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How do you hide chat widget outside of business hours?
Answered
Posted Nov 08, 2023
We would like to make the chat widget available during office hours, and hide the widget when it's outside of business hours. We can use either the classic widget or messaging.
Is this possible? From what I can tell, it looks like the only option is to have the fallback be a form or the standard 'leave a message'.
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6 comments
Christine Diego
You can prevent your customers from initiating chats when you do not have staff available to help them.The process for setting this up differ between live chat and messaging.
For live chat, If you have not enabled any offline or contact forms then the widget will not appear on your website when your staff is offline.
Messaging behaves more like conversations through social media apps where the conversation can be picked up at any time. As a result, there isn't an ability to turn off Messaging or to prevent customers from picking up where they left off. Instead, you can choose to notify your customers when you don't have staff available and set expectations about when they can expect to hear back. To do this, set up business hours and then create a business hours condition in your bot to send a message to your customers.
More information can found here Can I turn off chat when no staff is online?
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mfg
Thanks @... ,
I'm a bit unclear on how to use this info correctly, so let me see if I can provide some more of the details. Looks like we should use the snippet in order to embed the chat/messaging widget in one of our other sites.
Our primary brand has multiple end user forms enabled, so it sounds like I can't use that widget since I can't disable those forms. I set up a second brand that is reported in the admin center as not having any associated forms and have tested with "ticket forms: replace the default..." enabled and disabled.
Using the chat widget, the chat works as expected when agents are online, but rather than the bubble itself being disabled or otherwise hidden, I can only get the default contact form when hours are turned off or when an agent is not available.
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Christine Diego
It seems like the offline form or contact form is enabled. If you have not enabled any offline or contact forms then the widget will not appear on your website when your staff is offline. You can check that under admin center > channels > widget > select the brand widget > uncheck contact form and save the changes.
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Anastasiya Kastsiushkina
Hi Matthew,
With regard to messaging, it is true that no out-of-the-box solution exists for hiding the widget. However, it is possible to achieve this by customising it through the API. To hide the widget, you can use the appropriate command.
Have a great day,
Anastasiya
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Testing
Hi! In New Agent Workspace messaging how can we hide bubble chat outside of business hours? There is a way to get business hours or status using messaging or web API and then use zE('messenger', 'hide'); function?
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Ivan Miquiabas
Thanks for reaching out to our Community!
From your customer's perspective, a Messaging conversation is continuous. The conversation goes through periods of activity and inactivity but it has no clear end point. Messaging behaves more like conversations through social media apps where the conversation can be picked up at any time. As a result, there isn't an ability to turn off Messaging or to prevent customers from picking up where they left off. The Web Widget is also persistent and will always be available to accommodate bot conversations.
Instead, you can choose to notify your customers when you don't have staff available and set expectations about when they can expect to hear back. To do this, set up business hours and then create a business hours condition in your bot to send a message to your customers.
Cheers!
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