Planning: check replies against channel limits

Lesson 2 of 11 · Planning. You check your AI agent's replies against the limits of each channel you plan to use, in the preview from lesson 1.

Lesson 2 of 11 · Planning. You check your AI agent's replies against the limits of each channel you plan to use, in the preview from lesson 1.

The scenario

Your AI agent goes live on the Web Widget and on WhatsApp next week, and you may add Messenger or SMS later. Some of its answers end with buttons, and some offer a list of options. In the test widget they look fine. You don't know yet what WhatsApp does with them.

Goal: every reply in your flows reaches the customer on each channel you plan to use.

What you need

• Access to the dialogue or procedure of the flow in the AI agents dashboard, to fix what you find.
• The Admin role for Support, so that the channels connected to your account appear at the top of the channel menu.

Steps

1. Start a test with Test AI agent, or with Test dialogue in the dialogue builder, and run a flow that ends with buttons or options in the Web Widget preview. This is your reference: the Web Widget shows the buttons as your AI agent sends them.

2. Open Preview channel in the toolbar and choose WhatsApp. The test conversation carries on in a phone. Channels connected to your account are listed first, under This account. How the menu works is in Choosing the channel to preview.

   

3. Look at the welcome reply. On WhatsApp the customer writes first, so the preview hides your AI agent's welcome reply behind a one-line note. Click Show, or turn on Show welcome reply messages in the preview settings, to see it dimmed.

4. Go to a reply with buttons and count the characters of each label. WhatsApp rejects reply buttons longer than 20 characters. Because Simulate channel limits is on, the preview dims such a message and marks it Probably not delivered.

5. Click the red note. The inspector opens on the Message tab: Checks gives the reason, and On WhatsApp lists what the channel changes or leaves out. How to read and fix a marked message is in Messages marked as not delivered.

   

6. Go on to a reply with more than three options. On WhatsApp, up to three options become reply buttons and four to ten become a list behind one button. Switch to Messenger: the options are a row of quick replies, and the channel notes say when a label is cut to 20 characters.

   

7. Switch to SMS under Text, workplace & other channels. SMS has no buttons, so the options are added to the text, and the channel notes count the SMS segments. A message over 1,600 characters on SMS, or over 2,000 on Messenger, is marked Not delivered. Every limit the preview checks, with its source, is in Channel limits the preview checks.
8. Fix the flow in the AI agents dashboard, for example with a shorter button label. Then run the flow again on each channel until no message is marked. Do the same for every flow that sends buttons, lists or long texts.

Why it matters

• A message the channel rejects never reaches your customer. The preview shows it before go-live, and the note says which limit was hit.
• Zendesk documents the 20-character limit for AI agent buttons on WhatsApp only. The Web Widget shows longer labels, which is why step 1 looks fine.
• Not delivered means the channel rejects the message. Probably not delivered means the platform documents the limit, but not what happens when it is exceeded.
• Email does not run on Sunshine Conversations, so these checks do not apply there. An email AI agent is previewed in Gmail or Outlook; see Previewing an email AI agent in Gmail or Outlook.