Configuration
Everything about a bot's appearance and behaviour is set per project, in the dashboard's Widget tab. Nothing is configured in the embed snippet, so changing a setting takes effect without touching your site.
Settings
Bot name
Shown in the chat header and used as the assistant's own name in its answers. Most people use their company or product name.
Accepts: 1–40 characters
Default: Assistant
Bot tagline
The short line under the bot name in the chat header (for example “Answers from this site”). Clearing it removes the line and the status dot.
Accepts: Up to 80 characters; leave blank to hide
Default: Answers from this site
Welcome message
The first thing a visitor sees when they open the chat, before they have asked anything.
Accepts: 1–300 characters
Default: Hi! Ask me anything about this site.
Primary colour
Used for the launcher, the visitor's message bubbles, and accents. Text contrast against it is derived automatically, so a pale brand colour still reads.
Accepts: A six-digit hex colour, e.g. #2563eb
Default: #2563eb
Fallback message
Sent verbatim when the bot has nothing to answer from. This is the single most useful setting to customise: it is the sentence a visitor sees at the exact moment you have failed them, so it should tell them what to do next — email an address, open a form, call someone.
Accepts: 1–300 characters
Default: I don't have information on that. Try rephrasing, or ask about something else on this site.
Similarity threshold
How close the best matching piece of your content must be to the visitor's question before the bot is willing to answer at all. Below it, the fallback message is returned and no model call is made.
Accepts: A number from 0 to 1
Default: 0.35
Position
Which corner the launcher pins itself to on your page.
Accepts: bottom-right or bottom-left
Default: bottom-right
Bot logo
One image represents your bot everywhere it appears: the closed launcher button, the chat header, and beside each answer. Your own image is uploaded through the dashboard and cropped to a circle; remove it to go back to the TeklDesk logo.
Accepts: The TeklDesk logo, or your own image
Default: brand
Teaser message
A small nudge bubble that appears beside the closed launcher. Once a visitor dismisses it, it stays dismissed on that device.
Accepts: Up to 80 characters; empty disables it
Default: Have a question? Ask me.
Suggested questions
One-tap starter questions offered on an empty conversation, stacked on the right under the welcome message. Worth setting: they tell a visitor what the bot is for, and they steer the first question towards content you know is indexed.
Accepts: Up to 4, each up to 120 characters
Default: None
Icon size and shape
The size of the closed launcher button, and whether it is round or square. Square is only available with an uploaded logo.
Accepts: Small, medium or large; circle or square
Default: medium, circle
Auto-open
Opens the chat panel by itself after the delay you choose. Off means the visitor always opens it.
Accepts: 1–120 seconds, or off
Default: Off
Dark mode
Renders the chat panel with dark surfaces instead of light ones. Text contrast still derives from your primary colour.
Accepts: On or off
Default: Off
Right-to-left
Mirrors the panel's text and layout direction, for Arabic, Hebrew and other right-to-left sites. Independent of dark mode.
Accepts: On or off
Default: Off
Header alignment
Which side the logo and bot name sit on in the chat header. Independent of right-to-left, so a right-to-left panel can keep a conventional header.
Accepts: Left or right
Default: left
Answer feedback
Thumbs up and down under each answer. A visitor can change or clear their rating. Ratings appear in Analytics as a satisfaction score, with a list of downvoted answers to review, and as a marker on each answer in a conversation.
Accepts: On or off
Default: On
Follow-up suggestions
After each answer the bot offers up to three questions the visitor might ask next, as tappable chips. They are not shown under fallback messages. Each one costs a small extra model call, so switch this off if you would rather not spend it.
Accepts: On or off
Default: On
Allowed domains
Which sites may use this project's chat. Empty means any origin — see below.
Accepts: Up to 20 hostnames
Default: Empty (open)
Tone and custom instructions
The Persona tab shapes how the bot talks, separately from the Widget tab. Pick a tone preset — Default, Friendly & Supportive, Professional & Formal, Sales-Focused, Consultative, or Playful & Casual — and optionally add custom instructions of up to 1,000 characters, such as “always mention our 30-day returns when relevant”.
Both apply on top of the bot’s base behaviour. They change the voice, not the facts: the bot still answers only from your knowledge sources.
Tuning the similarity threshold
This is the dial that trades confidence against coverage, and it is worth spending a few minutes on.
- Raise it if the bot is answering questions it should not — stretching a loosely related page into an answer.
- Lower it if the bot is refusing questions your site plainly covers.
Do not tune it blind. Your project’s analytics show the similarity distribution across real questions and list the ones that fell through, which is a far better guide than guessing — and the unanswered list doubles as a to-do list of content to write.
Allowed domains
Your project id travels in your page source, because the browser needs it to load the widget. Anyone can read it. Allowed domains is what stops a copied id from being useful: requests to the chat API are checked against this list and rejected if the origin is not on it.
The list starts empty, and empty means open to any origin. That is the default so that existing embeds keep working, but on a live site you should set it. Add the hostnames your site is served from — both the bare domain and the www form if you use both.
Scheme, port and path are ignored, so https://example.com/ and example.com are the same entry.
The “Powered by” badge
Free projects carry a small TeklDesk line under the chat. Paid plans do not. It is decided server-side from the account’s plan, so it is not something a setting can switch off — see Plans and limits.
What is not configurable
The assistant’s core instructions are fixed. You can shape its tone with a persona preset and custom instructions, but you cannot replace its system prompt outright. The levers you have over what it says are the fallback message, the similarity threshold, and — most powerfully — what you put in its knowledge sources. A bot that answers the wrong way is almost always a content problem rather than a settings problem.