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Plugin Description
Live Support Desk puts voice, text, and video chats right in your WordPress site. Designed to work whether you are on your own or have a support team of agents. Quick and easy to install.
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Easy to install : our intuitive configuration menu lets you quickly insert live chat windows right into the your site. Just select your preferences and the short code is generated for you.
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Simple for your visitors : when people visit your site they’ll see clickable chat windows right in the pages you choose. One click and they’re connected to someone who is ready to help them out. This all happens without a visitor ever needing to download an external application or leave your site.
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Control every aspect of the chat : Different chat styles can be selected between text only or video and voice chats. Choose to enable or disable text chatting as part of your voice or video chats. Use different chat styles in different pages. In addition, choose whether or not to give your visitors and agents control of their media functions, such as cutting their web cam or audio feed with just the click of a button.
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White brand : our clean, neutral interface looks natural in the page. Customize everything from the size of the display to the features that appear in the window.
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Adapted to your organisation : Add agent logins and define their roles and streamline requests to the right agents. Set up an agent chat window to receive any chat requests they are assigned to handle. So no need to give employees access to your WordPress Dashboard.
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Adapted to your process : Use a waiting queue that lets clients know their place in line or use a regular Accept/Ignore request management style that notifies you when somebody wants to chat. Possibility to display a custom page in place of the chat window when nobody is on line.
For more details, check out our website http://plugins.bistri.com/
How-to Guides
Here are some resources to help you get started.
Creating Agents and Roles
This is where you create login IDs for your agents, and roles that you will assign to chat windows and agents.
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Live Support Desk Dashboard Tab – Hover over the Live Support Desk tab on your Dashboard. Click on Manage Agents.
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Manage Agents – Click Add at the top of the page. The login is the username that an agent will enter when he or she logs in. You’ll need to assign roles to that agent. “Support” is a default role that you can use as a placeholder if you haven’t created any of your own roles yet. The role or roles that you assign to this agent will determine which chat windows they receive chat requests from. They’ll receive all incoming requests from chat windows matching their roles.
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Roles – Create the roles you assign to agents and chat windows. A role is a designation that you give to an agent or chat window to determine where chat requests go. You can add as many roles as you want to an agent. A chat window can only have 1 role. Set up roles for chat windows or pages in your site, and then assign the role to qualified agents.
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Manage Roles – Hover back over the Live Support Desk tab on the Dashboard sidebar. Click on Manage Roles. Click Add at the top of the page. All you have to do is give a name to the role you’d like to add and click Add Role. You can then assign these roles to agents and chat windows. When you are creating roles, just think of the function that you’d like a particular chat window to fill.
Chat requests are sent to agents from chat windows matching their roles. All agents receive all requests from chat windows with their matching roles.
Setting up a Chat Window
This is a lot of text, but this can all be done in just a few seconds once you know what you’re doing.
Access your WordPress Dashboard – Find Live Support Desk in the settings tab on your dashboard. Configuring the plugin with your API Key is a one time thing. No need to worry about that again.
- Decide what type of “Request Management Settings” you’d like to use. For a smaller business we recommend using Direct Connect. If you have lots of agents connected at once, it will be more effective to use a Waiting Queue style.
The Request Management Settings decide how incoming requests are processed by agents. If you have a Waiting Queue, calls will be put in a first come, first served queue. An agent just clicks on a prompt to take the next request in line. Direct Connect is more like a standard call. Agents will be notified of an incoming request and can decide whether to Accept/Ignore.
Note: If you change this setting it will change the Request Management Style for all the chat windows on your site. This is not assigned on a window to window basis.
Unavailable Message – You can create a custom page with a personalized message that will appear in place of the chat window if nobody is available. You can use this feature to direct clients to a page of your choice when nobody is online. If you don’t want to do that, you can just display our default message.
Keep in mind that people will still be able to join the queue if all agents are in a chat.
Note: Setting up Screen Sharing is also one of the options on the settings page. We have a separate How-to for that. It isn’t necessary to set this up to start using the other features.
Pages – Once you’ve Saved Your Changes in the settings, go to Pages in the Dashboard side bar and choose a page where you’d like to insert a chat window. You can do this on a new page or an existing page. You can do this all over your site, on as many pages as you want, with as many different types of chat windows as you’d like.
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Above the text editor you’ll see a Live Support Desk icon. Click on that icon and configure your chat window from the options in the short code generator. It will say “Create Chat Window” at the top.
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Create Chat Window – You’ll see that there are several options to choose from on the short code generator. We’ll break it down step by step.
Type – Choose between “Customer” or “Agent” windows. When you select “Customer” you will be creating the type of chat window that a visitor will see. They just have to click on it to request a chat. By selecting “Agent” you’ll be setting up an agent-facing window that will present agents with a login screen. Agents will be eligible to receive chat requests through the window just by navigating to the page where you put it and logging in. This makes it so you don’t have to give agents access to your WordPress Dashboard.
Role – You’re choosing what this chat is for. Choose which agents will receive requests from this particular chat window. When agents are logged in, they are able to receive chat requests pertaining to their assigned roles. If you assign this window with Support, any agent who has the assigned role of Support will receive requests from this window. Agents can have multiple roles, so if you’re limited on agents you can have agents receive requests from multiple chat windows.
Note: When you select an Agent window the Role menu is greyed out. This is because this menu only affects customer-facing windows. Agent windows are role neutral to limit the amount that you have to create. An agent who is logged into the agent window will receive any chat requests that pertain to the agent’s assigned roles.
Layout – This menu lets you choose the style of chat window you’d like to display. You can decide whether you’d like to have the controls and the self-facing display on the right or left side in side-to-side layouts. You can also choose vertical for a layout with a more prominent video stream. You can also use text-only chat.
Media Source – Choose the quality of the video resolution here. You can also select an audio-only chat window if that fits your needs better. As with anything, the quality of your image and audio will also largely depend on the power of participating machines and their connections.
Don’t be overly ambitious with the quality you select. In order for the plugin to function at its best you should select appropriate settings. While the plugin is capable of great quality, it won’t magically make a computer more powerful or an internet connection faster.
Enable Text Chat – Keep this box checked if you’d like text chat to be enabled in the window. This allows you to have a text chat going with the person you are talking to in voice or video chats.
Enable Media Controls – Have this box checked to give a client or agent the ability to cut their microphone, camera, or sound. If you’d like these controls disabled just make sure this box is unchecked.
Disabling text chat and media controls might be useful if you want a really basic looking chat window integrated into your page. This will remove the icons that surround the video feed. We keep the chat window clean to begin with, but this just enables you to have a simpler interface if that’s what you need.
Enable Screen Sharing – Check this box to enable screen-sharing when it is configured. This process is a little more involved, and requires a couple extra steps. There is a detailed explanation in the How-to guides.
Chat Window Width/Height – These two spaces let you define the size of the chat window. You can either set a size in Pixels or a % of the available page space. Tinker with this to find a size that works. The size of the window will max out at 100% of the available space if you set a number of pixels that is too large.
Note: If you set the window really small the chat features and media controls will not be visible.
Insert Short Code – The chat window (in the form of short code) will be inserted into the text box in your page editor.
Test It Out – Open up a private browsing window and navigate to the page you just configured the chat window for.
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Once you’ve done that go back to the browser window where your Dashboard is open and go to the Live Support Desk icon in your Dashboard Sidebar. Click on Desk.
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Go back to the private window and refresh the page. You will give access to your microphone and webcam by simply clicking the prompt.
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Click on the chat window and you’ll receive a request in the Live Support Desk. Accept the request and you have hosted a video chat (or another kind of chat) with yourself.
To test an agent window just follow this same process in reverse. Keep a customer window configured and open up both the agent window and the customer window in private browsing windows. Log into the agent-facing window. Go back to your customer window and send yourself a chat request.
NOTE: Make sure the agent ID you use for your test has the role that you assigned to the customer chat window you are testing from. If you get an unavailable message try refreshing.
There are more How-to guides on our website: http://plugins.bistri.com/how-to-guides/
Screenshots
A screenshot of your account creation
Chat support
Video Support – Agent view
Video Support – Customer view
