Build Better Bots - Know Your Bot's History

Know Your Bot's History!

Chatbot - Jun 07, 2021

Much like training a pet or learning a new skill, creating a great bot isn’t just a one-time endeavor.

A good amount of trial and error is involved, as are making periodic tweaks and changes based on historical data to improve a bot’s performance and engagement. This process is how we’ve learned what works when building bots. While we’re “experts”, we still regularly experiment with different strategies, try new tactics, and test our hypotheses when it comes to building and creating bots.

What is this new feature?

Instabot’s new Bot Version History feature makes it easy for you to better keep track of any changes to your bots, to see which adjustments have been successful, and easily review how your bot has progressed over time.

Not only can you see past versions of your bots, you can also see:

who made changes,
when they were made, and
analytics data corresponding to different versions,

starting from when the bot was initially published and launched.

How is this useful?

In life, there’s not always a "redo" button, but with this new feature, you can easily review and restore past versions of your Instabots. It used to be that once changes were made and saved in your bots, there was no way to restore a previous version. This feature gives you more power and freedom in the bot editing process.

This new feature is especially useful for bot builders who are always tweaking their bots, or making small enhancements to get the most engagement. With the Version History feature, you can access analytical data for each different version of the bot, seeing what dates that specific version was live, what impact your changes might have had on the bot’s performance. You can essentially A/B test within one bot, by comparing different versions based on the changes that were made.

Now, with every change you make and publish in your bot, a new version will be created. This allows you to look back on previous versions to compare the copy and content within the bot and user engagement. This way, you can make informed decisions about content strategy and making adjustments to your bots, to continue to improve and progressively build better bots.

How to Access & Use

Please NOTE: that bot version history is only available for bots that have already been published. New “versions” are created when edits are made and published to a bot that was previously already live.

Using the version history feature is pretty simple, and there are two ways you can access it! One view allows you to review analytics for the different versions of the bot, while the other view allows you to see the textual content of the bot and make changes from within the bot editor.

In order to view analytical data for different versions of a bot, you need to:

Go to the Bot Overview page
Click to “View Analytics” for the bot you’re looking to access version history for
Once on the Analytics page, Click on the “Last Published” date of the bot. This click will open up the version history panel.
Select whichever version of the bot you’d like to see by clicking on the version (detailed by Date & Author who made changes & published that version).
You will see the dates during which that version of the bot was live, as well as analytical data for that version of the bot while it was active.

In order to view bot content for different versions of a bot, you need to:

Go to the Bot Overview page
Click to “Edit” the bot you’re looking to access version history for
Once in the Bot Editor, click on the “Last Published” date of the bot to view previously published versions of that Instabot. This click will open up the version history panel.
Select whichever version of the bot you’d like to see by clicking on it (each version is detailed by Date & Author who made the changes and published that version).

NOTE: Once you select a previous version of the bot, you’ll see a blue banner at the top of the screen notifying you that you’re viewing a previous version, which cannot be edited in your current view as it is not the active version of the bot (see banner below)

5. You can review this previous version of the bot, clicking through to see the structure and content of previous versions of this bot, as you would do in the Bot Builder

6. If you would like to restore to edit and/or publish a previous version of a bot, you must first “SAVE AS” a separate copy of the bot under a different name. This will create a Draft copy of this bot for you to edit and re-launch if you please.

If you have any questions about this feature, send us an email at [email protected] and we’d be happy to help!