Channels and escalation

Channels and escalation

OAssist supports 5 channels via OAssist_Channels:

Site widget

Enabled by default. The floating launcher renders in the bottom-right corner of every storefront page. Configure under Channels -> Site:

• Position: bottom-left or bottom-right.
• Theme: light, dark, or match-site (reads CSS variables).
• Open by default: show the chat panel expanded on load.
• Allowed pages: whitelist/blacklist URL patterns.

Inline embed:

[oassist_chat]
[oassist_chat height="600px" template="compact" welcome="Hi! Looking for something?"]
[oassist_inline height="520px"]

Gutenberg block: OAssist - Chat under the Widgets category.

Email

OAssist_Channel_Email listens for inbound email to a configured forwarding address, processes the message through the assistant, and replies. Useful for converting an existing support@yoursite.com queue into AI-first handling.

WhatsApp, Messenger, SMS

Require your account credentials with the respective platform (Meta WhatsApp Business API, Facebook Messenger Page, Twilio for SMS). Configure under Channels with the platform's webhook URL.

Escalation

When the assistant can't help, or when sensitive intent is detected, it calls the escalate_to_human tool:

json{
  "reason": "sensitive_topic|complex_question|customer_request|cannot_help",
  "summary": "Customer asking about a refund for order #1234 - product damaged in transit."
}

This writes a row to oas_escalations with status = 'open'. Inbox tab shows open escalations at the top with a transcript and one-click assignment to a WP user.

Escalation channels (where the human gets notified): email (always), Slack, Microsoft Teams, your own webhook. Configure under Escalation tab.

Templates

Templates tab controls the widget's visual templates. Each template is a CSS file paired with markup variants (classic, compact, fullscreen). Switch templates per page via the shortcode template attribute.

Budgets and rate limits

oas_budget tracks daily cost in dollars. Set a monthly cap under Settings. When the cap is reached, OAssist returns a polite fallback message and stops calling the LLM until midnight UTC. Audit log captures every over-budget event in oas_audit.