Rules: what the chat does when a shopper asks for something

What a rule does

A rule reads like a sentence: when a shopper asks for something, ask for the details you need, then do something with them. For example: when a shopper wants to return an item, ask for the order number, the email and the reason, then email my team.

Your online salesperson checks each shopper message against your live rules. When one fits, it follows that rule: it asks for the details it is still missing in one question, does what the rule says, and answers in the shopper's language. A message no rule fits gets the normal answer.

Rules live in your dashboard under Settings → Rules. Only store owners see that page and can create, change, test or switch on a rule. Every rule starts off and goes live only after a passing Try it.

Rule, page or writing style: which do I need?

Ready-made rules

Six rules come ready to add with one click from the Ready-made rules panel at the bottom of the Rules page: Order status, Return request, and four that pass a request on to your team. They are added off: try them, then go live.

The six ready-made rules

Order status

Answers "where is my order?" from your shop's own data. Your online salesperson asks your shop through your Emporiqa plugin and tells the shopper where the order is.

What the shopper sees

• A guest is asked for the order number and the email used for the order, in one question.
• A shopper signed in to your shop gives only the order number. Your plugin answers only for that customer's own orders.
• A signed-in shopper with no number at hand ("where is my order?") gets their newest order without being asked, on the plugin versions in the table below.
• The answer is one sentence with the status. When your shop sends more than the status, the dates and tracking, an order card shows the items and the totals, with the rest of what your shop sent under More details. A tracking link shows when your shop has one.
• When no order matches, the assistant asks the shopper to check the details. A second miss gets "I couldn't find it" and, when handoff is on, an offer to bring in your team. A wrong email and an unknown order get the same answer, so nobody can find out whether an order exists.
• When your shop can't be reached, the shopper is told the order can't be checked right now and is offered your team, or your contact details when handoff is off.

What your team sees

In the conversation view the lookup shows as Order looked up: with the order number, status, total and date, so you can see what the shopper was told.

What you set

1. Update your Emporiqa plugin to the version in the table below and connect it.
2. In your plugin's settings, click Open in Emporiqa next to Order status. Or open Settings → Rules and click Add next to Order status.
3. A shop connected with Connect to Emporiqa needs nothing else: Emporiqa fills in your shop's address and checks it. If it ever asks for the address, paste the one your plugin shows. On Drupal and Sylius, which have no one-click connect, paste the Order status address your plugin shows under Check my shop and save. Emporiqa checks it with one signed call to your shop and emails the store owners a link to confirm it.
4. Under Try it, enter one of your recent order numbers and the email used for it. When the answer is right, click Go live.

There is nothing else to decide: your shop plugin answers this rule. Under Customize you can change the examples and the notes on how to word the answer, but not the address, the names of the details or what your shop sends back.

Plugin versions

Order status needs a connected Emporiqa plugin. A store that adds the chat with the embed script alone can't add it, and the Ready-made rules panel says why.

Platform	Order status from	Newest order for signed-in shoppers from
WooCommerce	1.2.0	1.2.2
PrestaShop	1.3.0	1.3.3
Magento	1.4.0	1.4.2
Shopware	1.3.0	1.3.2
Drupal Commerce	1.1.0	1.1.1
Sylius	1.11.0	1.11.1

Each platform name links to its Order status setup guide.

Already answering order questions through the older order tracking (an Order Tracking API URL)? It keeps working. Once Order status is live it answers instead, and your platform's setup guide says how to switch the old one off.

Your own rules

Click New rule and describe what should happen, in your own words: "When someone asks about a warranty, get their order number and a photo of the problem, then email my team." Draft my rule fills in the editor for you to check. Anything a rule can't do, like collecting a photo, is listed so you know. Nothing is saved until you click Save rule, and Start from scratch instead opens an empty editor.

The parts of a rule

When

One sentence about the shopper's situation, plus one to three messages that should use the rule, written the way a shopper would type them. Under More options, up to three that should not: close, but for the normal chat.

Ask for

The details to collect. Each one has the label the shopper sees, why it is needed or where to find it, and whether it is required; an optional detail is asked once. Under More options: its type (text, email or phone), how the value is found (ask the shopper, use a value unless the shopper says otherwise, or always send a fixed value the shopper can't change), and whether it identifies an order or booking. A detail that identifies one needs a second required detail that checks it's the shopper's, like the email on the order. An email, a name or an order number can also be read from the account of a shopper signed in to your shop (From the signed-in shopper's account), on the plugin versions in the Order status table; a guest is asked as usual.

Then

Where the reply comes from (My text, Checking my shop or "Passed on") and what else happens after it (Email my team, Send to Zapier or Make, Offer a person).

What a rule can do

More options

• Also send with the details: the page the shopper is on, the product they're viewing, their cart, their message as typed. It goes to your shop when the rule checks it, and to Zapier or Make when the rule sends there.
• Signed-in customers skip the check (Checking my shop): a shopper signed in to your shop is not asked for the details that prove it's theirs. Your shop gets their customer id instead and must answer only for that customer.
• Answer beside product questions: when the shopper is also asking about a product, the rule's reply is added beside the product answer. With it off, a product question keeps the normal product answer.
• Also take it when the shopper reports a problem: as for Return request above.
• Test on my last 50 shopper messages: shows which of your recent shopper messages the rule would have answered, and which another rule took. Nothing is stored.
• Order: drag rules on the Rules page. When two rules could answer, the higher one wins.

Try it, then go live

Every rule starts off. Below the editor, Try it is a small chat: send a message as a shopper would, answer its questions, and it says what happened, one line per step: "Found it in your shop", "Emailed your team (marked [TEST])", "Would not use this rule for this message". A message can be added as an example that should, or should not, use the rule.

Try it runs the saved rule for real, in test mode: emails go out marked [TEST], Zapier or Make get a test request, your shop gets a request marked as a test, and nothing is billed. Save first, because Try it uses the saved version.

What counts as a pass

• My text: a written answer that passes our checks.
• Checking my shop: a signed, valid answer from your shop, whether it found something or not.
• Email my team: a [TEST] email sent to the people under Send to.
• Send to Zapier or Make: the hook accepted the test request.
• With extras ticked, each one must have gone out in that run, so a rule that checks your shop and then emails passes only when your shop finds something.

Going live

Click Go live under a passing run, or use the switch on the Rules page. The rule answers shoppers from their next message, and every owner of the store gets an email saying who switched it on. The same switch turns it off from the next message.

A live rule answers shoppers while you change its wording. To change what it sends or calls (the address, the details, the sends), turn it off first, then run a passing Try it and go live again. When Go live is greyed out, the reasons are listed under it, such as no one ticked under Send to, or a webhook address that no owner has confirmed yet.

Activity

Each rule on the Rules page shows how often it answered this week. Its activity link shows what it did in real conversations; test runs are not shown:

• Recent answers: the shopper's words that matched, with emails, phone numbers and order numbers masked, and a link to the conversation.
• The last 20 calls, emails and webhooks, with the result, how long each took, and where a failure happened: your shop or Emporiqa.
• Messages another rule took, when two rules matched one message.

Paused by Emporiqa

If one kind of rule misbehaves on our side, we can pause it while we fix it. The rule then shows "Paused by Emporiqa while we fix an issue", shoppers get the normal answer, and your on or off choice stays as it was for when the pause lifts. There is nothing for you to do.

What a rule never does, and where the details go

The full list of who processes chat data is on the subprocessors page.

Limits

What rules cost

Nothing extra. A conversation in which a rule runs is billed like any other conversation, $0.25, inside your monthly cap. Try it runs are not billed. See pricing

For developers: the Checking my shop request

A Checking my shop rule sends a POST with a JSON body to the address in the rule. Order status uses this format too, at your plugin's built-in address.

Request

POST https://your-store.com/your/endpoint
Content-Type: application/json
X-Emporiqa-Action-Signature: t=1760000000,v1=<hex>

{
  "rule": "warranty_check",
  "request_id": "7d3c2b9e-0f4a-5c1d-9e8b-2a6f4c1d0e3b",
  "language": "fr",
  "channel": "web",
  "currency": "EUR",
  "country": "FR",
  "signed_in": false,
  "test": false,
  "fields": {"order_number": "1042", "email": "[email protected]"},
  "customer": null,
  "context": {"message": "is my blender still under warranty?"}
}

• rule: the rule's name as a slug (order_status for Order status).
• fields: the details the shopper gave, under the Name set under More options, plus any fixed values. A detail with no value is left out.
• customer: {"id": "77"} only when the shopper is signed in to your shop and your plugin passed a verified token, else null. Then answer only for that customer.
• context: only what you ticked under Also send with the details.
• test: true for requests from Try it. Answer with real data and change nothing.
• request_id: stays the same when we retry a request, so you can answer a repeat once.

Signature

The header carries a Unix timestamp and an HMAC-SHA256 of the timestamp and the raw body, under a key derived from your connection secret and your public store ID. Refuse a timestamp more than 5 minutes off, and accept the header when any v1 value matches: while you change your secret, it carries one per secret, newest first.

key  = HKDF-SHA256(ikm = connection secret (UTF-8), salt = "emporiqa-v2",
                  info = "emporiqa-to-plugin:" + public store ID, length = 32)
v1   = hex(HMAC-SHA256(key, t + "." + raw_body))

# PHP
$key = hash_hkdf('sha256', $secret, 32, 'emporiqa-to-plugin:' . $storeId, 'emporiqa-v2');
$ok  = hash_equals(hash_hmac('sha256', $t . '.' . $rawBody, $key), $v1);

# Signing your answer (X-Emporiqa-Response-Signature: t=...,v1=...)
key  = the same HKDF with info = "response:" + public store ID
v1   = hex(HMAC-SHA256(key, t + "." + request_id + "." + raw_response_body))

Response

{
  "status": "found",
  "text": "The warranty on this order runs until 12 March 2027.",
  "data": {"deadline": "2027-03-12", "eligible": true},
  "products": ["SKU-1"]
}

• status: found; not_found when there is no such record or the details don't match it (one answer for both); rejected when a required detail is missing or malformed; error. Answer with HTTP 200 for the first three.
• text: a sentence the reply may use. data: facts for the reply; only the keys ticked under Use these fields are used.
• products: up to 10 product IDs or SKUs from your synced catalog, shown as product cards.
• ask: names of the rule's details to ask for, then call again. handoff: true to offer your team.
• Signing the answer is optional for your own endpoint; once one answer is signed, every later one must be. Emporiqa plugins always sign.

Zapier and Make receive the same body, signed under the label emporiqa-to-webhook, so it can never be replayed at your shop. Their answer is not read: a 2xx only means the request was accepted.

Frequently asked questions