How does SnapEngage work?

How long does it take to install SnapEngage on my web site?

A couple of minutes. See the 3 steps installation guide for more details.

What does my visitor need to install to use SnapEngage?

Nothing. Any visitor on your site can use SnapEngage Live Chat. Only JavaScript is need and it is available on all modern browsers.
Sun Java will allow them to automatically submit a screenshot, but SnapEngage will still work fine even if the your visitor browser is not Java enabled (less than 10% of the visitors).

What does it take to install SnapEngage on my web site?

You only need to embed a handful lines of JavaScript in your web page and we take care of everything else. Just create an account.

How can I delay the loading of SnapEngage to after the page has been rendered?

Even though the SnapEngage JavaScript library loads and initializes quickly, you can use asynchronous loading of the library following the instructions in this document: SnapEngage async loading. This method requires JavaScript coding skills and is therefore recommended only for customers who are comfortable with advanced web development.

How can I use SnapEngage with my web application which is a full page Adobe Flash ?

You should only have to insert the SnapEngage JavaScript code in the HTML document which embeds your Adobe Flash app. If you are not already doing so, make sure you have the wmode parameter set to transparent, otherwise on Windows the SnapEngage button will be hidden behind your Adobe Flash application. Add this code in your OBJECT tag: 

<param name="wmode" value="transparent" />
and the following parameter to the EMBED tag: 
wmode="transparent"

International

In what languages is SnapEngage available?

The SnapEngage widget is available in the 26 following languages:
Arabic, Canadian French, Chinese, Czech, Danish, Dutch, English, Finnish, French, German, Hebrew, Hungarian, Icelandic, Italian, Japanese, Korean, Lithuanian, Norwegian, Polish, Portuguese, Romanian, Russian, Slovak, Spanish, Swedish and Turkish.

Does SnapEngage support my language characters set?

Yes. SnapEngage let's you chat with your website visitors using any UTF-8 characters.

Button configuration

My help button is not staying at the same position on Internet Explorer

It is usually happening on webpages rendered in "quirks mode", because the DocType you are using puts Internet Explorer in an old compatibility mode. You can find out more about this mode and how to address it here.

Usually, it is because you have a DocType as this one: 

<!DOCTYPE HTML PUBLIC "-//W3C//DTD HTML 4.01 Transitional//EN">
Changing it to the following should address the problem: 
<!DOCTYPE HTML PUBLIC "-//W3C//DTD HTML 4.01 Transitional//EN" "http://www.w3.org/TR/html4/loose.dtd">

Chat configuration

How can I stop SnapEngage from assigning chats to me when I am idle in my Gtalk client?

SnapEngage currently only differentiate the Online and Offline states of your Gtalk account. If you want to be automatically signed out from SnapEngage when idle, you should use a Gtalk client which allows to change your status to Offline when you are idle. PidGin for instance support this mode. Go to the Tools menu, in the Preferences menu item, and select the Status/Idle tab. Then check the "Change status when Idle" and set the status to Offline and you are all set.

We hope to have a real solution to handle the idle state soon, pending our platform provider extending some of their current features. Stay tuned.

Which application should my live chat team use?

SnapEngage lets you use the instant messenger software you are the most comfortable with. Any software that connects to Google Talk will work great with SnapEngage. The Google Gtalk client built-in Gmail is a good way to start experimenting. If you don't have a preference, we suggest you try PidGin if you are on Windows or Linux, and Adium if you are on a Mac. On the iPhone, eBuddy works well. On Android phones, the native Google Talk client is perfect. Google maintains a list of the most popular clients with configuration instructions.

I have setup the proactive chat rules, but I can't get the proactive chat prompting me?

The proactive chat will only prompt visitors on your website on the behalf of one of your live chat agent when at least one of your agent is online and your agents are not all maxed out with chats already.
When testing the proactive chat, note that SnapEngage does not prompt visitors who have closed a SnapEngage window on your site in the last hour. This feature avoids harassing your website visitors. For testing, you should use a Google Chrome Incognito window, a Firefox Private Browsing window, or similar. That way, SnapEngage will see you as a fresh visitor and will engage you based on the rules you have set.

Plans and pricing

I'm not sure which plan to select for my site, how can I decide?

We offer a 14-day free trial with all SnapEngage features enabled.

You can also sign up for any plan risk-free. If you are not satisfied with SnapEngage for any reason, you may cancel your subscription plan within 30 days of signing up and we will give you a full refund.

How can I upgrade SnapEngage?

When you subscribe to a new SnapEngage plan, your account is upgraded right away, enabling the additional features and quotas. Your new subscription payments will start only once the pro-rated remaining time from your previous plan will be expired. The payment page shows you exactly when your new payment will start.

Can I downgrade my SnapEngage subscription?

Yes. When you subscribe to a lower premium plan, your account is immediately set to the new plan. As shown on the payment page, the remaining time of the previous plan is pro-rated accordingly.

Billing

How am I billed for the service?

You subscribe to SnapEngage with either a monthly or yearly billing cycle. Your payments are processed on the first day of your billing cycle.

What payment methods can I use?

We accept all major credit cards: Visa, MasterCard, Discover and American Express.

Do you have refund policies?

You can cancel your subscription plan within 30 days of signing up for any reason. We will process a full refund to your credit card. We would really appreciate it if you could let us know how we have failed to meet your expectations.

Where can I get a receipt for my SnapEngage payments?

You can print receipts of your SnapEngage payments in your account Billing History. Sign-in your SnapEngage account, in the Account menu, select the Billing History menu item. Click on the link in the Invoice Number column to open the receipt. Contact us if you have any issue accessing your receipts.

How do I pay for SnapEngage if my company needs a quote to generate a Purchase Order?

Please contact us and specify the best way to reach you. We will get in touch with you to present how we process non-credit card orders for our larger customers.

How do I cancel my SnapEngage subscription?

Just tell us in a message while you are logged in your SnapEngage account using the the Help button in the top right menu. In order to serve our customers better, we would really appreciate it if you could let us know as well why you are canceling your subscription and what we could do to serve you better.

Technical requirements

What browser my web site visitors should use with SnapEngage?

SnapEngage is compatible with all common browsers. Our validation process tests SnapEngage with the following browsers: Microsoft Internet Explorer 6 and newer, Mozilla Firefox 2 and newer, Apple Safari 3 and newer, Google Chrome 2 and newer, Opera 10 and newer.

What operating system my web site visitors should use with SnapEngage?

SnapEngage is running in the web browser and is therefore independent of your visitor's operating system. Our test systems cover a wide range of hardware and different operating systems, including Microsoft Windows XP, Microsoft Windows Vista, Mac OS X on PPC, Mac OS X on Intel, Linux Ubuntu 9 and more. On handheld platforms, we are using SnapEngage on iPhone and on Android.

What are the requirements for my visitor to automatically provide a screenshot of the page?

SnapEngage is using Sun Java to automatically take a screenshot of the webpage displayed in the browser. Your visitor must have a Sun Java Runtime Environment version 1.5 or higher. Based on our visitor's statistics, over 90% of web visitors have Java enabled in their browser, therefore a large majority of your visitors will be able to provide your support team with a screenshot.

Browser Java support percentage across visitors

Tips and limitations

With my Adobe Flash application, on Microsoft Windows, the SnapEngage button is not showing up.

Adobe Flash does not obey the layering set in the HTML code on the Microsoft Windows platform. To work-around this Flash issue, you just need to set the wmode parameter set to transparent. Add this code in your OBJECT tag: 

<param name="wmode" value="transparent" />
and the following parameter to the EMBED tag: 
wmode="transparent"

On my Mac OS X 5.8 machine, the screenshot option is missing. How can I fix this?

Mac OS 10.5 "Leopard" on Intel CPU has a known issue in the Java Virtual Machine. We are currently looking at work-arounds for this specific OS version. Note that earlier and later versions of Mac OS X are taking proper screenshots with SnapEngage. Please note that Mac OS 10.5 "Leopard" on PowerPC CPU do not have this limitation.

On my Mac OS X Lion machine, the screenshot option is missing. How can I fix this?

Mac OS 10.7 "Lion" has disabled the availability of Java in the browser by default, and in addition to that has a severe issue causing the standard API to report that Java is enabled even if it is not. Therefore, SnapEngage can not use the Java JVM in Max OS Lion and the screenshot option is then disabled on this platform.
We are checking regularly on the Apple updates if a fix is done in Mac OS X, but at this point, there is no known Apple plan to fix this.

SnapEngage Customization

I would like to use a different chat image than the one defined in the configurator

To do this you simply need to use a special image tag:

https://snapabug.appspot.com/statusImage?w={widget_id}&on={online_image_url}&off={offline_image_url}

where: w = your widget id, on = the full url of the online image, off = the full url of the offline image.
If you are going to place this image in a secure page, use https url for your online and offline images and call the image script from https://snapabug.appspot.com/statusImage

How can I get the same effect as the default SnapEngage button on my custom button?

You only need to add the following JavaScript command before the SnapABug.addButton() call:

SnapABug.setButtonEffect('-4px');

where the parameter is the offset applied to the button image when the mouse is not over.

SnapEngage JavaScript API

How can I pre-set the email address of my users, when they are already logged in my site?

Just add a call to 

SnapABug.setUserEmail('email@domain.com');
in the SnapEngage JavaScript section where email@domain.com should be replaced by your user email address. The easiest way to set the email address would be from your server side scripting, but doing it from JavaScript is also possible.

If you would like to have the pre-set email address read only for the user, you can add the 2nd parameter to true 

SnapABug.setUserEmail('email@domain.com', true);

How can I have a chat session continuing across sub-domains of my site, like when my user is moving from blog.domain.com to www.domain.com?

Just add a call to 

SnapABug.setDomain('domain.com');
in the SnapEngage JavaScript section where domain.com should be replaced by your site domain. Ensure you place this API call just before your call to SnapABug.addButton(...) or SnapABug.init(...).

How can I fix the position of the SnapEngage dialog from the top of my page?

Just add a call to 

SnapABug.setFormTopPosition(40);
in the SnapEngage JavaScript section where 40 should be replaced by the distance in pixel from the top of the page. Fixing the position of the SnapEngage dialog from the top of the page is especially useful when your web application is rendered is inside an iFrame, on Facebook for instance.

I would like SnapEngage to start on a click of my page, without using the help button.

In the code snippet you copied from the SnapEngage configurator to your page, replace the following line: 

SnapABug.addButton('{your_widget_id}',...);

by this call: 
SnapABug.init('{your_widget_id}');

paying attention to put your own widget identifier instead of {your_widget_id}. It will ensure SnapEngage is loaded and ready, without displaying the help button.
You will just have to add the following code in place of your link: 
<a href="#" onClick="return SnapABug.startLink();">Report a Problem</a>

When my agents are online, I do not want to show the offline option on the form.

Just add a call to 

SnapABug.allowOffline(false);
in the SnapEngage JavaScript section. This API call will only affect the SnapEngage dialog when your agents are online, and will then only offer your visitors to chat.

I want to disable the screenshot feature on the credit card payment and other sensitive pages of my application, for both offline and live chat modes.

Just add a call to 

SnapABug.allowScreenshot(false);
in the SnapEngage JavaScript section. The screenshot option will no longer be displayed on the form, and the live support agent will not be allowed to request a remote screenshot while in a chat session with a user on the given page.

How can I programatically disable the pro active chat for some users I know are already converted?

Just add a call to 

SnapABug.allowProactiveChat(false);
in the SnapEngage JavaScript section. You can make this call from some JavaScript scripting, or by generating the JavaScript snippet from your backend page renderer.

I need the chat window to start right away when my visitor clicks the button.

Once you have the SnapEngage code installed on a page, add the following call in the same block as your init() or addButton() 

SnapABug.setStartChat('How can I help you today?');
The parameter of this function is the initial message you want to display in the chat window.

I would like the chat communications to be encrypted using SSL on my http website.

Just add a call to 

SnapABug.setSecureConnexion();
in the SnapEngage JavaScript section. This call will force all the communications between the visitor and our systems to be encrypted using SSL (https).

I do not need the screenshot option on the offline dialog.

You can hide this option by adding the following call 

SnapABug.showScreenshotOption(false);
in the SnapEngage JavaScript section. This call will remove the checkbox from the form, but will still allow to take screenshots during live chat sessions, unlike with SnapABug.allowScreenshot(false); which prevents screenshots to be taken.

How can I open the chat window programatically?

Once you have the SnapEngage code installed on a page, you can start a chat directly by calling 

SnapABug.startChat('How can I help you today?');
You can make this call from a JavaScript function or a "onclick" attribute on an HTML tag.
The parameter of this function is the initial message you want to display in the chat window.

I would like to turn the chat sound notification off on my site.

Add the following call in the same JavaScript block as the call to init() or addButton() 

SnapABug.allowChatSound(false);

I would like to offer chat with my support and sales teams, which are in 2 different SnapEngage widget.

To allow multi-widget on the same page, use the regular SnapEngage code in the no button mode. Use the code snippet for the widget you want to enable pro active chat if applicable.
Then on the onclick attributes of your chat controls (image, link, dynamic image from SnapEngage, etc.), or in the JavaScript calls on your site to start the chat, add the following call just before the call to startLink() or startChat() 

SnapABug.setWidgetId('your-widget-id')
Your-widget-id is the widget id that can be found here.
Here is for example the code for a text link 
<a href="#" onclick="SnapABug.setWidgetId('your-widget-id');return SnapABug.startLink();">
Chat with the support team
</a>

How can I set the default position of the chat window?

Add one of the following call just before the call to init() or addButton() in the standard code snippet
For top left positioning of the chat window 

SnapABug.setChatFormPosition('tl');

For top right positioning of the chat window 
SnapABug.setChatFormPosition('tr');

For bottom left positioning of the chat window 
SnapABug.setChatFormPosition('bl');

For bottom right (default) positioning of the chat window 
SnapABug.setChatFormPosition('br');

I would like to clear all SnapEngage cookies when my user logs out of my site.

Add a call to the following API function when processing your own sign out session cookie removal 

SnapABug.clearAllCookies();

How can my AJAX application inform the agent of the visitors actions while in chat?

You can programatically send text to the agent when a chat is in progress by calling the following API function 

SnapABug.sendTextToChat('Added a pink pony to shopping card');
If this function is called when no chat is in progress, the call is ignored.

I need to programmatically start the proactive chat on some pages.

You will have to setup a rule (or some rules) that matches the URLs for these pages and therefore have a proactive chat message prompt defined. The delay should be long enough such as the engagement is not done by the timer but by the API call. Just make this call from your JavaScript logic to start a proactive chat when appropriate: 

SnapABug.openProactiveChat();
Note that this function call will have no effect when agents are unavailable or when the visitor has closed a SnapEngage window on your site in the last hour.

If you want to have SnapEngage ignore the previous closed chat window by the visitor, and always show the proactive chat prompt on this API call, add a first parameter set to true: 

SnapABug.openProactiveChat(true);
In this mode, you could have the proactive chat API call used when someone click a button "chat with us", so you may want to have the fallback to the offline form. For that, just add another parameter set to true: 
SnapABug.openProactiveChat(true, true);
Finally, if you are managing your proactive chat engagement logic on your own back-end, you probably do not want to have to setup rules in the SnapEngage dashboard for the messages. You can add a 3rd parameter with the message as a string. For instance: 
SnapABug.openProactiveChat(true, false, 'Hello, can I help you with our setup process?');

Partner program

How do I become an partner of SnapEngage?

Once you are signed in SnapEngage, Simply sign up for a SnapEngage Partner Account.

How does the SnapEngage Partner Program work?

The SnapEngage Partner Program gives you a way to generate revenue by referring clients to us. Use your partner links to refer new customers to SnapEngage and earn 30% of their first purchase and 10% of their monthly subscription for the first year. SnapEngage will pay you via PayPal monthly.

How will I get paid?

Payments will be delivered to you via PayPal in $USD. Your commision will be paid monthly, on the first business day of the month.

I don’t live in the USA. Can I still participate?

Yes! All you need is a valid PayPal account. We will make payments in $USD.

If a customer signs up for a trial account and upgrades, will I be paid for the upgraded plan?

Yes, The plan change will be reflected in your partner screen and you will receive a commission on the upgrade.

Why can’t I find out the revenue from each individual Client?

We do not provide this information as it would be a violation of the client’s privacy.

Is the amount I can earn capped?

No! There is no limit on how much you can earn with SnapEngage. You can collect on as many clients as you want.

Will there be more features coming in the partner system?

Yes! Just as with SnapEngage, we are constantly developing new features for the partner system. If there’s any feature or functionality that you think would make the system better, contact us.

What are the terms of service?

The partner program agreement, that you will need to agree to prior to signing up, are located here.

How do I cancel the program after signing up?

Simply contact us.
 

TOPICS

How does this work?
International
Button configuration
Chat configuration
Plans and pricing
Billing
Technical requirements
Tips and limitations
Customization
JavaScript API
POST Event API
Partner Affiliate Program