server (or "global") level.

For more information about user roles, refer to User roles.

See Superadmin.

A role that grants users the authorization to manage some aspects of an account, such as certain teams and their members.

If a supervisor manages a team with subteams, they can manage those subteams and their members, too.

For more information about user roles, refer to User roles.

Teams are groups of users and subteams. A subteam is simply a team within another team.

Teams allow you to change settings and apply the changes to multiple users. Configuration settings applied to a team are inherited by the team’s users and its subteams.

Teams don’t intersect: a user can only be a member of a single team. If a user is a member of a subteam, they aren’t members of the parent team as well.

For more information, refer to Creating agent teams.

A role that grants users the authorization to configure settings at the account and server (or "global") level.

The TECHNICAL_ADMIN role is intended for specialists with a purely technical function who aren’t authorized to access personally identifiable information (PII) stored in Unblu.

For more information about user roles, refer to User roles.

A setting containing text used in one of the Unblu UIs. Many text properties can be adapted to your organization’s needs and localized.

The text properties are listed and described in the text properties reference.

The Unblu Cloud is Unblu’s software as a service (SaaS) offering. Customers can choose between two different options:

For more information, refer to the articles in the Unblu Cloud section of the Unblu documentation.

A deployment of Unblu running in a Kubernetes or OpenShift cluster on a customer’s infrastructure. An Unblu cluster can run on the customer’s own hardware or in their IaaS environment.

Running an Unblu cluster is the recommended deployment method for on-premises installations.

For more information, refer to Unblu cluster components, Cluster hardware requirements, and Cluster deployment.

A collaboration layer that allows persons to view a website together that hasn’t been instrumented with Unblu. Universal co-browsing requires the Rendering Service.

For more information, refer to the section on universal co-browsing in Introduction to collaboration layers and to Configuring the universal co-browsing collaboration layer.

The entity used to store information about someone who can use Unblu, such as their name and email address, in the Unblu server.

Agents, supervisors, admins, technical admins, and superadmins are all represented as users in Unblu.

What a user can do in Unblu is determined by their role.

Users may be created in Unblu or propagated from an external source such as an identity management system. For more information, see User modes.

In conversations, users are represented by person entities.

In natural language understanding (NLU), an utterance is a distinct chunk of communication, that is, speech or writing. The Unblu Conversational Bot analyzes a visitor’s utterance to determine its underlying intent.

A user identity propagated to Unblu by another system. Unblu doesn’t have any local information about that user in its built-in user directory. Rather, it trusts the system that propagated the user’s identity.

A person using Unblu to get assistance, support, or advice. Usually a customer of the company that offers collaboration services on their web site.

For more information about user roles, refer to User roles.

The visitor-side equivalent to the Single Conversation Desk.

The Visitor Desk gives visitors access to a single conversation without the navigational possibilities of the embedded and floating visitor UIs.

A visitor using Unblu after being authenticated by a protected web application such as an e-banking portal.

For more information about user roles, refer to User roles.

A collaboration layer that allows persons to collaborate on a blank canvas. Participants can draw diagrams as well as add text, shapes, and arrows.

For more information, refer to the section on the whiteboard in Introduction to collaboration layers and to Configuring the whiteboard collaboration layer.