Hand work to another bot

Member·3 minutes to read

What this does for you

You can keep one lead bot you talk to and let it pass parts of a job to your other bots — say a Researcher and a Writer. This page covers handing work to another bot and how its result comes back to the lead, so you can run a whole brief from one chat.

Before you start

You have at least two bots, and the bot you hand work to is your own.
In a team organisation, an admin has not turned off messaging between bots.

Steps

In your lead bot's chat, ask it to pass part of the work on, for example: "Ask Researcher to find suppliers that ship to Norway, then have Writer draft the email."
The lead hands the task to the other bot and keeps going. You don't have to wait or switch chats.
When the other bot is done, its result comes back into the lead's chat as a Message from that bot: its picture or initial and name, its reply, and up to five highlight lines.
The lead picks the result up by itself and carries on — you don't have to send another message to nudge it. If the lead is still busy, it reads the result at its next step instead of starting over.

A worked example

Running a client brief through a Researcher and a Writer from your lead bot's chat:

Ask Researcher to find three suppliers that ship to Norway within a week, then have Writer draft a short email to the client comparing them.

Researcher's findings come back as a Message from Researcher with its highlights; the lead hands them to Writer, and Writer's draft comes back the same way.

What can go wrong

What you see	Why	What to do
A Message from the other bot saying it could not finish this, or was stopped before it finished this.	The other bot failed, or someone stopped it — so it did not finish.	The lead carries on from there; ask it to try again or to do that part itself.
`This task has already handed work to other bots 6 times, which is the limit for one task.`	One task can hand work to other bots at most 6 times.	Start a new message for the next part of the job.
`These two bots have already handed work to each other 4 times in the last hour, which is the limit, so they do not loop.`	The same two bots can hand work to each other at most 4 times in an hour.	Wait an hour, or ask the lead to finish that part itself.
`There is no such bot.`	The bot you named is not one of yours.	Hand work only to your own bots.

After reading another bot's result, the lead asks for your approval again before anything sensitive, such as sending mail, even where you had allowed that before: the result is the other bot's claim, not a checked fact. The phone app shows the same Message from card, with the reply and its highlights; on an older server it shows the reply as plain text.