This is where you give your WhatsApp assistant its name and voice, its first words, how it handles booking questions, and its hand-off messages.
When you'd use this
- First-time setup of your bot.
- Changing how it sounds, what it says first, or how it points people to booking.
Where to find it
Go to Settings → About your bot → Bot Config. Everything below is on that one page. (Free-text instructions for the bot live on the separate Bot Rules page — see bot-rules.md.)
Identity: name and tone
- In the Identity card, set the Bot Name — what customers see (e.g. "Finn").
- Choose a Tone. This sets the bot's personality and how much it uses emoji. Pick one:
- Balanced (recommended) — warm, clear and a little playful. The safe all-rounder.
- Professional — crisp and polished, no emoji.
- Playful — high energy, lots of character, more emoji.
- Reassuring — gentle and patient, great for nervous first-timers.
- Hover the small info icon on each tone to see exactly what it does.
- Press Save.
(If your centre has bespoke wording set up by DiveOps, you'll see a fifth Custom tone — leave it selected to keep that wording.)
Messages: greeting and sign-off
In the Messages card:
- Greeting — the first thing the bot says to a new chat. Pick a ready-made greeting, or choose Write my own. Use
{bot}for the bot's name and{centre}for your centre name; the preview shows how it reads. - Sign-off — an optional closing line. Pick one, choose None, or Write my own.
- Press Save.
Booking handling
The Booking handling card tells the bot what to do when a customer asks about availability or wants to book:
- Auto (recommended) — uses your booking link if you have one, otherwise your email, otherwise hands the chat to your team.
- Send my booking link — the bot points customers to your online booking page.
- Ask them to email — the bot tells customers to email your team.
- Hand off to a person — the bot passes every booking/availability question to your team.
Your booking link comes from Centre Info (there's a link to it under the dropdown).
Diving availability
The Diving availability dropdown (in the same Booking handling card) decides how confidently the bot answers "do you have space on [date]?":
- Defer to the team — the bot never claims a date has space. It points people to your booking link or email, or hands off to a person. This is the safe default.
- Check the availability calendar — the bot answers from your live Booking calendar (booking-page.md): it tells the customer a day is open only when the calendar actually shows free space, and defers for anything the calendar doesn't cover. (Only works if the booking calendar is switched on.)
- Assume available — the bot may confidently tell the customer you have space for any date that meets your booking cutoff, then point them to book. Use this if you rarely fill up and don't want to run a live calendar. The bot never quotes an exact number of spaces and never promises a specific instructor.
If you pick Assume available, set your Booking cutoff so the bot knows the earliest a customer can book:
- By a cutoff time the day before — a customer must book by your cutoff time the day before the day they want. So today is never bookable; before the cutoff the earliest is tomorrow, and after the cutoff the earliest is the day after tomorrow. (Set the time on a 24-hour clock, e.g. 18:00 means "book by 6pm the day before".)
- At least one full day's notice — a whole clear day must pass, so booking any time today can't get tomorrow; the earliest a customer can book is the day after tomorrow. (This always leaves at least ~24 hours' notice.)
- At least two full days' notice — the earliest is three days from today.
These options are exact and easy for customers to understand, because the bot answers by date. The bot never confirms a same-day booking (that's the riskiest thing to promise without a live calendar), so the earliest it will ever offer is tomorrow. If the customer asks about a date that's too soon, the bot tells them so and gives the earliest date they can book instead — it will never wrongly say "yes" to a date past your cutoff.
A small preview under the setting shows exactly what the bot will treat as bookable.
Hand-off notices
When a member of your team takes over a WhatsApp chat from the bot, you can have the customer told automatically, so a human reply doesn't look like the bot suddenly changed voice.
- Find the Hand-off notices card.
- Tell the customer when a team member joins is on by default. Leave the message blank for the default wording, or write your own. Use
{first}for the staff member's first name and{centre}for your centre name. - Tell the customer when the bot takes back over is off by default. Turn it on for a note when a chat is handed back to the bot; use
{centre}in its message. - Press Save.
Notes:
- Notices are only sent while WhatsApp's 24-hour reply window is open (see inbox.md).
- Nothing is sent when DiveOps support steps into a chat to help you.
Tips
- Facts the bot answers with (hours, prices, sites) come from your other editors, not here — keep them where they live. See kb-overview.md.
- The WhatsApp number connection is on WhatsApp Setup, not this page.