Integrate live chat into Helpstream pages

Activa Live Chat Support » Miscellaneous » How To

Article ID: 141 | Last Modified: 02/08/2010

If you want to integrate Activa Live Chat into Helpstream's on-demand services, you must follow special instructions to accommodate the way Helpstream renders its pages. Please be aware of the following information:

Helpstream uses XML parsing when processing the content wrapper and then serializes the XML back to a string. However, their code will replace certain characters within the Activa Live Chat Deployment Code and Button/Link Code with HTML entities, which breaks the functionality of the code.

This means you cannot copy and paste the Activa Live Chat Deployment Code or Button/Link Code into Helpstream pages per usual. Instead, you must employ the following workarounds to integrate successfully.

Both the Activa Live Chat Deployment Code and the Button/Link Code will have to be integrated using an external javascript file (rather than pasting the javascript directly into the page). Here is an example of integrating the Deployment Code with an external javascript file:

1. Create a new Javascript file and name it something like "alc_deployment_ID.js" where "ID" is the ID of the deployment you're using (the deployment ID is referenced in the Account Dashboard > Deployments section). This will help you keep track of which javascript file belongs to which deployment.
2. Copy and paste the Deployment Code javascript into this new file (Note: only copy and paste everything from between the Deployment Code's opening and closing <script></script> tags).
3. Next, put the new javascript file into the proper directory on your Web server, such as your "/js" folder or wherever you prefer to store external javascript files.
4. Then add the following script tag into your Helpstream site, directly above the closing </body> tag (Note: the "Helpstream Workaround" comment tag in between the script tag below is necessary for the workaround to function properly):
   
   <script type="text/javascript" scr="js/alc_deployment_ID.js"><!-- Helpstream Workaround --></script>

Important: remember to replace the example source path above with the actual path to and name of the javascript file on your server.

You would do similar thing for Button/Link Code as well and place that wherever you want the Button/Link to appear.