Category: Open Source

Everything that has to do with open source.

Olark + WordPress Better Together

We rebuilt the Olark For WordPress plugin to support some of the new fun stuff that the Olark guys have been working on.

The old Olark Plugin hadn’t been updated in almost two years. We just had to jump in a show off all the sweet new features Olark has been working on. The real feature improvement is the new integration with Olark’s JS Api. This lets an Olark Operator know if a user is logged into WordPress and their relevant information. This should work in BuddyPress as well so it could be a huge step forward in your ability to support your clients or product with Olark on a WordPress installation.

A quick blurb on Olark

Olark provides clean integration with tools you already know and love so you can actually focus on selling and support. In fact, we’re the only live help tool around that was built from the ground up to work with a host of standard instant messengers. But did we skimp on the power? No!

Features

  • In Plugin Olark Signup (v2.4.1)
  • One Click Chat Tab
  • WordPress user Information in Chat (Olark API)
  • Call Out Widget
  • Async Loader
  • **Planned Color/Customizing of the Chat Tab.

If you need support Write a comment below.

Get the latest code from WordPress Plugin Repo HERE

CRM Plugin Admits Defeat

So this grand idea apparently had some fundamental flaws.

It required the browser to be open… Seems simple but how often is it that a vistor simply closes a chat window?

The method

that I had been planning to use collapse when thought about in this manner, how can

I parse the DOM if

there is no DOM to parse.

 

So sadly this will be shelved. Hopefully the guys over at Olark will either build a Chat Transcript API, or start developing CRM plugins on their end. Unfortunately we can’t do it with what we are provided.

 

 

 

 

Posted via email from BurningPony Blog

Build an Olark CRM (Fat Free) extension

The goal.

Dynamically Push Conversation Objects from Olark to a CRM of choice…. Current goal will be the fat free CRM.

Currently the Olark API does not provide the most helpful API to get the full conversation but we still should be able to capture the Conversation div that contains the chat.

Basic Functionality

  1. Command From Operator !crm save
  2. Capture Conversation DIV
  3. Parse out HTML
  4. Search CRM for existing client by email
    1. If Exists save the chat to the clients info
    2. Notify Operator/provide link
  5. If it does not create a new person in CRM
  6. Provide link to operator to complete new entry

End Scope for the plugin

Beyond the basic scope, we would really like for the system to immediately pull data from the CRM and update the chat vistors name. Then provide any relevant links to the operator either by notification or by updating the visitors status message.

 

This could be done with no commands but I am not sure if it would create to many malformed entries in the CRM.

 

Olark – Spotlight Extension

So the sweetest live chat service Olark, got an API. This was my first attempt at using this API, though hopefully not my last. I have dreams of CRM integration in my head.

The goal of this was to allow a operator to highlight a DOM on the users browser in a simple fashion, nothing to fancy, just useable.

It is capable of not only flashing the selected DOM but also scrolling the users browers so he or she can see the flashing done. All of the animation is done with jQuery.

Setting up your site.

You must add Olarks new API code, this can be found here.

Java

Add the olark.extend command for SpotLight and point it to the location of the olark-spotlight.js file

<script type='text/javascript'>

olark.extend('SpotLight', {source: '../lib/javascript/olark-spotlight.js'});

</script>

Don’t forget to include jQuery!!

HTML

Everything is based around a class “olark-spotlight” and the id of the respective DOM.

You can add the class to anything as long as it has a unique ID.

Like so

<li class = 'olark-spotlight' id= "bob" ></li>
<li class = 'olark-spotlight' id= "stone"></li>

Using Olark-Spotlight

The key command is !spot.

!spot – Provides a list of available elements that an operator can highlight.

!spot uniqueID – will scroll user to #uniqueID element and pulse the opacity of the #uniqueID element.

Demo

Sadly this is not something you can really demo. I haven’t taken the time to fake the operator’s command. But if you want a demo go to burningpony.com and ask for me to spotlight something.

Get the source here http://github.com/rposborne/olark-spotlight