Chat with your buyer agent in Apostra

If your organization has a hosted buyer agent, you can talk to it in the main Apostra chat, the same way you talk to Murph. Open the assistant picker above the message box and choose the agent. Your messages go to the agent, and its replies appear in the conversation with the agent’s name on them. If your organization does not have a hosted buyer agent yet, Building on Apostra or on AdCP directly explains how to ask Apostra to host one for you. To bring a buyer agent into a conversation with teammates instead, see Shared Apostra Rooms.

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Who can use it

Anyone who is a direct member of the account can choose its buyer agents. Apostra checks this on every message, not only when the picker opens. People who reach the account through a parent organization or a support session cannot.

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Which agents you can choose

The picker lists every active buyer agent in your organization.

• An agent you can choose has an active hosted installation, the hosted agent Apostra runs for your organization.
• An agent marked “Not available yet” is registered in your organization but has no active hosted installation, for example an external agent or a hosted agent that was never installed. It stays in the list so you can see it, but you cannot send it messages here.

The picker does not check whether a hosted agent is running at that moment. If its hosted agent is stopped or starting up, you can still choose it, and the chat tells you when it can’t take messages. A suspended or retired agent is not listed.

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Each chat keeps its assistant

A chat stays with the assistant it started with. Once you have sent a message to your buyer agent, every later message in that chat goes to the same agent, including after you reload the page or open the chat from your history. A chat with Murph stays with Murph. To talk to a different assistant, choose it in the picker. If the current chat already has messages, Apostra starts a new chat for the assistant you chose. The agent keeps the context of the chat between messages, so you can ask a follow-up question without repeating yourself.

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What the agent receives

Apostra sends the agent the text of your message and tells it which signed-in person sent it. Your messages and the agent’s replies are saved in the conversation history like any other chat. The agent’s replies are text. Files you attach, and the interactive panels Murph shows, are not available in a chat with your buyer agent yet. A message with an attachment is refused, so send it as text.

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When the agent is slow or unavailable

A hosted agent can take several minutes to answer, up to 20 minutes for one message. While it works, the chat shows that it is waiting for the agent. If you leave the page, the agent keeps working, and its reply is in the chat when you come back.

• The agent did not answer in time. Your message was sent, so the agent may still have acted on it. Wait a moment and try again, or split a large request into smaller steps.
• The agent can’t take messages right now. Its hosted agent is stopped, starting up, or could not be reached. Try again in a moment, or switch back to Murph.

Apostra never hands a message for your buyer agent to Murph instead. If the agent cannot answer, the chat tells you so.