Telegram

This agent enables communication between Katara and Telegram groups, allowing Katara to read and write messages. Currently, Telegram agents are used in the Community Support workflow to enable responding to questions in Telegram groups.

Registering a Telegram agent in your group

When creating a Telegram agent or adding an existing Telegram agent to a group, you will need to follow these steps:

1. Add the bot to your group. You will be given a link for this.

2. Register the agent using the /register@katara_app_bot command. You will be given a one-time password for registration. NOTE: The agent will be enabled by default in the channel you register in. You will be able to change this in the agent's configuration.

3. Verify that the agent has been registered. You should see a confirmation message from the bot and see that the group was registered successfully by verifying the registration on the same screen the other steps were given.

Group configuration

Registered Telegram groups have configuration options that allow you to fine-tune how Katara behaves.

Changes to your group's configuration can take up to a minute to apply.

Enabled

Whether to collect data from a group—if a group is disabled, we won't collect any data. If your group has topics, they will be enabled only when the group is enabled.

Reply policy

A group's reply policy is how your agent will respond to messages sent in the group. There are four policies:

• Always reply - Reply to every question asked. If an answer doesn't meet your Q&A agent's confidence threshold, the user will be informed that a high-confidence answer could not be found.

• Reply only when threshold is met - Reply to questions only when the answer meets your Q&A agent's confidence threshold.

• Reply to /ask command only - Reply to questions only when the user uses the /ask command.

• Replies off - Don't reply to any questions, but still collect them into your collection.

Q&A Agent

If sending replies, this option allows you to choose which Q&A Agent will generate the replies. This agent can then be configured to configure responses in your group.

Tags

Tags are applied to all future data collected by this group, which can be used later for filtering.

Coming soon: inherited tags. You will be able to set tags in your agent's configuration, which will then be inherited by all groups. For groups with topics, you'll be able to set tags for the group, and its topics will inherit them.

Commands

Commands can be typed into your Telegram group once you've installed the Katara bot.

/register@katara_app_bot <one_time_password>

Register an agent in your group using a generated password. NOTE: The agent will be enabled by default in the group you register in. You will be able to change this in the group's configuration.

/ask@katara_app_bot

Ask the agent a question, even if it's disabled in the channel. This will not produce an answer if you do not have a Q&A agent attached to the Telegram agent.

Topics and groups

If your Telegram group is set up with topics, we allow you to configure each topic separately. However, there are some differences with groups set up this way:

• Topics cannot be enabled/disabled themselves. They inherit this from the group, which can be enabled/disabled.

• You must register your Telegram agent in each topic individually. Registering in the default topic of a group will not also register the other topics.

• You must register your Telegram agent in the default topic (#General). If you register in a different topic, you won't be able to configure it until you also register in the default topic.

  • Changes you make to a group that has topics also affect the default topic.