The URL masking feature is something that has been highly requested that allows you to create a white label live chat replacing the regular URL in the chat window from “onlinechatcenters.com” to “sub.yourdomain.com.”

As an example, you can use “chat.johnsjelly.com” in your chat window if your website is John’s Jelly with the web URL www.johnsjelly.com

Here’s how to use the URL masking feature:

Login to your Account Dashboard

Click Setup > Basic Settings > URL Masking

Select your department from the drop down menu. Enter your desired subdomain and URL in the Custom URL field. We recommend using chat.mydomain.com

**The change also required you to add a CNAME record for your domain name. Here is a URL Masking Knowledgebase article on how to do that, copied below:

You’ll need to access your domain name provider and create a CNAME that points to OnlineChatCenters. Every domain provider has different sets of instructions to do this so here’s the basics:

1. Log into the domain provider to whom you pay your domain name bill to. Common vendors are GoDaddy, Network Solutions, 1and1, etc.
2. Navigate to the DNS Management/Domain Management section and find your domain.
3. You’ll need to edit the DNS records for this domain – sometimes this function is labeled as DNS Zone Editor, Configure DNS, Advanced DNS Settings or something else along these lines.
4. Add a new record with the type CNAME with the following:Hostname/Alias: chat (this can be anything but must match the custom URL entered in your Account Dashboard)
   Value/Target: www.onlinechatcenters.com 

   If asked for a TTL value, you can set this to 14400

5. Save your changes

Generally, the new DNS entry will be ready in a matter of minutes but it may take up to 48 hours to fully propagate.

You can see the new and improved Automatic Chat Invites in your Account Dashboard under:

Setup > Messages > Automatic Chat Invites

Specifically, we added 2 new features to chat invites:

- Invite Types
- Pop up # Limiting

We also added a  few more items to improve how this section works and to ease the process of adding an automatic chat invite to your website.

Invite Type

The invite type drop down now offers you 2 options for the chat invite:

Direct – This will send the visitor directly to the chat queue as was the case with our timed invite prior to the update.

Chat Request Form – The chat request form type will send the visitor to the chat request form defined for the department before they are sent to the chat.

Pop Up Limiting

There is a new option to limit the maximum number the chat invite is displayed to a visitor in a single browsing session. The default setting is 0 which will show the chat invite an unlimited number of times.

Future Additions

In addition to these edits, we added the triggers area which will be expanded much more in the future to show additional features such as time on site, pages visited, visitor source, and more for our upgraded users.

Let us know what you think of the new feature and we look forward to expanding this section of OCC live chat even more!

Here’s what the new Chat Request Form area looks like:

All 3 of these fields are in your chat request form by default and have to be edited through this section to change. You can delete the fields, edit them or sort them, same as you would the custom added fields.

These fields can also be pre-populated from information on your website by using the ID column as outlined in this blog post about hidden fields and pre-populating fields.

Operator Invites

Account owners can now invite operators to create their own profiles within their OCC account through the Account Dashboard.

Here’s how to invite operators to set up profiles:

Go to Setup > Basic Settings > Operators

We’ll pretend there are no additional operators added into the account just yet. Click Add Operator and fill out the information for the operator.

After adding the operator, you’ll see a new link and icon in the Actions column, “Email Invite.”

If you click the Email Invite link, a window will pop up to verify the user’s email address. Hit Send Email on that to send the email a link (valid only for 48 hours) to a page where they can customize their profile.

Operators are able to change their name, email, image, login and password. After saving their information, the operator is sent to a page that gives them their full login information and link to each of the OCC Agents, similar to this page: OCC Agents.

After the operator sets their profile up, the account owner is emailed a notification with the full details of the operator’s info for quality assurance.

Keep posted on more updates like this via our Twitter page: @OCC

Floating Icon

This has been our most requested feature since we launched our new website with the floating icon on the left of our site.

This new feature is found in your Account Dashboard under Setup > Design Customization > Online/Offline Icons as well as the Setup Wizard.

You’ll see a checkbox to enable the floating icon, which will then pop down some additional settings for the positioning of the icon on your site. You can position the icon anywhere on the page or custom position it based on pixels.

If a value other than 0 is entered in the Custom Positioning boxes, the values entered are used and overwrite the Horizontal/Vertical Positioning selections:

Chat Window Changes

The ending and sizing of the chat window has been changed a bit. A new option “Fit to Size” has been added which will adjust the size of your chat window automatically based on options selected, banners/logo used and more. This option is selected automatically when you are setting up your options, but can be disabled. You’ll notice some other changes here:

Style – Right now only Pop Up is available but we’ll soon be adding Embedded Chat Widget and possibly more types in early 2013!

Layout – The options for Pop Up are Standard and Mini layouts with a possible 3rd option coming soon. The sizes of the different layouts are easily displayed in pixels for both options as well.

Find this option under Setup > Design Customization > Chat Window

At the end of the chat on a visitor’s side post-chat options have been made more prominent – email transcript and operator rating. Check it out below:

And, finally, Happy New Year to all, wherever you may be!

Print Chat

This is a new feature for visitors to your website requesting a chat. Directly from the chat window, visitors can print a transcript of the chat they’re having with you or your operators. The Print Chat option is automatically enabled for accounts but can be disabled from your Account Dashboard under Setup > Basic Settings > Global Account Settings

Check out the look of the new button below

Offline Settings – Hide Icon & Disable Offline Messages

We added 2 more Offline Settings that were highly requested by our users. Both of these options are for Premium & Enterprise users only and can be found in your Account Dashboard under Setup > Basic Settings > Offline Settings

Each of these settings is definable per department/website like most of the other features within OCC:

Disable offline messages but do not hide chat icon – When all your operators are either hidden or offline, this option will show your offline icon but will disable offline messages. It is a setting we had before but it was not able to be set per department.

Hide live chat icon - When you’re offline, this setting will NOT show your offline icon but will instead completely hide the icon. OCC is still tracking visitors to your site but the icon will not be displayed to visitors.

Canned Messages – Initial per department and per operator

Canned messages can now be individualized further by having the initial message defined per operator or per department or both!

Find this function in your Account Dashboard under Setup > Messages > Canned Messages

In the example below, if “Send as Initial Message” is selected, you can then choose which department/website and/or operator will use the message as their initial greeting to the chat visitor. The per operator selection will override the department selection.

For example:

1. Message A is set for all departments
2. Message B is set for the OCC department
3. Message C is set for OCC department and Victor
4. Message D is set for all departments and Brandon

All operators will send Message A for all departments except OCC department which sends Message B except if Victor accepts the chat then it is Message C.
If Brandon accepts a chat from any department, he sends Message D.

There are checks for each scenario that will prompt you if a conflict arises. Below is an example of how the initial message setting now looks:

Translation Statistics

And, finally, we added some pretty cool and useful graphs to our Translation Program that displays what percentage of each language we have translated for each portion of OCC for each language.

A La Carte for Free Versions

The major one that some of you have already noticed and taken advantage of is Free users can now purchase a la carte operators, departments and SSL for the same price as Premium users, which is even more affordable than our older pricing.

$2 per month or $19.20 per year (20% discount) per feature.

Minor Updates

You now have a nice check on the Generate HTML page that notifies you when you have operator & department issues and there are potential issues with going online. The site will display a quick notice at the top of the Generate HTML page to notify you when there are:

• No operators added
• No departments added
• No operators associated with departments

We’ve also fixed some small issues including:

Chat invites - when the chat button text was customized and excessively long, the window would get cut off. This is now fixed.

Online/Offline Icons – when selecting icons for your site, the Save button was buried at the bottom of our pre-made icons. We’ve now placed a Save button at the top for easier access.

Company logo – uploading an excessively large company logo through the Setup Wizard displayed an incorrect preview. Now you will see the resized version of the image.

To illustrate, we’ll show you a Premium Version account with 3 operators and 3 departments. Here’s what the Account page would look like:

To manage the 3 operators, we click show below the operator icons to pop up the operator summary window showing expiration dates and renewal options:

We can see the 3 operators and each of their expiration dates. Clicking the green checkmark next to the corresponding operator will toggle whether the operator will be renewed or not. The first operator in the list is the free operator included with your account and cannot be toggled.

Clicking Add Operator will add a new operator to your account. Below is an example of operator 3 (chris) being toggled to “do not renew” and another operator being added, along with the view of how an expired operator looks.

The new account management system is ideal for users with Automatic Payments enabled and users that are constantly adding or removing operators.

Once you select the features you want, hit the blue Renew button to renew the features for another year or set up Automatic Payments to be charged automatically.

…and finally, have a Happy Halloween!

Hidden Fields allow you to pass information from your web page to the chat request information area and into the chat request form itself.

Note that this is an advanced feature that will require some knowledge of web development to set up.

How Hidden Fields Work

1. Log in to your Account Dashboard

2. Go to Account > Messages > Chat Request Form

3. At this point, we’re assuming you have a form already created. If not, click Add Request Form

4. Click form fields (x) to edit the fields on the form you want to edit.

5. Click Add Form Field and select Hidden Field

6. Once you add, you will see a column “ID”

7. Next you must pass data from the website into this hidden field. For this, the data must pass through the icon code.

Find in the OCC code on your website the line below. Note that the x below is your account number.

“<tr><td class=”occIcon-x“>&nbsp;</td></tr>”

Change this line to:

“<tr><td class=”occIcon-x“><!– { “request”: { “ID1” : “customer information”, “ID2” : “other field” } } –></td></tr>”

In the example above:

{“”:{“”:”"}} – JSON format.

ID1 - ID of first hidden field. This will be a number like 555

ID2- ID of second hidden field

and so on…

You can dynamically pass any string of info in the place of “customer information” such as a customer ID, email, or phone number. Pretty much anything that is displayed or located in your code on the web page can be passed into these fields.

For example, in PHP the hidden field can look like:

<!– { “request”: { “5555″ : “<?=$idCustomer?>” } } –>

If a chat request is requested from website, the operator will see this hidden field of data in “Request information”

You can also use this same method to pre-fill fields in the form that are visible to the visitor. For example, if they are logged in to your website, you can pass their name, email and phone number through the same methods and when they request a chat, they will see all 3 of these fields filled out on the chat request form! Use the same method outlined above with a different type of field, such as Text Field.

Here’s the gist of what’s new and what’s not:

Account Dashboard

We kept a very similar look and feel to the Account Dashboard. We wanted to keep a minimal learning curve and gradually roll out changes to that section, if at all.

The biggest differences are the shiny new buttons and the Account > Upgrades/Billing section is markedly different to allow easier control over your account’s features. We’ll get into that later in this post.

Billing

Our new upgrades / billing section in your Account Dashboard (click Account after logging in) is radically different than before.

We have made 3 large changes :

Monthly Billing

To accommodate users that don’t want a year-long commitment, we’re now offering monthly billing.

Annual billing can still be selected with an additional 20% discount included!

Automatic Billing (Auto Pay)

You’ll have the option now to enable automatic billing and automatic payments both on monthly and annually paid accounts, so your features will never expire and you don’t have to go through the hassle to enter your payment information into our system on each expiration date. Your payment information will be securely stored on our payment processor’s servers and your card will be automatically billed the day before your features’ expiration date. You can always see your next renewal date on the Account page.

Enable automatic payments through your Profile page under Account > Profile. Click Create Billing Profile to begin adding your information.

New Version: Enterprise

The new Enterprise Version includes UNLIMITED operators, UNLIMITED departments/websites and SSL. At this time, there is no difference between Premium and Enterprise features but we will be releasing exclusive Enterprise-only features in the future. The current features in Premium, however, will never change or be removed!

The new Enterprise Version is $50 per month.

New Pricing

Our new pricing will be as follows, effective October 1, 2012:

Premium Version – $5 per month
A la carte features: Additional Operators, Departments and SSL - $2 per month EACH

Enterprise Version – $50 per month
Each of those features is subject to a 20% discount if an annual payment is made!