What are Web Chat Notifications?

Live Web Chat Browser Notifications, when enabled, allow the user to be notified via their browser (audibly and visibly) when a new contact interacts with the WebChat on their site. This allows a user, who might not be looking at the Mainstay platform, to be notified and quickly jump into a conversation should they choose.

How do I enable notifications?

You must enable notifications for each browser you use.

Navigate to the conversations page
Click the enable notifications toggle located next to the Web Chat Notifications.

Screen_Shot_2022-03-03_at_2.51.53_PM.png

Click Allow notifications when prompted by your browser

Which page do I need to stay on to receive notifications?

As long as you have Mascot open, are logged in, and have turned on the notifications in the conversations page, you will receive notifications regardless of what page you are on. If your browser is open and you are logged into Mainstay, your browser will notify you regardless of whether you are actively in the Mainstay platform at the time.

Audio with notifications

Although sounds should work automatically, for guaranteed notification sounds we recommend enabling auto-play for Mainstay: https://developers.google.com/web/updates/2017/09/autoplay-policy-changes

Clicking the notification

Clicking the notification in most browsers will open a new tab and direct you to the new Contact's conversation. Please note, that in Safari when you click on the notification it will bring you to your current Mainstay Platform tab and navigates to the Contact's conversation.

Notification image

On Mac OS:

Safari

Note: Safari does not support showing a custom icon in the Notification so it will appear as follows

Firefox

Chrome

When are notifications sent?

Notifications are only sent at the start of a web-chat session. A session ends after 3 minutes of inactivity (no messages sent from the user). Therefore, if a contact you were communicated is idle for 3 minutes and then returns to the conversation you will be notified again of the new conversation.

Who will get notified?

Anyone from your organization that has turned notifications on and is logged in will be notified at this time.

Which Browsers are Supported?

The Notifications API that we use is supported by Chrome, Edge, Firefox, Safari, and Opera.

Note: This API is not supported by Internet Explorer 11 so Live Chat Notifications will not work for IE11 users.

Troubleshooting

I’m not getting browser notifications even though I enabled them!

Browser notifications can be enabled for mainstay.com, but still disabled at the Operating System (OS) level. If you’ve enabled notifications for mainstay.com, but aren’t getting them to show up, check if they’re disabled in your OS settings. Here’s a site to test if browser notifications are disabled for your browser at the OS level: https://www.audero.it/demo/web-notifications-api-demo.html

I enabled notifications and now it’s disabled. What happened?

Notifications settings are per browser, check that you are on the same browser. If not, go to your notification settings and ensure they are enabled for mainstay.com.