Slack Integration Set Up
You can add our Slack integration to any existing Live Chat set up. If you already use Slack or are typically on your mobile phone, this is a great way to live chat on your phone using the Slack client.
Here's a quick overview of the installation process for Slack:
Adding Slack to your Live Chat
In Social Intents, click on the Integrations link on the left-hand side and you'll see an Add to Slack button.
Click on this and you'll be directed to the Slack Authorization page (login to Slack or set up a new account if needed).
Accept the default privileges and choose a public channel for the Post to section. Please note, if you select a private channel, or change a private to public channel, you may not receive chat requests correctly. We suggest to always create a new public channel to start with.
If you have to use a private channel, please be sure to invite our chat bot to that channel so we can send messages to it.
Do this by selecting the channel and clicking Invite Others to this Channel. Then select the Live Chat bot:
That's it! Click on Preview of the Live Chat app and start a new chat. You should see the live chat show up in Slack.
Answering Chats in Slack
All new chats will be directed to the public chat channel you initially configured.
They will look like this:
To Answer the chat, click on the link starting with # - in the above case: #z-lc-testing-only. You'll be directed to a temporary channel created for this specific chat.
Click "Join Chat" and enter a message to begin the chat.
Agent Photos
We support displaying your Slack photo right in the live chat by default. To enable or disable this feature, simply go to the Integrations page and choose to enable or disable this option.
Here's an example where the Slack Profile photo is used.
Chat Availability: Online and Offline From Slack
With our Slack integration we suggest you use the live chat schedule on our website to manage whether your chat widget is online or offline at any time.
We also support manually setting the chat to online and offline right from Slack using slash commands. You simply type a slash and your live chat command into the message area of slack to do this: /livechat offline or /livechat online to set these right from Slack without visiting our site! See our other slash commands below.
Slack Slash Commands
We offer a number of commands right from our Slack app. Just type this command in the message area (at the start of a message) to execute them.
- /livechat help - to see a list of commands available
- /livechat end - to close a specific live chat. Execute this from within your specific live chat channel
- /livechat online - change your live chat app to online. Overrides office hours.
- /livechat offline - change your live chat to offline. Overrides office hours.
Slack Shortcuts and Canned Messages
Set up shortcuts for common questions in your Social Intents account. You can then trigger these right from Slack using your Slash Commands. Each shortcut is available as a slash command using this format:
/livechat <your shortcut name>