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Knowledge Center

Platform User Guide

Learn how to easily build, train, and launch your own virtual AI assistant to capture more leads and answer visitor questions 24/7.

Getting Started — Zero Friction Setup

Kick off your journey in seconds. Captivate is designed to build a secure, private assistant customized directly for your website.

1

Workspace Onboarding

Register on the onboarding panel. This automatically configures a secure, private workspace dedicated solely to your business.

2

14-Day Free Exploration

New signups get full, unrestricted premium access for 14 days with no credit card required. Track your remaining trial days right inside the dashboard status bar.

Active Status Check

To preserve server capacity, chatbot widgets and upload queues pause if the trial expires before subscribing. Don't worry — your configuration and knowledge files are securely saved and never deleted.

Business Tip

Use the 14-day trial to embed the script on your site immediately. Seeing the AI capture actual leads in real-time is the best way to evaluate its business value!

Meet Your Assistant Builder

Style your AI representative to sound and behave exactly like your best employee.

1

Creating Your First Assistant

Head over to the Assistants tab, click New Assistant, and input a name. Selecting the assistant opens the configuration editor panels.

2

Defining the Persona & Tone

Tailor its character: use System Prompts to outline strict rules, choose a Tone (Friendly, Professional, Empathetic), and write Handoff Instructions explaining what contact details the bot should gather when it needs to escalate a conversation.

3

Cloning & Archiving

Easily experiment by duplicating assistants with the Clone tool. If you need to take an assistant offline, use the Archive feature. It disables the embedded widget instantly without losing your setup.

Maximize Conversions

For best results, make your System Prompt friendly and clear. Instruct the AI assistant to gently ask for a name and email as soon as a visitor expresses buying interest or asks for custom quotes.

Ingesting Your Grounding Base

Train the AI on your unique business details. It reads your site pages and uploaded files, guaranteeing it only answers with official facts.

1

Uploading Documents

In the Knowledge Base panel, select your assistant and drag files (PDF, DOCX, TXT, CSV, MD, or HTML up to 20MB) into the upload box. The table shows live status: pending, processing (organizing layout grids and vectorizing contents), completed, or failed.

2

Automatic Web crawler

Enter your website URL, pick a crawl depth (up to 3 levels), and let the crawler scan your public site. It respects robots.txt permissions and ignores external links, automatically mapping your website structure into the AI memory.

Ingestion Notice

If a website has strict bot blocks (like Cloudflare protections or robots.txt exclusions), the crawler will register a "failed" status on your dashboard, accompanied by a clear explanation.

Grounding Benefits

Because the AI is grounded in your upload files, it will never hallucinate or invent answers. If it is asked something outside your files, it uses your custom Handoff Instructions to collect user details and email you.

Deploying to Your Website

Get your AI assistant live on any platform (WordPress, Squarespace, Wix, Shopify, custom HTML) in under two minutes.

1

One-Line Script Embed

Copy your assistant's customized script block from the builder editor and paste it right before the closing </body> tag of your website HTML template. The bubble appears instantly!

<script src="https://captivateai.com/widget.js?id=YOUR_ASSISTANT_ID"></script>
2

Standalone Link Sharing

No website? No problem. Every assistant is assigned a unique Standalone Chat Page URL. Send this link directly to customers via email, newsletter, or SMS text to chat immediately.

Where to Paste

If you use WordPress, Wix, or Shopify, you can paste the script using any free "Insert Headers and Footers" plugin or within the custom HTML/Footer section of your theme builder.

Annotation Studio — Instant Overrides

Control specific responses with absolute certainty. Perfect for disclaimers, refund policies, and current promotions.

1

Create Hard-Coded Rules

Open the Annotation Studio sidebar page, input a visitor phrase trigger (e.g. "What is the holiday special?"), and type your exact preferred answer.

2

Verbatim Override Priority

When a customer mentions a trigger phrase, the assistant instantly delivers your mapped response word-for-word, bypassing standard search algorithms entirely.

Capture Sales

Set trigger phrases for popular search questions like "pricing", "discount", or "coupon" to present direct links to purchase pages, converting visitors into buyers on the spot!

Lead Telemetry & Sentiment

Gather lead data easily and monitor customer satisfaction trends in real-time.

1

Pre-Chat Lead Wall

Turn on Collect Leads to require visitors to share their Name, Email, Phone, and Company before starting a conversation, filtering out casual browers and securing hot leads.

2

Dashboard Overview

The dashboard displays qualified counts: total conversations, unique visitor tracking, leads captured, fallback rates, and real-time conversation sentiment (Positive, Neutral, Negative) analyzed on the fly by AI.

3

Transcript Explorer

Open the explorer table and click View to review transcripts line by line, seeing exactly what your visitors are asking and how the assistant helped them.

Immediate Email Alerts

Every qualified lead is packaged and sent straight to your email inbox. You don't need to monitor another dashboard — simply reply directly to the email to close the sale!

Subscriptions & Stripe Billing

Easily manage pricing thresholds, download receipt sheets, or adjust payments via Stripe.

1

Subscribe to Premium

Review plans in your Billing tab and select the tier matching your business requirements. Checkout is completed securely using Stripe.

2

Stripe Self-Service Portal

Click Manage Billing Portal in your dashboard billing screen to download invoices, update payment methods, or pause/cancel memberships anytime.

Need custom setup help?

We offer personalized onboarding assistance to help you vectorize documents and get the script running perfectly on your site.

Contact Onboarding Support