Overview

Bolt Agents have skills designed to help students get information and complete tasks conversationally. They enable the agents to assist with applications, event registrations, inquiries, and more.

We will explain the details of each skill below. To enable/disable skills, navigate to Engagement > Bolt Agents.

Access to Skills

The Bolt Agent skills available to your team depend on the Element451 package you have. For example, if your plan does not include application management, your agents will not have access to application-related skills. Expand the sections below to see which skills are available with your package:

Element Connect

Human Team Member Handoff
Common App Knowledge
Financial Aid Knowledge
User Data Access

Element Ignite

Human Team Member Handoff
Common App Knowledge
Financial Aid Knowledge
Inquiry Flow
User Data Access

Element Engage

Human Team Member Handoff
Start an Application
Get Application Status
Application Status Checklist
Register for Event
Schedule Appointments
Common App Knowledge
Financial Aid Knowledge
Inquiry Flow
User Data Access

Agent Skills

Human Team Member Handoff	Agents are intelligent enough to transfer conversations seamlessly from one agent to another based on the student’s needs (if they're on the same team). However, agents can also transfer the conversation to a human agent on your team if the student requests it or the agent cannot resolve the student’s inquiry. Explore more on handoffs in this article.
Start an Application	Guides the student through starting and completing an application.
Get Application Status	Provides the student's current application status.
Application Status Checklist	Retrieves the status of the student’s application checklist.
Register for Event	Assists the student in registering for an event.
Schedule Appointments	When enabled, the agent will guide the student through scheduling an appointment.Read how the Schedule Appointments skill works below.
Common App Knowledge	Utilizes data from Common App to provide relevant information.
Financial App Knowledge	Uses data from FinancialAid.gov to help with financial aid queries.
Inquiry Flow	The Inquiry Flow skill gathers key information from prospective students and submits an inquiry on their behalf. Think of it as a digital form. Explore the Inquiry Flow skill more in the next section.
User Data Access Skill	Enables agents to access and share student record data stored in custom fields.

How Specific Skills Work

Schedule Appointments

The student selects the appointment type and time.
The agent finds all users available for that type and time.
The agent checks if the student has an assignee in that list of available users.
If yes, the appointment is booked with that assignee.
If not, the agent moves to the next step.
The agent counts all appointments in the next 30 days for the users in the list of available users.
The agent books the appointment with the user who has the fewest appointments.

Inquiry Flow

When an agent detects that the user intends to inquire about studying at your institution, it will initiate the Inquiry Flow. Phrases like these trigger the intent:

I am interested in studying at Fire University.
I am interested in studying Biology.
Can you send me more info about Biology?

The agent will then ask the student to provide the following information:

Intended major
Intended term
First name
Last name
Email address

After gathering the information, the agent will take the following actions:

If the student has an existing record, a prospect milestone is added.
If the student record does not exist, a user will be created with a prospect milestone.

Important Notes

The Inquiry Flow skill must be enabled for the agent to launch the flow. Ensure the Inquiry Flow skill is activated in the agent's settings.
When enabled, agents can also list available majors and terms.
The agent-submitted inquiry does not authenticate the user via the email address provided. The inquiry flow behaves the same as submitting a form.
Majors are matched using machine learning, which can result in mismatches, especially for majors with similar names.

Check it out in action

Pro Tip: Combine Convo Starters + Inquiry Flow

Combine Conversation Starters with Inquiry Flow

Make the Inquiry Flow even more effective by using conditional Conversation Starters to prompt students to kick off the flow. For example, set up a Conversation Starter on your biology program page that says, “I’m interested in studying biology.” When a student clicks on it, the agent will initiate the Inquiry Flow.

Benefits of Combining These Features:

Drives more inquiries by prompting students in relevant contexts.
Collects more qualified leads by targeting key pages like academic programs.
Gathers more accurate major information since the major is directly prompted.
Provides a smoother experience by initiating the flow from a student prompt.

User Data Access Skill

The student asks a question that relates to a custom field—like “What hold is on my account preventing me from registering for classes?”—which triggers the skill.
The agent asks the student to provide their email address.
A confirmation code is sent to that email.
The student enters the code in the chat to authenticate.
If that email address is associated with a contact record in Element451, the student is authenticated. If the email does not exist, the agent will reply with a similar message to "It seems that the email address you provided does not match our records. Please double-check the email or try a different one."
Once authenticated, the agent will access and share the specific custom field data the student inquired about.
A log out button appears at the bottom of the chat so students can end access at any time.

Important Notes

Authentication via code sent to an email address associated with an existing Element451 record is required before any personal data is shared.
Agents will display a message during authentication: Just a heads-up: After logging in, your data will be accessible in this chat until you log out.
The skill must be enabled per agent via Engagement > Bolt Agents.
Admins choose which custom fields are accessible; upload-type fields are not supported.
- Once the skill is enabled, a "User Data Access" card will appear, allowing you to search and select custom field(s).