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Message count seems too much?
# 🤝help
h
Hi! So I am watching the message count for our bot and just can't understand how quickly we are reaching the message limit with hardly any users. I can see from my inbox that nobody used the bot overnight yet the number increased? According to the analytics dashboard there were only 42 messages but in the usage section it says there have been over 642 messages? Can someone please help me understand how so many messages are being counted in our message usage even when the bot is not beg used? The bot no longer pops up when someone enters the website as we thought by stopping that we would stop that trigger from counting towards our message limit but it hasn't made a difference.
c
Hey there! There are various things that count towards the credit of 2K (please see the screenshot). Testing your bot in the emulator will also consume incoming messages.
h
Ok so why when the bot is not being used messages are counting towards usage? For example - last night there is only one interaction with the bot. Someone clicked on it to open up (so that's a trigger) but they did not have a conversation wih the bot. This increased the message usage count by quite a bit - around 100.
c
@bumpy-butcher-41910 would have more insights into this.
h
Thank you - would be good to understand why as every time i look the message count has increased despite no users.
c
Can you please send over your bot ID? In case we need it
h
Yes. Sorry could you please remind me where I find the bot ID? And just add it to this chat?
c
Simply hop on your bot, and copy the URL you get
h
c
thanks
b
I see your session count is pretty high despite messages not being sent, do you know why that is?
h
@bumpy-butcher-41910 - complete non coder here - not sure what sessions even are? 😆
b
think of sessions like "conversations"
you've got three counts - users, sessions, and messages
is this bot published on a website? how's the traffic on the website?
h
ah ok - so the bot is an auto bot meaning we have not yet started using knowledge base etc yet. So the user picks a topic and then the bot goes through each node with the information - if that makes sense!
yes it's published on website
b
yep that makes sense
h
I wouldn't say we get that much traffic - we are a not for profit agency
b
can you export your bot for me?
in the studio, click the botpress logo, export, and upload the file here
h
sure no problem
is there a way I can send it to you in private as my CEO will not want me to share it publicly.....
b
sure, ive sent you a friend request
ah i see
so whenever a user visits a page with the bot on it (in theory, every page on your website), it'll hit the conversation started trigger
it's either that, and/or (and it really might be both or just the next one), but if someone clicks on the chat widget/bubble, that first execute code card you have at the beginning of the conversation will fire
so it's automatically starting the conversation and then setting the language
executing code requires computing power, which is what's triggering the message event
I believe that's the case - and I see you've got 4 in that first node, plus the conversation started trigger
to debug this, I would: 1. add a preliminary node with just a single card that says something like hi, would you like to continue? and force the user to continue before executing the cards that use code
also I really like this bot lol
h
hmmmm ok so originally we had the bot trigger on as soon as someone entered the website (so when they jumped on the bot would automatically pop up) - we disabled that (or we thought we did!) because we didn't want it adding to the message count.....so I thought it means it's now only triggered when someone actually clicks on the bot to open it up? So perhaps it's the next thing you mention - we did that to try and stop people from free texting straight away because we are not using KB or AI just yet.......so I will try your suggestion - just blows my mind that what you have mentioned all adds up like that! Weird thing is despite there not being much chats in the inbox the numbers keep climbing.....
haha really? I feel embarrassed to show it to you considering how fancy all the other bots around here are! haha!
b
sometimes simple is better 🙂
and the wombat is really delightful
it sounds like you turned off the widget from automatically opening, but since you have the "conversation started" node connected, if someone even clicks into the widget without sending a message, it'll trigger all these events
if i add up the number of daily sessions I see here, I arrive at 586
and these won't show up in your inbox - because they're not technically a conversation - but the bot is taking an action nonetheless
I just ran a test - the interaction I have pictured here used 4 message events
despite me not sending a prompting message or anything in response
so I do suspect it's the execute code cards that are the culprit (of which you have 4 in this first node)
h
Ah ok - I did ask that and was advised that those would not count towards messages and only once they click on the language button would it count as a message......
b
ah sorry, it sounds like some wires got crossed
however - we recently changed how we bill for messages and events. it's possible that you were advised prior to us making this change 🙂
h
ohhhhh........!
b
we expanded the scope of the "message" limit and increased it from 1,000 to 2,000 to reflect this
h
yes so that was why I was surprised that suddenly we were using heaps compared to before
b
yeah that'll do it
h
ok so let me just quickly get my head around this while I have you!
get rid of the delayed message code....
b
i would actually advise not to change that bit
as it looks like it functions quite well and you probably don't need to
h
oh ok!
b
give me a moment, I'll show you what I would do
h
oh thank you!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!
b
I sent it back to your DM
essentially, I've 1. disconnected the conversation started node 2. moved the code cards to another node, so my user has to respond "Yes" before any of those execute
I would encourage you to play around with these two options to see what best suits your needs. if your bot sending the first message is mandatory, then it'll always use some events to trigger that message but there's no need to use those execute code cards all in one go right at the start
h
Really appreciate you taking the time to help me out. I'll have a look at your bot and then play around with ours to see what works best....thanks. I would never have worked any of that out myself.....not quickly anyway!
b
everything has a learning curve 🙂
h
very true! A social worker learning to build bots - thanks to botpress! Pretty cool - haha! Thanks again Robert. I'll let you know how it works out!
Ok @bumpy-butcher-41910 (or anyone else who might know) - update. Did what you suggested but the message numbers are still climbing. Nobody clicked on the bot overnight to open it up and there have been no messages. Looking at he logs (feels like it's in another language to me!) it seems very busy doing something with a timeout function......could that be the issue? The logs go on & on for ages which I find weird if nobody is actually using the bot? But also - I have no idea. Maybe this is normal in logs? Have screen shot some of the logs - it goes on for a while so only screenshot a sample.....
ok so....update......for some reason the timeout minutes were set to 999 minutes. I changed it to 5 mins and the messages are now not increasing rapidly like they were. So I'll keep an eye on things but hopefully he issue is now fixed!
b
hey @high-afternoon-19612! sorry for the delay - ran some tests on my end and I came to a few conclusions:
the execute code cards were in fact not the culprit here - but you were right to land on the timeout event as triggering new events
h
hi @bumpy-butcher-41910 no problem at all! Really appreciated your help on this. I will monitor how it goes as we may need to change some other things so as to not have the limit climb so high so fast but for now I think changing that timeout time limit has helped - unless the usage calculator on the dashboard has frozen! 😆 Guess I will find out soon!
m
I would like to follow this thread. I am also experiencing consistently increasing message usage despite the chatbot not being used as much. The usage seems to increase even during inactivity. It just keeps increasing 2-3 messages every few minutes for the entire time
a
@bumpy-butcher-41910 I also have non logical situation between the usage counter and analytics, I have one new bot in one new workspace that has almost no traffic, I have a trigger that only triggers when the the user opens the webchat, I checked the user counter when manually opening the bot and it counts properly, some other thing creates usage and I suspect it could be the conversations in dashboard that create an empty thread every few minutes, if this is counted as Incoming Messages & Events please do something, creating an empty thread every fews minutes provides nothing useful, even if in the middle the the empty threads there are real threads they are impossible to find any way, please see how we can disable conversation threads in dashboard or only activate on a specific trigger. So there is a clear issue with the billing system, Incoming Messages & Events in usage should have more detail so we know what we are paying for, and we need to know how to adjust the bot not to explode the bots budget, thanks
h
@bumpy-butcher-41910 - the issue is back again 😢 I have not changed anything - it stard consuming messages a day or so ago and is quickly using message credits despite having no users.
just contstaly looping the time out but I don't know why considering it's been fine for a while.
b
@high-afternoon-19612 strange! I'm seeing in these logs that a capture card seems to be expecting an input. can you DM me an export of the current/latest version of this bot?
h
yep will do now!
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