LibraryH3lp Blog

Example of an entry form that a guest would see to start a chat

Once the "Start chat" button is clicked, the guest sees a chat box populated with the question from the entry form as the first message in the conversation. 

The guest sees the chat box after clicking the "Start chat" button

Now, let's talk about the operator's side of the entry form. From the operator's point of view, the question from the entry form pops up as the first message in the conversation just like any other chat. A big difference, however, is that the operator sees the guest's identity (name and email) during the chat instead of the usual anonymous guest ID. The guest's name and email are also saved as part of the chat metadata in Chat History.

What the operator sees after the guest submits the entry form

Maybe you don't need both a guest's name and email. No worries! It's possible to hide name and/or email, or you can make either or both optional for the guest to fill out. Only the question is required because this becomes the message that kicks off the conversation with the operator.

And if you would like to collect other sorts of information from the guest, you can do that too! For example, you can add a drop-down menu for the guest's status, such as undergrad, grad, staff, unaffiliated, etc...  Just like name and email, custom metadata is shown to operators during the chat and also saved to Chat History.

Entry forms are enabled on a per chat skin basis. Administrators will find the entry form editor within the chat box skin editor of the administrative dashboard. When editing a chat box skin, administrators will see a "Require guest to complete an entry form before chat" checkbox that creates or removes the entry form for the chat box skin. Once the entry form checkbox is checked, an "Entry Form" tab appears between the "Branding" tab and the "Wicked CSS Hacks" tab.

Chat Skin Editor in Administrative Dashboard ("Entry Form" tab appears when checked)

In the "Entry Form" tab, administrators will find a visual editor where they can design an entry form. The default is a basic entry form that asks for a guest's name, email, and question. If desired, administrators can provide instructions, re-order fields, and add custom fields to the entry form. 

Entry Form Editor

Updates to 3mail

 Did you know that LibraryH3lp provides resources to help you promote your services to guests? We sure do!

We offer both printable and social media materials that you can use as-is or as a starting point for your promotional campaign. You can find it all on the LibraryH3lp FAQ.

Image for use in Meta Stories

Guest chat box

For many many years, we have used Twitter to publish LibraryH3lp system status alerts.  It was handy for a number of reasons, including that no one needed to be signed in with a Twitter account to read the messages.  Alas, things have changed and Twitter is not as convenient as it once was. 

In the interest of simplicity and visibility, we're moving our status alerts here, to our blog.  Status alerts will be located at the top of the right sidebar so you can quickly see if there is a known technical problem afoot in LibraryH3lp-land. 

System status alerts are issues that impact your staff's ability or your guest's ability to use LibraryH3lp in some way... Hardware failures, widespread networking issues and data center problems are all examples. Thankfully these sorts of issues are rare. Because these problems could mean that our servers are not reachable, our blog (hosted by Blogger) is a perfect place to share them.

We will continue to use the Message of the Day feature within the LibraryH3lp admin dashboard and webclient to share news items of general interest to our customers and their staff.

For those customers that still actively engage on Twitter, don't worry. We will continue to tweet the same status alerts we post to the blog so you will see and receive those important messages in the familiar way. 

If you have administrative rights to all or part of your LibraryH3lp subscription, this post is for you. We've updated the users management page in the administrative dashboard. The new page has been in beta testing for quite some time and we've wrapped in customer feedback as well as bug fixes during that time. Please continue to provide constructive feedback on how we can further improve this page.

Updated user management page in administrative dashboard

We'll update the administrative dashboard on each of the servers in the coming weeks. And we'll update this section as we go to note the date. Here's the release schedule:

• Canada - May 27, 2022
• Singapore - June 21, 2022
• Europe - June 23. 2022
• Main (US) - July 5, 2022

Creating and updating users

Managing chat contacts

When users forget to logout

Administrative permissions

But I loved the old page

We hope everyone had a great summer. Fall is already upon us, and we wanted to share some big news: a next generation chat box is coming to LibraryH3lp packed with features you've been asking for. 

But wait. There's more! We also want to show off some neat new features in the admin dashboard and webclient for staffing.

We'll be rolling the new features described in this post to each of the regional servers soon. Here's the release status so far (and we'll update this section as rollouts happen):

• Canada: August 29, 2021
• Singapore: September 3, 2021
• Europe: September 3, 2021
• Main (North America): September 11, 2021

Easier Chat History search

It's now even easier to search chats in the Chat History page, which is common to both the admin dashboard and the webclient for staffing. As before, there's the area at the top of the page where you can search chats by date, transcript keywords, or most any bit of chat metadata either by typing you search parameters in the search box or by using the advanced search dropdown and filling out the search fields. 

But now there are two new features: one-click narrowing of search parameters and easy-to-remove-search facets.

When you visit the Chat History page, you'll see all the chats which match your current search criteria (this week's chats by default) in a table. We've added hyperlinks to the guest, protocol, queue, and operator fields in that table for each chat. Clicking on any of these links for a chat will automatically add the value of that field to your search so you can quickly narrow your search to a particular guest, protocol, queue, operator, or any combination of these metadata fields. You'll also see these fields added as facets to your search.

Here's an example of the new search features in action:

Before narrowing search by clicking on an operator hyperlink

Clicking an operator name narrows the search to a particular operator and adds a facet

New Webclient Features

Today's chats with the guest

Each incoming guest chat over a queue now includes a history hyperlink as part of the chat metadata. Clicking that hyperlink lets you quickly view today's chats with that guest, which is especially handy for repeat guests who may have previously chatted with another operator or to refresh your memory on a prior chat with a guest.

New "History" metadata on chats within the webclient. Click to see today's chats for the guest.

Volume control for webclient sound notifications

 2nd Generation Chat Box (Yay!)

Without further ado, we're excited to announce the second generation LibraryH3lp chat box packed with lots of great new features. Don't worry, we haven't gone crazy with the redesign and guests who have used your chat box before will still find it familiar.

Default 2nd generation chat box with no customized skin

• more spacious typing area that auto-sizes based upon chat box dimensions
• modernized icon set for chat features such as emailing transcripts
• new icon to enable/disable visual notifications of new chat messages (pop-out and follow-me chat box styles only)
• new icon to review and choose emojis to insert into the conversation
• new icon to clear chat history which replaces the old 'Clear Chat History' button

After you've upgraded the chat skin, you can then take advantage of some new features and customization options which include:

• Add an optional, customizable greeting message that appears in the transcript area at the beginning of a conversation. This is separate and different from the concierge auto-response in that this message is NOT part of the chat transcript per se and appears to the guest before a chat starts.
• Create and present a chat policy to guests and optionally require guests to acknowledge your chat policy before chatting.
• Customize the 'Type here to chat. Press ENTER to send.' typing instructions for the chat box.
• Disable file uploads for guests if you do not want guests sharing files with operators.

NOTE: If you have a chat skin which is highly customized though advanced customizations in Wicked CSS Hacks, those customizations will be lost if you choose to upgrade through the default upgrade process. The reason that the contents of Wicked CSS Hacks are purposefully not preserved is because much of what is valid for a Generation 1 chat box is NOT valid for a Generation 2 chat box. That is, the old Wicked CSS Hacks content will likely just make your updated chat box look strange and is no longer needed. Please contact LibraryH3lp support if you'd like assistance upgrading any chat skin or have questions.


Updated Chat Box Skin Editor

Finally, we've redesigned the Chat Skin Editor in the admin dashboard. The new editor makes it easy to search your existing chat skins and see what each skin looks like at a glance.

• There are color pickers with built-in WCAG color contrast checkers to help you style your chat box skin while ensuring your skin meets color contrast accessibility standards.
• Rich text editors are available for parts of the chat box where there is text content, like the title.
• As before, you can see your changes to the chat box skin update in real-time. But now you can also click on the visualization of your skin to highlight the settings in the editor that are relevant to that portion of the skin.

Redesigned Chat Skin Editor

With the redesign, we've broken up the chat box skin settings into two groups -- Branding Basics and Additional Flair. The Branding Basics group represents the most commonly tweaked skin settings and Additional Flair is for other customizations which are less commonly tweaked.