Terminology
Learn the significance of terminology commonly used in Airkit documentation.
Everything built within Airkit is, at the highest level, sorted into Organizations, or Orgs for short. One must have access to an Org in order to access Airkit.
For more on how to add users to an existing Org, check out Adding Users to Airkit. For more on how to create a new Org, check out our Quickstart.
The Console is the part of the platform that provides access to Org-level material, making it possible to configure application resources, connect external integrations, and access all applications that have been created within the relevant Org.
The Studio is the interface in which your apps can be created and edited. It consists of multiple Builders, each of which makes it possible to construct and edit different components of your apps.
Journeys are a means of conceptualizing how Airkit keeps track of where users are within the flow of the application, as well as what they've done, entered, or requested in the process of going through it.
A Journey starts when a user first begins to go through the flow of an app. This can happen in a multitude of ways, but regardless of how a Journey starts, it spans all of the user's interactions with that app, across all relevant channels, as long as the app has some way of recognizing the Journey.
Every Journey has an Actor. The Actor represents an individual customer going through the flow of an application. Airkit uses information associated with each actor to help route incoming chat and voice interactions to the correct customer, which enables the platform to seamlessly transition between different channels.
Web Flows are containers for Web Pages. Web Pages are containers for Web Controls, basic UI building blocks that allow users to interact with a web app.
Constructing Web Flows out of Web Pages and Web Pages out of Web Controls is how web apps are built in Airkit. This is done in the Web Flows Builder.
Actions define how applications interact with users, themselves, and the outside world. A series of Actions taken sequentially is called an Action Chain. For more on Actions, check out Action Builder.
Events refer to any catalyst that might trigger an Action Chain. All Action Chains are associated with a particular Event. It is when – and only when – an Event is fired that its associated Action Chain is performed.
The different types of Airkit Events are:
- Starting Events: Start an Airkit Journey. These Events will commonly be triggered by things like the user clicking a specific link or texting a particular number.
- Control Events: Come out of the box with each Control and vary depending on the Control's functionality. For example, Buttons come associated with a single Event: 'Click'. Text Input Boxes, on the other hand, come with three associated Events: 'On Blur', 'Value Changed', and 'On Enter'.
- Session Events: Global Custom Events that can be invoked anywhere in a Journey by the Run Event Action.
- Activity Group Events: Activity-level Custom Events that can be invoked by the Run Event Action. In contrast to Session Events, Activity Group Events are only accessible within a specific Activity: an individual Web Flow, Chat Bot, or Voice Bot.
Data Flows are custom connections. Conceptually, Data Flows work like functions: they take in input, process it, and return the resulting output (if applicable).
Data Flows are made up of component parts called Data Operations, which define how input is processed. They are made and edited in the Connections Builder.
AirData is Airkit’s internal database. It allows you to conveniently structure and access gathered from your Airkit apps and pulled from external systems. While it is technically capable of long-term storage, it is intended primarily to be used as a convenient interim database to keep track of data your applications need frequent access to, but not, ultimately, a source of truth.
Information in AirData is organized in the form of objects, which are created with any number of properties.
Airscript is a programing language specialized for data manipulation: it's by strategically combining Airscript with input from app users (or other external sources, such as an external API) that you control the order, flow, and nature of the interactions between your Airkit apps and the outside world. Most commonly, this is done by defining a variable with Airscript or by using Airscript to access or modify data via the Transform Data Operation, both of which parse any input in Airscript by default. To get started experimenting with Airscript, see Airscript Quickstart.
Notifications
Notifications are one-way, outgoing email or SMS messages. Notifications cannot parse replies or incoming messages, but they can still be used to prompt responses from the recipient. For example, Notifications might contain web links or cues to prepare for a previously-scheduled meeting. Most commonly, Notifications are used to send reminders or follow-up messages spurring users to continue a half-finished Journey.
Notifications are created in the Notifications Builder.
Chat Bots
Chat Bots are a type of Dialogue Bot. They define two-way SMS experiences capable of parsing and replying to incoming messages.
Chat Bots are created in the Chat Bots Builder.
Voice Bots
Voice Bots are a type of Dialogue Bot capable of holding two-way phone conversations.
Voice Bots are created in the Voice Bots Builder.
KitCloud Templates are pre-configured and customizable Airkit modules that can be used as building blocks to accelerate the development of app-building. They are available across Web Flows, Voice Bots, Chat Bots and Data Flows.
Updated over 2 years ago