Overview
Handoffs in Bolt Assistants for Students offer a versatile solution for managing conversations when a Student Assistant can’t resolve an inquiry or a student requests to speak with a human agent. They allow you to define the next steps, such as assigning the conversation to a specific user or team or sending an automatic reply.
The handoff process requires some configuration to determine how handoffs are processed. This flexibility allows you to adapt the handoff process to different situations. You also have the option to bypass handoffs, giving you complete control.
Two components drive handoffs:
Team Member Handoff Skill
Conversation Rule with the Bolt Assistant Handoff Intent condition
This article will explore each component in detail and explain how to configure both.
Human Team Member Handoff Skill
Bolt Assistants include various specialized skills to enhance its task-oriented capabilities. One such skill, the Team Member Handoff, lets you enable or disable Assistant handoffs. You can think of this as the global on/off switch for handoff. Assistant Skills are managed by navigating to Engagement > Bolt Assistants. You can read more about Assistant skills here.
Disabling Handoff
If you don't wish to use handoffs, simply disable the Human Team Member Handoff skill. When the Assistant cannot resolve a query or a student asks to speak with a representative, instead of offering to transfer to a member of your team, it will search your Knowledge Base for contact information to share with the student. If you have the Schedule Appointments skill enabled, the Assistant can help the student book an appointment with someone from your team.
Disabling this skill can be useful during extended university closures, like winter break. For more recommendations on managing handoffs when your campus is closed, see the end of this article.
Enabling Handoff
When you enable the Human Team Member Handoff skill, the Assistant will initiate a handoff (offer to connect them with a human team member) if it exhausts all help options or the student requests a human agent. Once the student confirms they want to be connected with someone, the Assistant will disconnect itself, and the conversation will be unassigned.
Since the Assistant doesn’t know who to assign the conversation to, you must add a Conversation Rule with the Bolt Assistant Handoff Intent condition. This rule can also be configured to perform other actions besides assigning the conversation to an individual or team. Read on to learn more.
Conversation Rules + Bolt Assistant Handoff Intent Condition
Once the Assistant initiates a handoff, you can trigger specific actions for that conversation using a custom Conversation Rule with the Bolt Assistant Handoff Intent condition. These rules are evaluated at the time of handoff when the Assistant disconnects from the conversation.
This feature allows you to tailor the handoff process to different situations. You can configure actions to assign the conversation to an individual or team, add participants, tag, close, reply, run a workflow rule, or a combination of these actions.
If there is no “assignment” action within the rule, the conversation will remain unassigned. This is the same outcome if no rule is matched to a conversation. No further action will be taken; the conversation will be unassigned.
Handoff Intent Types
Specific Intent: Use this type to fine-tune the actions based on the conversation’s intent. For example, you can set specific intents like “financial aid,” “financial assistance,” and “FAFSA” to ensure the conversation is assigned to the financial aid team. You can create multiple rules with specific intents. Enter short, clear keywords separated by commas; exact matches aren’t required.
If you have multiple rules, they are evaluated in bulk (unlike other conversation rules that are evaluated in order). BoltAI will determine which rule the conversation best matches based on the Intent and any other conditions. Since only one rule will apply to a conversation, if you want multi-actions to occur, such as assigning the conversation to a specific individual/team AND sending an automatic reply, you should add both actions to the same rule as the assignment action.
All: Use this type to apply the same actions to all handoff conversations, regardless of intent. For instance, if you have a reception desk or a student worker handling inbound conversations, you can use this type to assign all conversations to a specific internal user.
- Only one conversation rule should use the All Intent type.
How to Configure Assistant Handoff
Step 1: Create a Conversation Rule
Navigate to Engagement > Conversations > Settings > General.
Under Automation Settings, click Add Rule.
Rename the Rule: Replace "Untitled Rule" at the top with a name for your rule.
Configure Settings:
Enabled: Toggle this on now or later to activate your rule.
Description: Provide a description for internal purposes.
Configure Conditions:
Click + Add Condition and select Bolt Assistant Intent. The Bolt Assistant Handoff Intent side sheet will open.
Configure Actions:
Click + Add Action and select the desired action. Depending on the chosen action, define additional details (e.g., if you selected the Assignment action, specify the individual or team for the assignment).
Add additional actions if needed.
Click Save in the top right-hand corner of the side sheet.
Activate the Rule: Ensure the rule is enabled in the settings section to make it active.
Step 2: Enable Team Member Handoff Skill
Skills are configured for each assistant. Therefore, you need to edit the assistant to enable the handoff skill.
Navigate to Engagement > Bolt Assistants.
In the Assistants section, locate the Assistant you wish to enable the skill for.
Click the three vertical dots
icon at the end of the row.Click Edit.
Where it says Select Bolt Assistant Skills, click the Team Member Handoff chip. It will turn blue when it's enabled.
Learn more about adding and editing Bolt Assistants in this article.
Handoff Rule Example
Let's take what we learned above and apply it to a rule. In this example, we want to ensure that any unresolved Assistant conversations about financial aid are assigned to the financial aid team, and we only want this to happen Monday-Friday, 8 AM-5 PM.
Rule Conditions
Rule Conditions
First, let's examine the rule's conditions. You'll see we added two: Bolt Assistant Handoff Intent and Date Condition. This is because we want two criteria items checked before executing the actions: we want to make sure the conversation is financial aid-related and that it's during regular office hours. When multiple conditions exist, the conversation must meet all of the conditions.
Condition 1: Bolt Assistant Handoff Intent
We selected the Specific Intent type to ensure actions are applied only to conversations about financial aid. We used the keywords “financial aid,” “financial assistance,” and “FAFSA,” separated by commas. Remember, these keywords don’t need an exact match, but keeping them short and specific helps the system accurately identify the conversation's intent.
Condition 2: Date Condition
Next, we added a second condition—a date condition—and configured it to M-F 8 AM—5 PM. This ensures that the handoff only happens during regular business hours.
Rule Actions
Rule Actions
Next, let’s look at the actions for this rule. We added two: Assignment and Reply. We chose these actions because we want conversations that meet the conditions above to be assigned to the financial aid team and to send an automatic reply informing the student that help is on the way.
Action 1: Assignment
Action 2: Reply
Student POV
Student POV
Now that our rule with our conditions and actions has been configured and enabled, let's examine it from the student's point of view. For this example, we use the Live Chat feature on an Element451 landing page.
Student: Hello. Can I speak with a financial aid representative about the status of my award?
Assistant: I can help you with general financial aid questions, but for specific details about your award status, it's best to speak directly with a financial aid representative. Would you like me to connect you with a human team member for this?
Student: Yes, please.
Assistant: Great, a financial aid representative will reach out to you soon to discuss the status of your award. If you need anything else in the meantime, feel free to ask!
In the example conversation, the student indicated they needed assistance with their financial aid award. Because the Assistant does not have access to specific financial aid award details, it offered a handoff.
You'll notice that we prompted the student to enter their email address. This is because the student was unknown. Had we known who they were, we would not have asked that.
Finally, you can see that our rule was successfully executed because the last message received, "Hello! Someone from our financial aid team will be with you shortly. ⌛️" was the result of our rule's second action.
Internal POV
Internal POV
Now, let's look at how the conversation appears in your Element451 inbox.
Throughout the conversation, we display the activity in a small gray font under the timestamp so you can observe what’s happening.
Once the student agrees to connect with a team member, the Assistant is disabled. At this point, the system checks for rules with the handoff intent.
The system message, “Fire University assigned this conversation to Financial Aid Team,” and the reply, “Hello! Someone from our financial aid team will be with you shortly. ⌛️” indicates that the Financial Aid Handoff Rule ran successfully. These are denoted with the rule name by the system.
Rule Processing
Rule Processing
Notice that we have two active conversation rules in our list. Both have a handoff intent condition, but only the first rule ran. This is because rules are processed in the bulk, and only the first matching rule is applied to the conversation. Since this example conversation met the conditions of the “Financial Aid Handoffs” rule, the second rule, “All Handoffs - Test,” was ignored. Had this conversation happened on a Saturday, it would have failed the date condition of the first rule, and the system would have selected the second rule to evaluate if the message met its conditions.
Another important thing to keep in mind is if you have other conversation rules to manage other types of conversations that don’t involve Assistants, those don’t matter during this evaluation process. Only rules with handoff intent conditions are evaluated at handoff.
Managing Handoffs When Campus is Closed
Even when your institution is closed, your students can still receive around-the-clock assistance thanks to the power of Bolt Assistants. However, there will be times after hours or during closures when the Assistant can’t answer a question or the student asks to speak with a human. Here is how we recommend handling handoffs when you’re not able to monitor and reply to them:
Long-Term Closures (Holidays + Breaks)
As mentioned earlier, you can prevent the Assistant from handing off conversations by disabling the Team Member Handoff Skill. When disabled, instead of offering to connect the student to a team member, the Assistant will search your Knowledge Base for contact information to share with the student. Alternatively, if you have the Schedule Appointments skill enabled, the Assistant will attempt to help the student book an appointment with someone from your team.
Since turning the Assistant skills on and off is a manual process and you likely want to avoid managing that daily, we recommend using this approach only for cases where you have no live support agents available to handle handoffs or during longer campus closures, like holiday breaks.
After Hours + Weekends
For short-term closures like weekends and after hours, we recommend leaving handoffs enabled and creating a rule to send a reply to conversations that get handed off, letting students know your office is closed. This creates an automated process with minimal manual work. Once your team returns to the office, you can review and resolve the handed-off conversations.
To set up this rule, use two conditions: Bolt Assistant Handoff Intent and Date Condition, and one action: Reply.
Bolt Assistant Handoff Intent: Use the ALL intent type to apply the action to all handoff messages.
Date Condition: Define the dates and times when you want to send the automatic reply.
Reply Action: Create a message like, “Hey there 👋! We apologize, but our offices are closed. Our business hours are M-F from 8 am-5 pm. We’ll reply as soon as we can. Go Embers! 🔥”