Bot Personas Guide
Bot Personas Guide
What is a Bot Persona?
A Bot Persona is the complete character your bot presents to visitors: name, avatar, tone of voice, opening greeting, voice (text-to-speech), and which AI model powers it. Instead of a generic "Bot" label, visitors see a branded identity like "Sales Assistant" or "Support Bot."
You can create multiple personas and assign each one to a different workflow. Your sales flow uses one persona; your support flow uses another. When a conversation transfers between workflows, the new persona takes over automatically — including its tone, greeting, and voice.
Creating a Bot Persona
1. Go to Settings → Bots in the sidebar.
2. Click New Persona.
3. Fill in the four sections: Identity, Character, Voice, and AI Model.
4. Click Create Persona.
The persona is now available to assign to any workflow or AI bot node.
Identity — Name and Avatar
Name: Up to 50 characters. Shown in the chat header and used in the system prompt so the AI knows its own name (e.g. "Your name is Atlas."). Keep it short — names truncate around 20 characters on mobile.
Default Persona: Mark one persona as Default. It is used whenever a workflow or AI node does not specify a particular persona. The default is shown with a gold star on the Personas page. If you delete the default persona, the next one is automatically promoted so nothing breaks.
Avatar — Preset Gallery: 24 built-in avatars across three styles:
- 🤖 AI Bots — stylized robot illustrations (Atlas, Echo, Nova, Cipher, etc.)
- 👤 Personas — illustrated human-style avatars (Alex, Morgan, Riley, etc.)
- ✨ Illustrated — bold artistic portraits (Aria, Ember, Sage, Zara, etc.)
Avatar — Upload Your Own: Drag and drop or browse any PNG, JPG, GIF, or WebP up to 5 MB. Square crop works best. Minimum recommended size: 128 × 128 px.
Character — Tone and Greeting
Tone
Choose one of four tones. Velaro automatically injects it into the system prompt — you do not need to write tone instructions yourself.
- 😊 Friendly — Warm, approachable, conversational
- 💼 Professional — Formal, precise, business-appropriate
- 💙 Empathetic — Caring, patient, emotionally aware
- ⚡ Concise — Short answers, gets to the point fast
How tone works at runtime: The persona's tone overrides any tone setting on the workflow's AI node. Changes take effect on the next conversation without touching any workflow.
Opening Greeting
An optional message the bot uses to start the conversation. Leave it blank to use whatever greeting is in the workflow or system prompt. When set, it is injected into the system prompt as context so the AI uses it as its opening line.
Example: Hi! I'm Atlas, your sales assistant. How can I help you today?
Keep it under 300 characters. The greeting appears in the chat preview on the left side of the persona editor so you can see how it looks before saving.
Voice — ElevenLabs Text-to-Speech
Voice settings are part of the persona character. When a conversation transfers to a new persona (e.g. from a triage bot to a specialist bot), the new persona's voice activates automatically.
Enable Voice: Turns on ElevenLabs TTS for this persona. Requires the Voice feature on your plan.
Voice: Pick from your available ElevenLabs voices. Voices are loaded from your ElevenLabs account connected in AI Configuration.
Voice Model: Three options:
- Turbo v2.5 — fast, low latency (recommended for chat)
- Flash v2.5 — fastest, lowest cost
- Multilingual v2 — best audio quality, supports non-English languages
Auto-play: Automatically speaks each bot reply when it arrives. Note: browsers require the visitor to interact with the page at least once before audio can auto-play. Auto-play works best after the visitor has clicked or typed in the chat window.
AI Model — Which LLM Runs This Persona
Each persona can use a different AI model. The model is resolved in order:
1. This persona's model — if you select one here, it always takes priority
2. Site default — set by Velaro per your plan; superadmin can upgrade
3. AI node's model — the fallback setting on the bot node in your workflow
Select Velaro Default to inherit your site's assigned model automatically. This is the recommended setting for most personas — it means Velaro can upgrade your model when your plan changes without you having to update each persona individually.
Available models (subject to your plan):
- GPT-4o Mini — fast, cost-efficient (Basic)
- GPT-4o — best OpenAI balance (Pro)
- GPT-5 / GPT-5 Mini — most capable OpenAI (Enterprise)
- Claude 3 Haiku / 3.5 Haiku — fast, lightweight Anthropic models (Pro)
- Claude 3.5 Sonnet — best Claude balance (Enterprise)
- Gemini 2.0 Flash — fast multimodal (Pro)
- Gemini 1.5 Pro — advanced reasoning (Enterprise)
Contact support@velaro.com to upgrade your plan.
Assigning a Persona to a Workflow
1. Open a Workflow.
2. Click a Bot or AI node.
3. In the node settings, select a persona from the Bot Persona dropdown.
4. Save the workflow.
Visitors going through that workflow will see the selected persona — name, avatar, tone, voice, and AI model — for the entire conversation.
Deleting a Persona
Click Delete on a persona card, then confirm. Deleting a persona:
- Does not break active conversations — history is preserved
- Does not break workflows — they fall back to the default persona
- If the deleted persona was the default, the next persona is auto-promoted
Tips for Branded Personas
- Use role-based names: "Sales Assistant", "Support Bot", "Billing Help"
- Upload your company logo or mascot for a fully branded experience
- Give each workflow its own persona so visitors always know who they're talking to
- Set Friendly tone for sales flows, Professional for compliance-sensitive flows, Empathetic for support flows where visitors may be frustrated
- Set a greeting that matches the workflow context — a sales greeting is different from a support greeting
- Use Velaro Default for AI model unless you have a specific reason to pin a model to a persona
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