How do I prefill the user contact form in the widget?

Question

When customers are signed in on my website, I want the widget to identify and prefill the user's name and email address in my contact forms. How do I capture the user's name and email address automatically at the start of a conversation in my widget?

Answer

User identities can be passed onto the widget automatically no matter which widget you're using on your website. See the instructions below after verifying which widget you're using. 

Web Widget

Web Widget (Classic) and Chat-only Web Widget (Classic)

Legacy Chat widget

Web Widget

In messaging you use end-user authentication to pass your user's identities to the widget. This allows the widget to match that user with their previous conversations. For a complete explanation of this process, see the article: Authenticating end users in messaging for the Web Widget and mobile SDK. 

Web Widget (Classic) and Chat-only Web Widget (Classic)

You can use the identify and prefill settings. For more information, see the developer documentation for the identify and prefill settings.

For complete instructions, see the article: Advanced customization of the Web Widget (Classic).

Legacy Chat widget

The Chat widget does not automatically capture the user's name and email address when they log in to your website. Use the Chat API to send the name and email address to the Chat widget. To know more about how to identify users in the Chat widget, see the developer article: Identifying visitors.

Another workaround is to use user authentication. For more information about authenticated visitors for the Chat widget, see the article: (Legacy Chat) Enabling authenticated visitors in the Chat widget.