How do I create a Doc Bot?

To create a DocBot, you first create an Auto-Responder with a standard document and add Action Phrases to the Auto-Responder for each of the commands or phrases you want to look for. See "Auto-Responders" and "Server Action Phrases".

When someone sends mail to the Auto-Responder address, ListManager will first check to see if any Action Phrases match. If there is an Action Phrase match, then the Action Phrase action will be taken and the document specified in the Action Phrase will be mailed back.

If no Action Phrase match is found, then the document specified in the Auto-Responder is sent back.

An example: Say you have various sales and promotional documents. You want to create a DocBot that responds to mail sent to it by sending back a standard information pack. But, you also want people to be able to obtain your other documents, such as pricing, specifications, service information, contact phone numbers, etc.

So, you create an Auto-Responder called "sales" on your ListManager. You set the Auto-Responder to send back a document with your standard information, and instructions on obtaining the other documents. Then, you create Action Phrases for each of the specialized documents that look for words such as "price", "service" or "specifications", which reply by sending back the appropriate documents.

Then, if someone sends a message to sales@acme.com (for this example, your company name is Acme) the DocBot will look at their message to see if a specialized document is called for. If no specialized document is found (no Action Phrase "hit"), and then the standard sales information document is sent back. When the person gets the standard sales information and it reaches the customer, the person can then decide to ask for the other documents, by sending mail back to the DocBot with the words you've specified, such as, for instance, "specifications".