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Early access and launch

A channel is connected before it is launched. Until you launch it, only the phone numbers on its early-access list reach the agent there. A message from any other number is dropped without a reply, and the sender sees nothing.

Early access is what gets the real agent onto real phones before the public can find it. Your own staff, and the people at your customer who sign the work off, message the agent on the channel it will run on, with real effects.

It is the counterpart to the emulator, which is a browser and a sandbox. A real person is never in the sandbox, and a persona is never on a phone.

Add numbers, then launch

Both controls are on the channel's detail page under Channels.

  1. Under Early access, enter a number in E.164 form (+15551234567) and click Add number. A list holds up to 200.
  2. Have those people message the agent on that channel and work through whatever you want to be sure of.
  3. When you are ready for everyone, click Launch channel.

Launch channel becomes available once the binding's status is Active, since there is nothing to launch until the carrier or platform has finished provisioning.

Launching is one-way. To take a launched channel offline, use Disable, which stops the agent answering there without losing the setup. The early-access list is kept after launch for reference, and it no longer decides anything.

Every new channel starts unlaunched, and the gate holds on every provider.

A message from a number that isn't on the list gets no reply. The channel's detail page shows the last four digits of the most recent number that was turned away, so a tester who hears nothing back is easy to spot and add.

RCS and the provider's tester list

RCS adds a second list. Before an RCS agent is launched with the carriers, the provider only delivers to phones on the agent's own tester list, and each person has to accept the tester invitation on their phone. A number therefore has to be on both lists.

Where Anychat can keep the provider's list for you, adding a number to early access also invites it there, and removing it takes it off. The Invite column shows where each number stands: a number at pending is a person who has not accepted the invitation yet.

  • Anychat runs the Google RBM account for you: Anychat keeps Google's tester list the same as your early-access list. Google allows 20 invitations a day and 200 in total.
  • Vonage: Anychat adds and removes the numbers you change in early access on the agent's test-device list, using the credentials the channel already has. Test devices you added in Vonage's dashboard yourself are left alone. Vonage allows 50 test devices per agent. This works for agents Vonage's Channel Manager lists; for an older agent it doesn't, and the console says so.
  • Webex Connect, or your own Google RBM agent: Anychat can't reach the provider's list. The console marks each number to remind you: add it in the provider's dashboard as well. Test connection with that number reports it as unreachable when the provider-side entry is missing.
  • A managed channel whose list Anychat keeps by hand: the console asks you to contact Anychat support after you change early access.

RCS does not let a person message a business first, so getting the real agent onto someone's phone otherwise means sending to them by hand. A test link is a shareable URL to a public page where the person types their own mobile number. The agent then opens the RCS conversation with them, in its Default Playbook, exactly as it would for a new contact. Their record appears under People once the conversation produces one, so mark it internal when it should stay out of the numbers.

Test links exist to get the agent onto the phones of people on your side. To reach customers, use Outreach.

Create one on the Links tab under Test:

  1. Click New link and pick the RCS channel it sends through (agents with one channel have it preselected).
  2. Give it a label so you can tell links apart later ("QA round 2", "Customer sign-off").
  3. Set Max uses (how many people can redeem it; 1–500, default 25) and an expiry (up to 30 days out, default 14 days).
  4. Copy the link and send it to the people who should try the agent.

Each link's row shows how many times it has been redeemed and how many uses remain. Disable pauses a link without losing its remaining uses; re-enable it later, or delete it outright. Removing the RCS channel a link sends through disables the link too; its row then says the channel was deleted. Create a new link on a live channel rather than re-enabling that one.

The same link can be redeemed in the emulator as a persona, which consumes none of its uses. That is how you see the opening before anyone real taps the link.

After launch

Once a channel is open to everyone, staff who keep using the agent on their own phones are ordinary people in your statistics. Mark their Person record internal through the Agent API and they are kept out of the numbers and out of conversation review, without being kept out of the channel. It is a People attribute, not a mode and not a kind of testing.

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