What can agents do?

RBM agents can interact with users in a variety of ways to offer worthwhile experiences to users and guide users through conversations. You can design your agent to prompt users with potential responses, to utilize the native functionality of users' devices, and to present information in the best way possible.

Business information

Your agent is associated with branding and business information, such as colors, images, and contact information. Your agent's business profile contains a logo, a banner image, a description, and preferred phone numbers, websites, and email addresses.

For more information, see Agents.

Events

With RCS, both agents and users can send and receive delivery receipts, read receipts, and typing indicators. User activities automatically send events to your agent, and your agent can manually send events to users to let them know that your agent acknowledged their messages or is processing a response.

For more information, see Events.

Messages

Your agent can send messages, including text, images, and videos, to users. Agents can also send suggested replies, suggested actions, and rich cards to format, present, and associate pieces of information.

For more information, see Send messages.

Suggestion chip lists

Your agent can send suggesed replies and suggested actions with messages in suggestion chip lists.

For more information, see Suggestion chip list.

Rich cards

Rich cards let you send a chunk of related information, media, or suggestions as a single unit. You can send rich cards individually or in a carousel, and rich cards can contain media, title text, description text, suggested replies, and suggested actions.

For more information, see Rich cards and Rich card carousels.

Suggested replies

Suggested replies help your agent guide users through conversations by providing responses that the agent knows how to react to. Your agent sends suggested replies in suggestion chip lists or in rich cards.

For more information, see Suggested replies.

Suggested actions

Suggested actions help your agent guide users through conversations by leveraging the native functionality of the user's device. Your agent sends suggested actions in suggestion chip lists or in rich cards.

For more information, see Suggested actions.

Dial a number

The Dial action guides the user to dial a phone number that your agent specifies.

For more information, see Dial a number.

View a location

The View location action displays a location in the user's default map app. You can specify the location either by latitude and longitude or with a query based on the user's current location. You can also set a custom label for the pin that displays in the map app.

For more information, see View a location.

Share a location

The Share location action lets the user send a location to your agent.

For more information, see Share a location.

Open a URL

The Open URL action lets you guide users to a web page specified by your agent. By default, the web page opens in the user's browser. If a user has a default app configured for the web page, that app will open instead, and the icon on the suggested action button will be the app's icon.

For more information, see Open a URL.

Webviews

Important: Webviews are available in RBM. However, we're gradually rolling out webview support for RBM in Google Messages. To use webviews in Google Messages now, you need to join the Early Access Program for testing. (The feature will become available in Google Messages for production agents at a later date.) To request Early Access for testing webviews in Google Messages, reach out to your RBM contact.

The Open URL action supports webviews, allowing users to open a specified web page (such as a payment platform) right in the messaging app.

Webviews have three display modes:

• Full: The web page takes up the full screen
• Half: The web page takes up half of the screen
• Tall: The web page takes up three quarters of the screen

Full screen mode

Half screen mode

Tall screen mode

For more information, see Open a URL with webview.

Create a calendar event

The Create calendar event action opens the user's calendar app and begins to create a new event with the specified information.

For more information, see Create a calendar event.

Compose a text, audio, or video message

Beta: We're gradually rolling out the Compose action in Google Messages, so you may not have access to it right away. To get access before the full rollout, you can join the Messages Open Beta program.

The Compose action opens the user's messaging app so they can send text, audio, or video messages to a predefined phone number, such as Customer Support. For more information, see Compose messages.

There are three types of compose actions: