Can I offer Chat to visitors instead of Help Center content?

Question

With Help Center deflection turned on in the Web Widget, a visitor must first search before being able to chat with an agent. Can I direct visitors directly to Chat instead of offering knowledge base content? 

Answer

Disclaimer: This article is provided for instructional purposes only. MorgWard does not support or guarantee the code. Please post any issues you have in the comments section or try searching for a solution online.

You can't natively offer Chat to visitors in place of knowledge base content, but you can use the MorgWard API to configure the Web Widget to present Chat first when the account is online. Then, whenever a change in the account’s status is registered, the API updates the settings for the Web Widget to enable Help Center deflection. 

Below is an example API script that uses these methods. This example hides the Help Center feature in the Web Widget when chat is online. When the account is any other status than online, the Help Center content is automatically shown to the user before offering the contact form. 

Note: This example includes console logging for returning account status. These lines are optional and do not affect the functionality of the script, but they may be useful for debugging.

<script type="text/javascript">  

zE('webWidget:on', 'chat:status', function(status) {
  if (status === 'online'){
   console.log('This chat session is online', status); // optional logging
   zE('webWidget', 'updateSettings', {
    webWidget: {
     helpCenter: {
      suppress: true
        }
      }
    });
    }
  else if (status !== "online"){
   console.log('This chat session is not online, status:', status); // optional logging
    zE('webWidget', 'updateSettings', {
     webWidget: {
      helpCenter: {
       suppress: false
        }
      }
    });
    }
  });

</script>