Alcméon's inMessage messaging channel can be setup in numerous configurations to support the functional and time to market needs of different customers. The sections below provide an overview of common deployment scenarios.

Bots

The inMessage channel can take advantage of Alcméon's builtin capabilities to:

Build static bots via the Alcméon bot Editor,
Handover transparently between a bot and a customer support agent, but also,
Leverage the Subbot API to generate fully-personalized interactions via content extracted from a backoffice or a CRM,
Offload NLP capabilities to specialized components via the api-subbot

Customer Identification and Authentication

Anonymous Chat

By default, inMessage chat conversations are anonymous: a user's conversation is persistent over time because this user is assigned a stable long-lived unique identifier but until the user performs a login or provides its personal identifiers to a bot or a customer support agent, no personal information is associated with the user's identifier.

Automated Identification

In some cases, when the inMessage chat is hosted within a website where the user is already logged in, or when it is integrated within a Mobile Application to provide in-app messaging, it is possible to leverage the user identifiers to automatically associate the inMessage user identifier with the customer user identifier and associated metadata. Customer support agents as well as bots are then able to leverage this information to access user account information.

Client-side User Interface

inMessage provides three major user interface configurations whose capabilities are summarized in the table below


	Look customization	Website deployment	Mobile Application deployment	Availability
Javascript SDK	+	Yes	No	Off-the-shelf
iframe	+	Yes	Yes	Off-the-shelf
HTTP API	++	Yes	Yes	Internal development team needed

Javascript SDK

The default HTML/js-based SDK can be deployed instantly on any website and its look can be easily customized to match customer's branding requirements.

iframe widget

The builtin iframe-based chat widget can also be deployed quickly, its look can be easily customized, and it can be integrated within Mobile Applications via a native webview as an in-app Messaging solution.

HTTP API

Customers who wish to maintain full control over the client-side user interface either within a website or within a Mobile Application can also take advantage of the HTTP-based inMessage API. The authentication mechanism makes it possible to use this API securely either directly client-side or server-side.