ikas AI chatbot and store integration

Connect an ikas store to an Incele workspace, synchronize its product catalogue, and offer shoppers an AI assistant that uses your products, instructions and chatbot design.

Availability: this guide describes the ikas connector implementation. Installation requires an Incele app configured and approved for distribution by ikas. A code release does not itself publish an ikas App Store listing. If the app is unavailable in your dashboard, contact Incele support; do not enter developer secrets into your workspace.

What the integration does

The connector does not place customer orders, collect a shopper's payment card, edit ikas products, or grant Incele account access to storefront visitors.

Before you begin

You need access to the ikas store's application management, an active Incele account, and an active workspace you currently own. Use the same Incele environment throughout: production is incele.ai on this documentation site; development and production accounts and resources are separate.

Add your catalogue and an HTTPS storefront domain in ikas. A connected store with no usable storefront domain can import data, but cannot activate the public chatbot until its domain is available.

Install and authorize

1. Open the Incele application from your ikas dashboard or its approved app listing.
2. Complete ikas's authorization screen. Incele requests access to products, inventory and its storefront script.
3. Return to the embedded Incele app. If authorization expired, use Authorize ikas and reopen the application from ikas.
4. Select Connect workspace, then Continue in Incele.
5. Sign in to Incele, select a workspace you own, and explicitly approve the connection.
6. Return to ikas and select Refresh status.

Connection links expire after 10 minutes and can be consumed once. They identify a proposed connection; they do not give the store access to an arbitrary workspace. Staff access or an email address matching the store owner is not enough to approve a workspace connection.

Merchant interface language

The embedded dashboard offers English (US), Turkish, German, Spanish, French and Arabic from Interface language. Arabic uses a right-to-left layout. Settings dialogs include the same selector, so changing language preserves your unsaved fields. Numbers, dates and prices follow the selected locale; purchase amounts and currencies remain unchanged.

A saved preference takes priority over a supported platform locale; unsupported values fall back to English (US). Preferences are separated by provider and verified merchant context in this browser. If embedded browser storage is unavailable, the choice lasts for the current page only.

This controls the merchant interface, not customer chatbot or Telegram/WhatsApp reply languages. App Store listing translations are also separate from the dashboard. Platform-hosted payment approval pages use the platform’s own language settings.

Payment history lists this store connection’s purchase attempts with their saved amount, original currency and confirmation status. It does not prove that a monetary refund has completed; refunds need payment-provider confirmation.

Synchronize products and inventory

The initial catalogue discovery starts after connection. Each source variant is mapped to a workspace product. Subsequent changes arrive through authenticated webhooks and periodic authoritative API checks.

The import retains source product and variant identifiers, SKU and barcodes, descriptions, brand, tags, product/variant attributes, available prices and their currency codes, variant options, image references and stock locations. Missing optional values remain missing. The assistant must not infer ingredients, vegan claims, suitability or stock quantities from a product name alone.

Products are matched only inside the connected workspace. Existing SKU or barcode matches are reused; conflicting matches pause the task for correction rather than silently merging different products. Products shared with another active store connection are retained when one source disconnects.

Only active variants published to a visible connected storefront become active recommendations. Inventory is separate from publication and sellability. Stock sums the current non-deleted locations and is bounded to the workspace's supported range. Backorder policy is retained separately; it does not fabricate stock. Source image identifiers remain metadata, and the native CDN helper format provides read-only external images. The gallery prioritizes the current variant and stays within five images; uploaded workspace media takes cover priority.

Synchronize again queues work; it does not finish the import immediately. Task counters show queued, processing, retrying and paused work. They are not product totals. Open a counter for paginated details. Correct SKU/barcode conflicts or permissions before selecting Retry after correction. Network and provider allowance failures retry automatically with bounded backoff.

Automatic updates and recovery

ikas product creation/update events and stock creation/update events notify Incele through authenticated webhooks. Incele deduplicates events and queues a current API read of the affected product. Events without an identifiable product request catalogue discovery instead. The webhook payload alone does not establish current stock or product status.

Background work is checked every minute. A full catalogue discovery becomes eligible six hours after its last discovery, catching changes whose events were missed, including products removed from the source catalogue. Queue size, API throttling, authorization and retries can delay completion; six hours is a recovery interval, not a completion guarantee.

This hybrid approach is recommended over relying only on hourly or daily full imports. Keep the app authorized and connected. Use the app's catalogue status and explicit synchronization control to inspect or recover work rather than manually resynchronizing after every edit.

Activate the storefront chatbot

1. Save the chatbot's availability and exact allowed origins in the Incele app or Workspace → AI Chatbot.
2. In the ikas app, select Choose a storefront.
3. Check the storefront's name and HTTPS domains, then choose Activate chatbot.
4. Refresh status after the activation task finishes.
5. Open that storefront and check the launcher.

Activation is specific to a storefront. Connecting a workspace does not automatically inject a script into every website. Do not paste the generic HTML snippet into an ikas store that already uses the managed integration: this can create duplicate launchers and lose the intended platform context.

Use Disable chatbot to request removal of this app's script from that storefront. A workspace disconnect immediately makes the previous loader inactive, even before native script cleanup completes. An already open browser page may need a refresh after configuration changes.

Configure the AI assistant

Choose a chatbot template, edit the welcome text and colors, and save your exact allowed website origins. AI instructions and enabled levels belong to the connected workspace and also affect its other experiences.

Use product-specific questions for common shopper needs. Keep factual product information in the catalogue. Instructions should describe tone, boundaries and business context, rather than promise facts absent from product records.

The public widget uses separate visitor credentials and mandatory anonymous verification. An ikas administrator session is never passed to a shopper.

Purchase and spend credits

ikas uses its own paid-credit balance. A shopper request spends:

1. Available Shared free & promotional credits.
2. Then ikas credits purchased through native ikas payments.

Incele-paid and Shopify-paid credits are unavailable to the ikas chatbot. Connecting, disconnecting, reinstalling or selecting a different workspace never transfers paid credits or duplicates a signup grant.

When billing is configured, choose a pack in the ikas app and approve the one-time purchase in ikas's payment interface. The server adds credits only after verifying the saved receipt through ikas. Opening a payment window, returning to the app or receiving a webhook is not proof of payment. Refresh the app after approval.

If prices are unavailable, billing has not been enabled for this environment. The documented native API does not expose a test-charge flag, so Incele does not label a real charge as a sandbox purchase. Do not make a real purchase simply to diagnose setup. See credits and billing.

Analytics and private exports

Analytics shows store-attributed all-time totals: estimated visitors, widget opens, conversations, AI replies, successful requests, credits used, feedback and uploaded photos. Visitor counts are estimates, not verified unique people. Reports do not imply order attribution, revenue attribution or conversion guarantees.

Private exports are available only while both the store authorization and the current workspace ownership remain valid. They contain conversations, collected profiles, feedback, usage and events scoped to this store and workspace. Media downloads require a separate authorized request. Store downloaded private files securely and apply your own retention policy.

Disconnect, reconnect or uninstall

Disconnect workspace in the ikas app, or Disconnect under Incele → Integrations → Connections, stops that connection's catalogue and chatbot. Credits and payment history remain with their original workspace. Source-only products become inactive; products retained by another current source remain available.

The application can remain authorized in ikas after a workspace disconnect. The current Incele owner can reconnect through Connections. A different account must approve a new one-time connection from the ikas app.

To revoke ikas authorization entirely, uninstall Incele in ikas. Uninstall notifications are treated as a signal to verify authorization, rather than trusted on their unsigned routing fields. Private workspace data follows the security and retention rules; uninstalling is not a monetary refund.

Troubleshooting

Related guides

• Shopify integration
• Chatbot templates, installation and analytics
• Workspace ownership and connections
• Credits and payment history
• Security and troubleshooting