HABot Walkthrough (4/n): Card Basics

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HABot is as much a graphical user interface as a chat bot: chat answers are almost always accompanied by a card with information about the query. It is also possible to interact with these cards, save them and edit them right in the app using an embedded Card designer.

By default, HABot can build dynamic cards with the information found relevant to the query - examples of dynamically built cards include:

  • If there is only one matching item, a simple card with the label, name and state will be built:

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  • If there are more than one item to display, the card will contain a list of those:

  • For historical data queries, an image containing the chart will be displayed, along with a button to open the Analyzer

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  • Cards can also show images (this needs some configuration, more on that later):

Saving Cards in your Card Deck

If you have a card you want to retain and potentially modify, use the context menu to add it to your “Card deck”:

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You will then find in the Card deck section - all cards must have at least one object or location attribute; therefore, when you save the card from the chat, it will have the attributes inherited from the intent. Using the filters in the Card deck screen, you can select one or multiple objects and locations and display the cards you saved matching those attributes. By default, only one object and/or location can be selected (to save clicks/taps) but you click the multiple choice button on the right, and then check all objects and/or locations you want to display at the same time. If both filters are used, cards have to match at least one selected object attribute AND at least at least one selected select location attribute.

A saved card can then be modified, or bookmarked: it will then appear in the bookmarks section and have a bookmark on its top-right corner. Use the bookmarks for cards you use all the time (like a scene switcher), to avoid cluttering the bookmarks screen - for the other things, you can go to the card deck and quickly select an attribute using the filters.

Reusing Saved Cards in Chat Sessions

If you save a card, it will be reused for future chat queries matching the card’s attributes (object and/or location) instead of one being generated dynamically; if there are more than one, one will be selected at random.
This is useful when you wish to modify a card to your taste and then recall it with a chat query.

However, you should be aware that saved cards might not reflect the actual items matching the attributes anymore if those items change: in other words, you’re responsible for maintaining cards saved to your Card deck yourself.

Recalling Recent Cards

All cards encountered during the chat (and saved cards recently modified) appear in a timeline in the Recent screen. From there, you can also add, modify or bookmark cards, depending on their state. You can also “forget” autogenerated cards which were not saved (called “ephemeral cards” internally) to remove them from the list.

Next Steps

The next article will introduce the Card Designer, where you can edit cards saved to your Card deck or create new ones.

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