LiveEngage

I have gotten a lot of request from people on how to connect to the APIs that are available from LivePerson using Postman, so I decided to share how to do this here.

In order to follow along with this tutorial, you will need the API keys that are available for Engagement History API, and you will need access to the Postman App. To get these keys, you can log into the LiveEngage console, and grab them from them from the API tab under data sources, which is on the campaigns tab. If you are not sure on how to setup your keys, you can learn how to do so here.

If you do not already have Postman installed, you can learn more about it and install it from here:  https://www.getpostman.com/

If you would just like to import a template of the query into Postman, you can do so here:  https://www.getpostman.com/collections/6bd9d4cc64bbee6843f1

Let’s get started.

The Engagement History API is an API that is available from LivePerson, and it allows for you to search, filter, and keep copies of chat transcripts and the related data, such as visitor information, agent information, and much more.

Before writing any code to start querying the API, it can be useful to use a tool that will allow for you to connect to the API in seconds.

Today I wanted to share with you a program I made that will allow you to use the Engagement History API to send out emails for transcripts that have a particular keyword.

The program will use the API to pull all of your chat transcripts for the previous day that contain a certain keyword, and then it will send it to an email address that you specify. The program makes use of the SendGrid API in order to send the emails.

One example use case for this tool is if you wanted to get an email every time someone answered dissatisfied on your post chat survey, you could use that keyword and it will automatically pull those transcripts.

In order to use the program, you will need to have a SendGrid account with an API key enabled on it. SendGrid allows for you to send up to 12,000 emails for free a month, and if you need to send more they offer very cheap plans. You will also need to have the Engagement History API enabled on your LiveEngage account in order to use the program.

Update: With the new HTML engagements in LiveEngage, this method is now outdated. It is recommended that you use the supported method listed above.

The purpose of this tutorial is to show you how you can use your own chat buttons with LiveEngage by using JavaScript.

Currently in LiveEngage, you have a limited number of options for creating a chat button in the LiveEngage studio. This can make it hard for the chat button to match the look of your site, especially with all of the things you can do with CSS and JavaScript today.

So, in order to work around this,you will need to create your own chat that you would like to use on your website, and you will need to create a basic embedded chat button in the LiveEngage studio. Don’t worry about what the embedded chat button looks like because we are going to use CSS styling to hide the chat button, and then use JavaScript to click the LiveEngage chat button when your button is clicked.

The purpose of this tutorial is to show you how to connect to the Engagement History API in Java.

The Engagement History API is a REST API that is offered through LivePerson that allows you to pull your chat transcripts without having to manually go through and export them. In order to connect to the API, you will need to get a set of API keys from LivePerson and install them on your account. Once you have done this, you will need to send an OAuth 1 request to the server in order to access your transcripts.

If you are not familiar with OAuth 1, you can read more about it here:  http://oauth.net/core/1.0/

One of the main things that I usually hear from agents is that they are always multitasking and that they are looking for ways to be more efficient when they are chatting, so they can provide the best experience possible to the customers that they are chatting with. My response to the client is, “Are you utilizing the hot keys that are available in LiveEngage?”

When you are in the LiveEngage workspace, there are seven hot keys that you can use to save you time. You can view a complete list of the hot keys that are currently available to you by opening the hot keys menu. You can view this menu by holding down the ctrl and tilde keys (CTRL + ~).

You will also see the hot keys appear above the menu items that the are related to.

When the menu is displayed, you can either click on the shortcut that you want to use, or you can press the appropriate character key to perform that shortcut. Here is a list of the shortcuts that you can use:

• (L) Logout - Allows you to logout of the agent workspace. 
• (V) Visitor List - Will take you to the visitor list. 
• (S) Status - Will toggle your status between online, busy, and offline. 
• (A) Accept Engagement - Allows you to accept incoming chats. 
• (X) End Engagement - Allows you to end the current engagement. 
• (T) Transfer Engagement - Allows you to transfer the current engagement to another agent. 
• (N) Next Engagement - Allows you to respond to the next engagement. 
• (I) Inactive List - Allows you to view your resolved engagements. 

The end engagement and transfer engagement hot keys are only available during chat. By learning these shortcuts it will allow you to be more efficient and allow you to spend more time focusing on your customers.

This best practice, based on feedback from LiveEngage users, is meant to offer you guidance and to help drive value for your brand.

I hope you enjoyed this tutorial. If you have any questions or comments, please feel free to post them below.

Update: With the new HTML engagements in LiveEngage, this method is now outdated. It is recommended that you use the supported method listed above.
The purpose of this tutorial is to show you how to use your own custom CSS to modify your embedded chat buttons from LiveEngage.

Currently in LiveEngage, the only options you have for an embedded button is to use an image or the few text styling elements that are available in the engagement studio. There is no way to use your own fonts, CSS, or HTML elements for your chat button, which can sometimes make it hard for your chat button to match the rest of the theme of your site.

For example, if the rest of the links on your site have hover effects, or if the font family of the text in the links is ‘Comic Sans MS’, your embedded chat button will not match the feel of your site. In order to fix this, you can use custom CSS on your site to modify the default styling of the button.

The embedded chat buttons have a class called ‘LPMlabel’, so by adding a CSS styling to the page with the !important attribute, it will override the default CSS.

The purpose of this tutorial is to show you how to use the Web Application SDK to send chat lines from your own web application.

The Web Application SDK is a client-side package that can be used to communicate with the LivePerson Agent Workspace. In order to use the SDK, your web application needs to be able to open inside an iFrame, and your application must be hosted over SSL. You can read more about the SDK here: Web App SDK PDF

For this tutorial, we are going to use create a simple web page that will send a “Hello World!” chat line to the agent console.

Today I wanted to share with you a XML Chat Transcript Parsing tool that I created to parse the chat transcripts that you can export from LiveEngage.

Inside LiveEngage, there is no easy way to see/analyze the chat transcripts without going through them one at a time. One of the options that is available to you, is you are able to export the transcripts as a text file or as xml file.

With the tool, you are able to load in these transcripts, and it will parse the information into a data table, which then you can filter to find the information you are looking for. For example, if you only want to look at chats with low CSAT scores, or if you are looking for chats where an agent answered yes to an Agent Survey question, or even if you are looking for a particular visitor’s chat, you can filter the table to only contain this information.

The tool allows you to print out individual chats, export the data to a csv file, or even copy the content of the table.

On the LiveEngage login page, there is a ‘remember me’ check box that you can check to have your information stored in a cookie, however this is not always a valid option for everyone. For example, if your computer automatically clears your cookies and cache every night, or if you have cookies disabled, then the ‘remember me’ check box will not remember your information, which then requires you to enter your account number, username, and password every time you want to login.

You can get around this by adding some additional parameters to the URL, which will then automatically fill out the fields on form when you request the login page.

Here is an example:

https://authentication.liveperson.net/login.html ?stId=123456

By adding the stId variable as a parameter on this URL, and by assigned it a value, it will populate the account number field on the login page. You just need to replace the 123456 with your Account ID for this to work.