Best Practices: How to test a Chat trigger

Scenario

You have created a new Chat trigger or modified an existing one and now want to test if the trigger works the way you expect it to.

Chat triggers are dependent on caching data, IP addresses, user data, and more. For this reason you can't simply test a trigger from a new tab on your browser. This article includes best practices for testing Chat triggers to make sure you're testing and seeing the right experience.

Best Practices

How to imitate a visitor chatting in

Make sure you are testing from an incognito window or other private browsing window. This makes sure any caching data in your main browser will not interfere with the test. You can also clear your cache and cookies for good measure, but this is not necessary. This is particularly important in situations where your trigger includes conditions like previous visits.

Make sure you are testing from the correct location. If you are testing a trigger with a location based condition (such as visitor country or visitor IP), make sure your browser matches with the correct location for the trigger to fire. Learn more in this article: How does Zendesk capture the location of the end user?

You can also use the Simulate visitor button under the Visitors section of your Chat dashboard as shown below. This is a great option for testing, just remember to make sure your IP address or your cache wont interfere with your test.

 

How to stage your account

Make sure your account, agents, or departments are set to the correct online or offline status depending on what you are trying to test. See more in this article: Configuring your chat availability settings.

If you are testing department routing, make sure at least one agent from that department is logged in to the Chat dashboard and set to an Online status. See more about chat departments in this article: Creating agents and departments in Chat.

If you are testing triggers that fire when the account is offline, make sure all agents are either logged out of the chat dashboard completely or set to an Invisible status. See more about offline triggers in this article: How does the Chat trigger condition Account status > Offline work?