Modern Client

The login screen will appear when opening the client. Every user will have their own username and password, as given out by an administrator. All details other than the password are remembered.

On your first login, you will also be asked to enter the WhosOn server and the authentication string. These will be provided by an administrator. Your name is what will appear when chatting with a visitor, and your department is the department that will appear in the transfer list for other agents to see.

Each user will have their own User name and Password, as set up by an Administrator user. The WhosOn Server and Authentication string will be the same for all users inside an organisation, and should match the details on the original setup email from WhosOn.

The WhosOn Client connects through it’s own port. If you have a firewall or proxy in place, you may need to allow outbound connections over port 8011 to the WhosOn server.

As well as your User name, the Client will ask for Your name when logging in. This is the name that will appear when you are chatting with a visitor. To avoid confusion, this name must be unique, so no more than one user can use the same name.

Users can have different rights and permissions inside the Client – logging in as an Administrator user will show you different options inside the Client than other users.

Setting status

Your status determines whether or not you are available to chat. You will only see notifications for new chats when your status is set to Online; not if your status is Busy, Be Right Back or Away. Your status is visible to other agents.

At least one agent must have their status set to Online in order for the chat to function. Depending on the configuration of your chat, visitors may be given an offline message or simply not able to see the chat button with no agents online.

Busy, Be Right Back and Away all mean that you are not available for a chat, but there are differences – If a visitor clicks to chat while you are Busy then they may be directed to a queue, but if you are set to Away or Be Right Back then they may be displayed a message showing that the chat is offline. The exact behaviour depends on your chat configuration.

Setting personal options

The ‘Options’ tab allows you to toggle certain options on and off. These are personal options and do not affect other agents.

Keep running in system tray when window closed – When enabled, and you close the Client window, it will continue running in the background and you will still receive any notifications
Show popup notifications – When enabled, you will see pop-up notifications for important events in WhosOn, even if the Client is minimised or running in the system tray
Enable spell checking – When enabled, incorrectly spelled words will be highlighted. Right-clicking will give suggestions to correct the words
Set my status to away on start up – When enabled, your status will be set to Awayupon opening the Client, rather than Online
Auto away after 5 Minutes of inactivity – When enabled, your status will automatically be changed to Away after a certain period of inactivity on the machine
Auto logout after 30 Minutes of inactivity – When enabled, the Client will log you out after a certain period of inactivity on the machine
Logout when computer locked – When enabled, the Client will log you out whenever the Windows lock screen is used
Always show canned responses window – When enabled, the Canned Responseswindow is always shown in the chat, rather than being toggled on and off
Show suggestions when typing – When enabled, suggestions will be shown to you based on your previous responses. You can select a response from suggestions using the Tab key
Auto monitor all chats – When enabled, you will automatically monitor all chats in progress for all agents
Show all visitors on start – When the program starts, it will load a list of all the current visitors. When turned off, you will only see visitors from the point that you log in
Show only icons on the toolbar – Removes text labels to show only icons on the side toolbar
Show Emoji popup when chatting – Shows the option for entering Emoji into the chat

When setting personal default messages, you can use the following values:

%NAME% – Visitor name
%MYNAME% – Operator name
%MYSMS% – Operator SMS number
%MYDEPT% – Operator department
%GREETING% – Operator’s greeting message (taken from the local machine and preset to Good Morning/Good Afternoon/Good Evening depending on the Client’s local time)
%DATE% – Current date
%TIME% – Current time
%MYTITLE% – Operator’s title
%SITENAME% – The domain’s name within WhosOn
%DOMAIN% – The domain within WhosOn
%MYEMAIL% – Operator’s email address
%MYPHONE% – Operator’s phone

Picking up a chat

If you are not configured to automatically pick up chats, and your status is set to Online, then you will be notified when a visitor requests a chat from the site. This notification will appear even if the Client is minimised, and clicking it will open the chat window and begin the chat with that visitor.

You will also be able to manually accept a chat by clicking it from the Chats panel of the Client.

If Chat Routing is configured, only Users with the relevant skill will be notified of an incoming chat. Users without that skill may be able to pick up the chat from the Client, depending on their User account permissions.

If chats are not set to be auto-accepted, all available users will see a chat notification. The first user to click the notification will pick up the chat; any others users clicking the notification will see a message to say the chat has already been taken.

A chat that is not immediately picked up will send reminder notifications every 30 seconds until it is picked up, times out or the visitor leaves.

Chat window

The chat window is what you will see when chatting with a website visitor. You will see messages sent by both you and the visitor, as well as a preview of what the visitor is currently typing.

Messages sent by yourself or the visitor will appear immediately in the chat window. You will also see Server messages here, for example when the chat is transferred or closed by the visitor, but these messages are not visible to the visitor.

As long as it is enabled in your site settings, you will see a preview of what the visitor is currently typing. This shows anything entered in the chat box by the visitor, even if they never send the message. The visitor will see a notification when you are typing back, but they will never see a preview of what you are typing.

Chat options

The visitor's status and current mood (based on the conversation so far) are shown above a summary of their information. You can see more information about the options by hovering over them.

The mood indicator only appears once enough has been said in the conversation to identify it as positive or negative, indicated by a happy or sad face near the visitor’s name.

As you start typing, the text box will pop up with suggestions based on your recently sent responses. There are options at the side for inserting emoji or canned responses, as well as sending and receiving files.

Close Chat Ends the current chat for you and the visitor
Transfer Chat Transfers the chat to another user, or a group of users
Request Monitoring Sends a notification to a moderator user to monitor the current chat
Email Transcript Allows you to email a transcript of the chat so far
Submit Ticket Only available if ticketing is enabled, this will take the transcipt of the chat and create a ticket
Block Visitor Places a temporary block on the visitor’s IP address, preventing them from requesting a chat for the rest of the day

The chat options are only available to you during an active chat session, while the chat is in wrap-up (after the visitor has left but before you close the chat) you will still have access to Email Transcript and Submit Ticket.

Canned responses and suggestions

Any words that WhosOn recognises as a keyword in the conversation will appear in bold. Clicking one of these words will bring up the canned responses window, suggesting canned responses based on the keywords. From the canned responses window, you can select other keywords from the conversation, or manually enter your own to search for.

You can also select a canned response manually from the list of canned responses, and click to send that to the visitor.

Global Canned Responses are created by Administrator users, and are available to all users. Keywords are generated automatically by WhosOn based on the content of the Canned Responses and do not have to be configured manually.

The Canned Responses window is shown when clicking the Canned Responses icon, or pressing Ctrl + R. There is also an option to always show the Canned Responses window inside Options.

Transfers

Clicking Transfer will bring up a list of logged-in agents and departments, with a colour-coded status. Transferring to an agent will send them a notification to pick up the transferred chat.

If you transfer to a user and they do not accept the transfer notification, the chat will be placed back into a waiting status and all users will receive notifications that the chat needs to be picked up at 30 second intervals.

When a chat is transferred, the user that picks up the chat will be able to see everything said so far in the chat.

The visitor is not notified when a chat is being transferred.

File transfer and suggestions

Any type of file can be sent to the visitor through the chat. You can manually pick a file to send with the ‘Send File’ option, or start typing a file name to see suggestions of recently sent files.

Visitors can only send a file when you request one using the ‘Request File’ option. The sent file will appear as a link inside the chat.

WhosOn support any kind of file, since it is downloaded through the browser and opened with any relevant program on the user or visitor’s machine. The file types that can be sent can be restricted in the Settings Portal. The maximum size of file that can be transferred is 10mb.

Visitors will not see an option to send a file through their chat window, this only appears when you use the Request File option.

Tagging

You can tag operators to get assistance inside a chat by using the @ symbol and typing an agent or department name.

Getting assistance allows you to chat to another agent without leaving the chat window.

Requesting assistance this way will not send a notification to the tagged user, it will open an operator-to-operator chat window for the tagged user. This means it is possible to chat to the a visitor and another operator at the same time.

You can tag any user to request assistance in this way, but users without permission to monitor a chat will not be able to see your conversation with the visitor.

Monitor & mood

Clicking a chat in progress with another agent allows you to monitor the chat, to see what is being said by the agent and visitor. While monitoring a chat you can type messages which will appear as a whisper that only the agent can see.

The mood indicator only appears once enough has been said in the conversation to identify it as positive or negative, indicated by a happy or sad face near the visitor’s name.

Any message you send while monitoring will be a whisper. Whispers are only visible to the user, and never the visitor. It is not possible for you to send a message that is visible to the visitor while monitoring a chat.

If you whisper to a user, they cannot whisper back to you. If you want to have a conversation with the user, rather than just passing information, the user can use the Get Assistance function.

Monitor all

The Monitor All option allows a supervisor to monitor any chats that are currently in progress. Any current, waiting or queueing chats for all operators are shown, along with a real-time preview of the transcript.

Using Monitor All gives a dashboard view of all chats. Chats are colour-coded based on their status, so you will be able to see when a chat is in progress, waiting or queueing. Chats are removed from this view when they end.

As well as seeing the content of all chats in progress, you will be able to see a sentiment indicator for the chat once there is enough information in the chat to identify it as positive or negative.

Team view

The team button shows any Agents currently logged into the Client. You can start a chat with an Agent by clicking their name.

Agents in the team view are group by their status, allowing you to see who else on the team is available.

Typing messages in the Agent chat gives you the same tools as typing to a visitor, including Emojis, Canned Responses and Sending Links.

Sites summary

The sites summary displays information on visitors and chats on the site for so far the current day and month.

These reports are based on information gathered by the WhosOn tracking code and any Prospect Detection rules that are set up in the Settings Portal.

The percentage indicator is based on the average for the weekday. 100% on a report would mean that the result is exactly average for that weekday.

Missed chats

When a chat request cannot be answered by an agent the visitor will be asked to leave their email address and a message and the chat is recorded as a missed chat.

You can add a response to a missed chat in the same way as you would a normal chat, but sending this response will instead send an email reply to the visitor.

A missed chat may occur for a number of reasons. These include the visitor clicking the chat button outside of your office hours, no agent being free in the department that the visitor chose, or the queue being full.

Pending Missed Chats will always show any missed chats, even if the visitor has not chosen to leave a message. If you respond to a missed chat, or use the close chat button within the missed chat, it will be removed from the pending missed chats list.

Active visitors and dynamic invites

Active website visitors are shown under the ‘Active Visitors’ tab. Any of these visitors can be invited to chat by using the ‘Send Invite’ option. This sends an invite graphic that the visitor can click on to chat.

Dynamic Invites should be configured in the Settings Portal for users to be able to send them. You may have several different invites configured at any time, and the user can choose which to send. When setting up the invites in the Settings Portal, you can also set each invite to be sent automatically to visitors on a certain page.

When choosing a visitor to send an invite to, the colour next to them indicates their status – visitors with a yellow mark may have your page open in a browser but not in the active tab, so they may not see or respond to your invite.

Previous chats

Clicking the Sites button and selecting a site allows you to view previous chats that have taken place on that site. You can move between dates using the arrow controls, and filter the chats by operator, department or visitor name.

The chats in the list are seperated by missed and taken, and will also show the rating if one was left by the visitor.

Clicking a chat from the list allows you to see a transcript of the chat. From here, you save or email the transcript. For Missed Chats, you have the option to Mark as Read so you know when they have been dealt with.