The website recruiter is a chatbot that embeds directly on your institution's web pages. Once installed, it lets prospective students start a conversation with your AI agent without leaving your site.
Create a webchat channel
From your platform dashboard, go to Settings.
Select Webchat from the left menu.
Click + New Webchat Channel.
Enter a name for the channel (for example, your institution name or "Prospective Student Chatbot").
Configure your settings
Once the channel is created, you can adjust the following options.
Conversation starters
Conversation starters appear as clickable buttons when a student opens the chatbot. Toggle each one on or off depending on what you want to surface.
Ask [Agent Name]: Prompts students to ask any question about your school or admissions process.
Application requirements: Surfaces information about your institution's application requirements.
Financial assistance: Invites students to ask about tuition costs and financial aid.
Intake form
When enabled, students are asked to identify themselves before the conversation begins (for example, "I am a prospective student"). You can customize the options by entering constituent type labels separated by commas.
š” Keeping the intake form on is recommended. When it's off, students can chat without providing their name or email. The platform logs these as anonymous interactions and cannot automatically match them to a contact record. If your team needs to follow up or escalate from a webchat conversation, the intake form ensures that contact information is captured at the start. If you prefer to run an open, anonymous chatbot, reach out to your CollegeVine rep to confirm how your agent is configured to handle contact collection.
Theme and positioning
Button color: The color of the chatbot launch button that appears on your site.
Header color: The color of the chat header bar.
Desktop positioning: Side margin and bottom margin control where the chatbot floats on the page.
Z-index: Controls how the chatbot layers over other elements on your page. The default value works in most cases. If the chatbot appears hidden behind other site elements, increasing this number will bring it to the front.
Enable the channel
Toggle Enabled on to make the webchat active on your site. You can turn this off at any time to hide the chatbot without touching the embed code.
Install the embed code
In the channel settings, click Installation instructions.
Copy the script that appears.
Share it with your web team or IT department.
Have them paste the script into your site's HTML above the closing
</head>tag on each page where you want the chatbot to appear.
š” The chatbot will only appear on pages where the script is installed and the channel is toggled on. If you want to temporarily remove the chatbot from your site, toggle off Enabled in the channel settings. There is no need to remove the code from your site.