Wednesday, January 23, 2013

Did you know that your LibraryH3lp widget has its own URL?

Amy Shelton 11:49 AM

The most common ways of embedding LibraryH3lp chat widgets on a web page is via code snippets or iframes. But if you strip back all the HTML and JavaScript, a widget boils down to a simple URL.

Widget URLs take patrons to your Ask a Librarian service with a single click and may be more effective in boosting engagement than only advertising links to your Ask a Librarian page.

Widget URLs follow this format on the main US server:

widget attached to a queue:
https://libraryh3lp.com/chat/QUEUE-NAME@chat.libraryh3lp.com
widget attached to a user*:
https://libraryh3lp.com/chat/USERNAME@libraryh3lp.com

We auto-detect mobile devices and send them a mobile-friendly widget, so you can tweet regular widget URLs to your patrons who are more likely to be on a smart device. But, here are what our mobile widget URLs look like, in case you'd like to see them on a regular computer:

mobile widget attached to a queue:
https://libraryh3lp.com/mobile/QUEUE-NAME@chat.libraryh3lp.com
mobile widget attached to a user*:
https://libraryh3lp.com/mobile/USERNAME@libraryh3lp.com

Widget URLs for regionals are very similar. Prepend the regional abbreviation (ca, eu, sg) to libraryh3lp.com in two places. An example for the Canadian regional server:

https://ca.libraryh3lp.com/chat/QUEUE-NAME@chat.ca.libraryh3lp.com.

And if you want to pimp out your widget, add some arguments to your URL.

*Note: chats for specific users are treated as private conversations and are not logged, so they will not show up in Activity or Reports. They also can't be transferred. To provide logging and transfer capabilities for an individual, create a queue and assign only that one user to it.