Customizing Discobot for your site

[Discourse]

This guide explains how to customize Discobot, the built-in assistant bot in Discourse, to better match your community’s persona and needs.

Required user level: Administrator

Discobot is a special user in your Discourse community that helps new members learn about the platform. As an administrator, you can customize various aspects of Discobot to better fit your community’s style and requirements.

Modifying Discobot’s user profile

To customize Discobot’s profile:

1. Go to Admin > Users and select the Discobot user.
2. Select “Preferences” or click “Visit this user’s preferences page to edit their profile”:
   
   

Once in the Preferences section, you can modify the following settings:

Account settings

• Name: Click the “Edit” button to change Discobot’s name.
• Image: Click the “Edit” button to upload a new avatar image.
• After making changes, click the “Save Changes” button.

Profile settings

Customize Discobot’s profile information as needed.

Email settings

Adjust email-related settings as needed.

Updating Discobot’s welcome message

To change the welcome message sent by Discobot:

1. Go to Discobot’s profile (https://example.discourse.com/u/discobot/summary) and select “Messages”.

2. Click on “Sent”.

3. Find a greeting message that you want to modify.
   

   

4. Copy a unique part of the message, such as “I’m only a robot”.
   

5. Navigate to the Admin Interface (https://example.discourse.com/admin)

6. Go to Appearance > Site Texts (https://example.discourse.com/admin/customize/site_texts)

7. Paste the copied text into the search window. When the greeting message appears, click “Edit”.
   

   

8. Update the greeting message and click “Save Changes”.
   

   

Limitations and additional information

• You can reuse existing variables in messages (like %{title}), but you cannot add new ones.
• Discobot must remain an administrator; this role cannot be removed.

For further customization needs or feature requests, consider posting in the feature category.

Last edited by @hugh 2024-07-19T02:45:16Z

Last checked by @hugh 2024-07-19T02:45:34Z

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[mohamed_abdrabo]

Is it possible to make a new conversation discobot with With members and make a new certificate for them ?

I am admin to an educational forum and I want to make a new conversation with a new certificate

[HAWK]

No, you cannot currently customise the full experience.

[mohamed_abdrabo]

Is it possible to know the codes for messages such as %{title}

Excuse me for my many questions

[HAWK]

Questions are fine.

You can reuse any existing variables in the message but you cannot add new ones.

[mohamed_abdrabo]

many thanks @HAWK
Is it possible to define the existing variables if possible?

[debryc (Deborah Chang)]

I suggest adding that either

1. People need to update the Discobot’s profile About me because it’ll still say message or mention @discobot even after you change its name

or

2. Maybe Discourse could remove the username from the default message? I went ahead and edited our About me to just say

Hi, I’m not a real person. I’m a bot that can teach you about this site. To interact with me, send me a message or mention me anywhere.

Just in case we have to change it again, we don’t need to remember to also change the About me.

[wxl (Walter Lapchynski)]

@HAWK

You can reuse any existing variables in the message but you cannot add new ones.

Is this something that’s going to be possible in the future? The current question/answer format of fortune and quote is sufficient for what I have in mind.

[HAWK]

@codinghorror is extending the discobot functionality on our roadmap at all?

[codinghorror (Jeff Atwood)]

@debryc

People need to update the Discobot’s profile About me because it’ll still say message or mention @discobot even after you change its name

That’s a good point we should make that copyedit, @tshenry can you take it? No need to deal with it retroactively just for new ones. Say “mention me by name” so editing the name doesn’t require editing the “about me”.

@hawk we don’t plan on extending discobot at the moment.

[tshenry (Taylor)]

@codinghorror

@tshenry can you take it? No need to deal with it retroactively just for new ones. Say “mention me by name” so editing the name doesn’t require editing the “about me”.

Should be done with the following!

https://github.com/discourse/discourse/pull/11820

[SchweizerSchoggi]

Does Discobot have to be a Moderator or can I take this role away from him? I mean, will he still work then?

[tshenry (Taylor)]

As far as I can tell from looking at the code and the UI, Discobot should never be able to become a moderator.

If you meant an admin, then no, unfortunately there is no way to take the admin role away from DIscobot at this time.

[Kyle_Pollock]

Thanks for answering. Since the last few posts, is it possible to customize the discobot user training and advanced user training or is this still standard? We do get a lot of search traffic with the word “capybara” but would maybe like to try another or term?

[Kyle_Pollock]

Actually I believe what I’m referring to might be here: How to Customize Discobot - #7 by HAWK

[Tris20 (Tristan)]

Is there any way an admin could toggle a particular part of the tutorial on or off?

For example, the Flag tutorial requires the user to select the “Innapropriate” Flag. This Flag is hidden in our instance because it doesn’t suit our use case. Consequently our users cannot complete the Tutorial. If I could just disable/skip this one section then we could re-enable the tutorial.

[Moin]

You could change the instructions of the step, similar to how liking a post can be skipped when likes are disabled. Disable likes - update discobot tutorial

[HAWK]

You can’t remove or add steps but you can customise the body content of the steps that exist (but not the triggers).

[wendellverli (Wendell Fernandes)]

Would love to cater this and train it to answer questions related to the main subject of the forum using LM / chatgpt etc… possible?

[HAWK]

Prob best to create your own AI persona/bot rather than trying to customise discobot.