A message variation is a super helpful feature that lets you refine the responses you can send a user based on their experience so far. It's a great tool especially when building quizzes or bots in different languages.

To find out more about variations, you can watch this quick video or follow the written instructions below:

Let’s start off with message variations for quizzes. If a user scored very badly on a quiz - you don’t want to send out a “Great job - you scored 2/10”. Message Variations can solve this by allowing you to create a variation of a message based on rules you program to create a more suitable response. 

I have created a quiz of 5 questions, and added a user attribute, “autumnquiz”, to each answer. Make sure you keep this consistent (which is easy with the handy drop down menu!)

Once you have built your questions and answers, create a “score” message - this is the message that can hold multiple Message Variations. First type out your default message. This may not be necessary, but is a good idea just in case the rules you’re about to create aren’t relevant to the user, or if they received a neutral score such as 3 out 5.

Next it’s time to create a variation of your message. Click on the + sign in the right hand bar (just above “Default”) on the message builder page. Here I’m going to create the rules for if a user did well on a quiz. I’ve decided that a user has done well if they have scored 4 or more points. So I select the user attribute that I applied to all my answers earlier (autumnquiz), and have created a rule that sends my “Well done” message to those who scored equal to or greater than 4. Then click save. 

The name is what will show up in the right hand bar. Make sure it’s clear and accurately describes your variation. You can then type in the message for that variation which you can see in the message builder on the left. Depending on which variation is highlighted, the message builder will represent what will be seen to the user; it shows that variation of the message:

For those who didn’t do so great, I’m going to create an “Unlucky” message. You can see the rules below. 

So anyone who scores 2 or under will receive the “Unlucky” message that looks like this:

Note that you can also choose from any of these rules:

Let’s see the quiz in action! I (purposefully) chose only two out of five correct answers, and lo and behold, I received the “Unlucky” message!

Variations can also be used if you are build a bot in several language but want to stick to the same flow. Simply build the main structure of your bot and slot in the translated text as a variation accordingly. 

Message Variations are great ways of making the user experience more personalised and exciting. You can also use them for any other attribute you have saved against a user.

When looking for a variation that is true for the bot user, the bot will start at the top of the list and work it's way through the possible variations. Once it hits a variation that satisfies what it's looking for, it will stop and deliver that variation. If it can't find a variation that matches the user's rule, it will send through the default variation instead. This is why a default variation is compulsory for each variation set up.

You can also reorder your variations by clicking on the specific variation and dragging into your required order.: