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Chat Sessions

Overview

Chat sessions in Open Chat Studio define the scope of conversations between a participant and a chatbot within a specific channel. Sessions are isolated, ensuring data privacy and contextual continuity for the duration of an interaction.

Session Scope

A session is uniquely defined by:

  • Participant: The individual engaging with the chatbot.
  • Channel: The platform through which the chat occurs (e.g., WhatsApp, Telegram, Web, Slack). See channels.
  • Chatbot: The specific chatbot handling the conversation.

Each session is independent, meaning:

  • The session's data is bound to that session only and is not shared with other sessions.
  • When a participant interacts with a chatbot, the chatbot receives the session's history to maintain context.
  • Multi-Session Channels: Channels such as Web, API, and Slack allow multiple active sessions per participant, enabling parallel conversations.
  • Single-Session Channels: Platforms like WhatsApp, Telegram, and SureAdhere support only one active session per participant at a time.

Every session has a status that tracks where the participant is in their chat journey. See Session Status.

History Management

  • As conversations progress, all previous messages within a session are stored as history, regardless of how the pipeline is configured.
  • What subset of that stored history reaches an LLM node, and whether it gets summarized or trimmed as it grows, is controlled per node. See Conversation History for how this works.

Participant Data

Aside from session-specific data, Open Chat Studio maintains participant data, which:

  • Persists across sessions.
  • Is tied to the same Participant, Channel, Chatbot scope.
  • Helps retain long-term participant preferences and contextual information beyond a single session.

Anonymous Sessions

On the Web channel, participants can have anonymous sessions, where:

  • Participant data is only available for the duration of the session.
  • Since participant identity cannot be verified, data cannot persist beyond the session.

Resetting Sessions

For Single-Session Channels like WhatsApp and Telegram, the current session continues until it is explicitly ended.

Sessions can be reset either manually by the participant or automatically.

For task-focused details, see How to reset sessions.