Before You Begin
Before using the LiveChat handover step, you need to connect your chatbot to Salesforce by creating and configuring an agent channel on ViaSay.
Make sure your Salesforce environment is already set up for Live Agent.
📖 Refer to Salesforce's setup guide to locate the necessary values.
Step-by-Step: Create a Salesforce Agent Channel in ViaSay
Step 1: Create the Agent Channel
Log in to your ViaSay dashboard.
Go to Integrate → Channels → Agent Channels.
Click New Agent Channel.
Enter a name for the channel (e.g., Salesforce Support).
Select Salesforce as the integrator.
Choose the language used in your bot.
Click Create.
Step 2: Configure Salesforce Settings
In the agent channel settings, fill in the following fields using your Salesforce Live Agent setup:
Setup in the Flow Builder
Once your Salesforce agent channel is created and configured, you can add the LiveChat Handover Step to your conversation flow.
Step 1: Add the LiveChat Handover Step
Open your use case in the Flow Builder.
Drag in the LiveChat Handover step where you want the transfer to occur.
Customize the system messages:
One for when an agent is available
One for when an agent is not available
The chatbot automatically checks your Salesforce workspace for available agents:
✅ If an agent is available → the conversation is handed over, and the Salesforce agent receives the full chat history.
❌ If no agent is available → the fallback message is shown, and you can offer Quick Replies to guide the user elsewhere (e.g., another use case or FAQ).
Troubleshooting
If you encounter the error message:
"Sorry, a technical problem occurred: could not make the handover availability request."
Double-check your Salesforce agent channel settings in ViaSay:
🔗 Chat Endpoint (must start with
https://and have no trailing slash)🆔 Organization ID
🆔 Deployment ID
🆔 Button ID
Also make sure:
Salesforce Live Agent is correctly configured on your Salesforce side.
Your API credentials are active.
There are no network timeouts or firewall issues blocking Salesforce API requests.
Advanced Configuration: Pre-Chat Details & Entities
You can send additional information to Salesforce agents before they join the chat — like the user's name or email — using static JSON payloads.
Pre-chat Details
A list of CustomDetail objects that pre-fill information in the agent’s view (e.g., name, customer type).
Pre-chat Entities
A list of Entity objects that let you search, create, or update Salesforce records before the chat starts.
To link them together, use entityFieldMaps inside your CustomDetail objects.
📦 Example: See a full request body example
Pre-chat payloads are static for the whole channel — you can’t inject live variables from the conversation.
If you need different payloads depending on the use case, create multiple Salesforce agent channels, each with its own configuration.