Quick Start: Create Your First Bot

This guide takes you through the new-bot wizard from a blank dashboard to a live, trained bot. It takes about ten minutes, most of which is watching training run. New to HelpJet? Start with What is HelpJet? for the lay of the land.

The wizard has four steps, shown in the step indicator on the right of every wizard page. Each step has an on-screen title, quoted in the section headings below:

1. Bot Info — name and describe your bot
2. Training Data — point it at your content
3. Preview & Test — try it before your customers do
4. Deploy — activate it and grab the embed code

To begin, click Create New Bot at the top of your HelpJet dashboard (or the + next to Chatbots in the sidebar).

Step 1: Bot Info — "Let's build your chatbot"

The first step asks for two things:

• Name your bot — how it appears in your dashboard sidebar (e.g., "Product Support Assistant"). A live preview under the field shows exactly how the name will look.
• Describe what it does — a short note for your team's reference in the dashboard. It isn't shown to end users, and it isn't the bot's instructions — you'll configure actual behavior and tone after training, in Brand & Voice.

Not sure what to write for the description? When the field is empty, the wizard offers starter templates — Customer support, Documentation Q&A, Pre-sales assistant, and Onboarding helper — that you can click and then edit.

Click Continue to training. HelpJet creates the bot (you'll briefly see "Setting up…") and moves you to step 2.

Step 2: Training Data — "What should it learn from?"

This is where your bot gets its knowledge. The step has a single smart input labeled Training URL — enter a WordPress site, a sitemap, or any webpage, and HelpJet detects the type automatically:

• A WordPress site (e.g., yoursite.com) — HelpJet discovers the site's content types (posts, pages, docs, etc.) and shows them as a source card where you pick which types to include.
• A sitemap (e.g., yoursite.com/sitemap.xml) — HelpJet parses it and lists every page it found, so you can include or exclude individual pages.
• Any single webpage — added as a one-page source.

Type or paste the URL and click Add. Repeat for as many sources as you like.

Fetch and curate (WordPress sources)

If you added a WordPress site, pick the content types you want on its source card, then click Fetch posts. HelpJet pulls in the matching content and shows a checklist so you can review it and untick anything that shouldn't train the bot — old announcements, internal pages, and so on. A search box helps when the list is long.

Start training

When you're happy with the selection, click Start training (the button shows the item count, e.g., "Start training (42 items)"). A progress bar tracks each item as it's processed. You don't have to babysit it — but it's usually fast enough to watch.

Two things can happen along the way:

• Some items fail. You'll get a "Training Completed with Errors" dialog showing how many succeeded and how many failed, with the choice to Retry Failed Items or Proceed to Next Step. Failed items can also be retried later from the Sources tab.
• You added no sources at all. The wizard warns you that the bot will only give general answers, and asks whether to proceed anyway. You can always add sources later.

When training is done (or still running — you don't have to wait), click Continue to preview.

Step 3: Preview & Test — "See it before they do"

Step 3 shows your bot in a simulated chat window, styled the way visitors will see it. Ask it a few real questions:

• Start with something broad, like "What do you help with?" — the preview suggests starter prompts drawn from your training content.
• Then ask the questions your customers actually ask. Pull a few from your support inbox if you have one.

If training is still finishing in the background, the preview shows its progress — answers get better as more items complete.

Happy with the answers? Click through to the final step.

Step 4: Deploy — "Ship it"

The last step gives you everything needed to put the bot on your site.

The embed code

Front and center is your bot's embed code — a small script you paste just before the closing </body> tag on every page where you want the chat widget. Click Copy embed code to grab it.

Where to paste it depends on your platform (Squarespace: Settings → Advanced → Code Injection → Footer; Webflow: Project Settings → Custom Code → Footer Code; and so on) — Deploying Your Bot has the full platform-by-platform guide.

Using WordPress?

Expand the Using WordPress? panel and click Download plugin (.zip) instead. The plugin comes pre-configured with your bot ID — upload it under Plugins → Add New → Upload Plugin in your WordPress admin, activate it, and you're done. Details in The HelpJet WordPress Plugin.

Customize the widget (optional)

Expand Customize widget appearance to set:

A live preview updates as you change settings. You can revisit all of this later — plus much more, like icons, header text, and feedback controls — from the bot's Deploy tab. See Customizing the Chat Widget.

Activate

Click Activate bot. This makes the bot live — the wizard confirms with "Your bot is live" and offers Copy embed code and View bot buttons. Activation is reversible: you can pause the bot any time by setting its status to Inactive in Bot Settings.

After activation

Your bot is live, but nobody can talk to it until the embed code is on your site. From here:

1. Paste the embed code (or install the WordPress plugin) and confirm the bubble appears — Deploying Your Bot covers verification and troubleshooting.
2. Keep testing from the bot's Train & Test Bot tab — a private chat your visitors never see. See Train & Test Mode.
3. Watch real conversations in the Activity tab once visitors start chatting. This is the single highest-leverage habit: every unanswered question tells you exactly what content to add next. See Reviewing Conversations.
4. Add more sources from the Sources tab as you find gaps — Training Sources Overview.

Not sure where any of those tabs live? The Dashboard Overview is a quick tour.