New webclient preferences and optional note when emailing transcripts

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We just released a few improvements, mostly for the webclient for staffing, directly as a result of excellent feedback from folks like you.  Additionally, we'll be including future announcements directly in the webclient for staffing, 3mail standalone page, and admin dashboard.  When you log in to any of those three and there's a new announcement, you'll see that announcement in a purple box at the top of the page.

Now, here's the rundown of those improvements we mentioned...

New, optional note when emailing transcripts

When emailing transcripts from either the webclient for staffing or the Chat History page or the chat management page (used mostly by those folks who staff with third-party chat clients like Pidgin), you can now include an optional note along with the transcript just like you already can with tag for follow-up.  Super handy for providing context as to why someone is receiving the transcript.



Two options for guest status change notifications

As part of our guest re-engagement feature, we added timestamped messages into the chat transcript for operators so that you have a persistent, timestamped history of when guests come and go during a chat.  This is currently the default behavior and provides the most context on the guest's behavior.

As a bit of background, guest comings and goings are especially common with guests in a couple of contexts.  On mobile devices, the device kills the network connection to the chat box when the chat box is not in front, and so the guest will appear to go offline when they bring something else to the top and return again to online when they bring the chat box back to the front.  On websites where the chat box is embedded in the page (or embedded within a tab), the guest's status toggles on page navigation.  They start the chat on one page and then navigate around the website, picking up the chat on later pages as they go.  This is seamless from the guest's perspective, and chat operators can continue to send messages even when the guest is in an offline state.

Depending on your set-up, these persistent guest status messages can become overly verbose.  If you'd prefer not to see the full timestamped guest status history and instead just have a 'simple guest is offline' indicator as part of the chat, uncheck the 'Include guest status as part of chat' checkbox in your webclient preferences. Webclient preferences are available within the webclient for staffing and set on a per-user basis.

Left screenshot shows default timestamped message guest status history. Right screenshot shows simple, current guest status indicator.

Ability to disable away/busy reminders

The webclient for staffing periodically checks your status and will remind you (if you have visual notifications enabled) if you are set as away or busy.  When away or busy, you won't be available to answer any new incoming chats, so this reminder can come in handy if you forget to set your status back to available.  But if you find these new reminders annoying, you can turn them off by unchecking the "Remind me when I've been busy or away for awhile" checkbox in your webclient preferences. Webclient preferences are available within the webclient for staffing and set on a per-user basis.



Uppercase Guest IDs

Previously, we used only numbers in guest IDs.  Recently we switched to a combination of letters and numbers to pave the way for future improvements.  We received some feedback that the lower case letters were a bit hard to read, so guest IDs are now a combination of upper case letters and numbers when shown to the operator in the webclient.