messaging-and-voice-channels.mdx

id	sidebar_label	title	description	abstract
messaging-and-voice-channels	Connecting to a Channel	Connecting to Messaging and Voice Channels	Check out how to make your Rasa assistant available on platforms like Facebook Messenger, Slack, Telegram or even your very own website.	Rasa Open Source provides many built-in connectors to connect to common messaging and voice channels. You can also connect to your website or app with pre-configured REST channels or build your own custom connector.

Connecting to A Channel

Learn how to make your assistant available on:

• Your Own Website

• Facebook Messenger

• Slack

• Telegram

• Twilio

• Microsoft Bot Framework

• Cisco Webex Teams

• RocketChat

• Mattermost

• Google Hangouts Chat

• Custom Connectors

Testing Channels on Your Local Machine

If you're running a Rasa Open Source server on localhost, most external channels won't be able to find your server URL, since localhost is not open to the internet.

To make a port on your local machine publicly available on the internet, you can use ngrok.

After installing ngrok, run:

ngrok http 5005; rasa run

When you follow the instructions to make your assistant available on a channel, use the ngrok URL. Specifically, wherever the instructions say to use https://<host>:<port>/webhooks/<CHANNEL>/webhook, use <ngrok_url>/webhooks/<CHANNEL>/webhook, replacing <ngrok_url> with the randomly generated URL displayed in your ngrok terminal window. For example, if connecting your bot to Slack, your URL should resemble https://26e7e7744191.ngrok.io/webhooks/slack/webhook.

:::caution With the free-tier of ngrok, you can run into limits on how many connections you can make per minute. As of writing this, it is set to 40 connections / minute.

:::

Alternatively you can make your assistent listen on a specific address using the -i command line option:

rasa run -p 5005 -i 192.168.69.150

This is particulary useful when your internet facing machines connect to backend servers using a VPN interface.