Last updated: 21 February 2023

Your webhook can contain valuable information parsed from your system to the chatbot. For example, your webhook might include a token, an email address, a product the user is looking to purchase, etc.

In this tutorial, we look at capturing this information from your webhook and storing it into a variable. You can then use this variable to do anything you’d like, for example triggering a specific conversation.

Step 1: Create a webhook

To create your webhook, go to Integrations. 

Find the Webhook section and click Add webhook.

Give your webhook a name and a referring URL. Leave the action empty.

The name is used for you to easily identify your webhooks. Make a note of the webhook’s key (the long string of numbers and letters after ?key=).

Step 2: Add your custom information to your webhook

There are two ways to add custom information to your webhook.

  1. Send a POST request to it containing a JSON formatted payload. Provided the correct Referer header is included in the request, the posted data will hit the platform and it can be used to trigger a conversation.

  2. Append information to the webhook using ?key=value.

Either way, we will use this information (the key) and store its value inside a variable.

Don’t forget to include your channel as part of the payload. More info.

For the purpose of this tutorial, we’ll use a simple URL param and append email_address to our webhook like so:

https://pulse-demo-api.chatbot.io/api/webhook?email_address=alex@google.com&channel_driver_name=Converse

Step 3: Create a variable

Go to Settings → Variables and click + Variable.

Give your variable a name, such as webhook_email and click Advanced Settings.

Under Data type, select Copy existing value and enter {{webhook.data.email_address}}.

The format is {{webhook.data. then the name of your custom variable (contained in JSON payload or URL.

Click Save.

Step 4: Create your conversation

We now need to capture this variable as part of a conversation. Go to Builder and create a new conversation.

Give your conversation a name and a description.

For its trigger, select If Variable {{webhook_key}} equals and enter your webhook key (found in step 1).

Hit Save.

Finally, from the block bank, drag and drop a variable inside the trigger. Select the webhook_email variable and hit Save.

Done! Now, as soon as the webhook is hit, the variable will automatically save the email_address value from the webhook inside the webhook_email variable; which you can then use for other actions in your chatbot.