How do I add chat to EBSCO?

New EBSCO Discovery Service User Interface

If you are following the EBSCO instructions for configuring LibraryH3lp, here are some helpful hints for entering your subscription information.

• Queue ID: This is the name of your queue, not a number. You can find a listing of all queues in the queues management page of the admin dashboard (main, CA, EU, SG).
• Chat URL: Here's a guide to crafting the chat URL for your queue. You can optionally style your chat box by including a skin argument as part of the URL. A quick way to figure out your chat URL is to look at the chat box on your website. When chat opens in a new window, you can inspect the URL of that window to find your chat URL. If the chat box is embedded on the page, you can use its pop-out arrow to open the chat box in a separate window. Inspect the URL of the popped out chat box to see its URL.
• Offline URL: If you have a LibraryH3lp FAQ, you can provide its guest-facing URL here. You do not need to use a LibraryH3lp-specific URL here if you do not want. For example, you could simply opt to provide a link to your website contact page or contact form.

"Classic" EBSCO

There are two ways to embed chat within classic EBSCO.  

1) You can include any LibraryH3lp chat snippet inside an EBSCO widget within the EBSCO admin interface.  

The caveat with this is that the referring URLs associated with chats will not take librarians to the actual page the patron is on when clicked.  This is because the URL available as the patron navigates around EBSCO is not the same as the permanent link EBSCO assigns to that page.

2) EBSCO offers a customization that allows the permanent link of a page to be captured as the referring URL of a LibraryH3lp chat.  

The caveat with the customization is that you can only have an embedded chat box with this solution -- no option for customized online/offline images.

Here is a rough outline of the steps to use the EBSCO customization...

1. In the EBSCO Admin site, head to "Viewing Results" and look for "Widgets" and click Modify.  
2. Add or edit items for the Results List and Detailed Records.  Make sure to change to "Custom HTML."
3. Add the custom code from below. Be sure to update the custom code to point to your queue and chat box skin. If you are using a regional server, be sure to update the libraryh3lp.com URL appropriately.
4. And also make sure both are set to "show" and "default to open."

Now on the results page, the embedded chat box will be in the right sidebar.  On the detailed records page, the chat box will be at the bottom of the record.  The embedded chat box will carry the user's current chat conversation from window-to-window as they navigate the results list and detailed records pages, so they won't lose their place in the chat.

Custom Code template:
<script id="libraryh3lp-app" data-plink="ep.PermaLink" data-url="https://libraryh3lp.com/chat/YOUR_QUEUE@chat.libraryh3lp.com?skin=CHAT_BOX_SKIN_ID" src="https://widgets.ebscohost.com/prod/simplekey/libraryh3lp/libraryh3lp.js"></script>

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How do I get my proactive chat invitation to appear correctly within Ebsco?

Symptom: My proactive chat invitation is stuck inside the sidebar

If you have a chat snippet embedded within the sidebar you'll probably find that if you enable proactive chat invitations on that snippet, the proactive chat invitations are restricted to the chat widget in the sidebar and won't freely float over the rest of the page. This is because Ebsco sandboxes the chat snippet inside an iframe. The workaround is to add a second, "proactive-only" chat snippet to Ebsco which is not placed within the sidebar but instead you'll add the chat code snippet as part of the footer or your EDS customizations.

Symptom: My proactive chat invitation looks a little weird and doesn't "float" over all the elements on the page

LibraryH3lp proactive chat invitations use a common, 3rd party library (jQueryUI) to present the invitation dialogs to patrons. Ebsco has it's own styling for the dialogs from this 3rd party library which override any theme you may choose for your proactive chat invitation.  If you are adding a proactive chat invitation, you'll probably want to add the following bit of custom styling to the "Offline Appearance" area of your chat snippet (for pop-up and follow-me chat boxes) or directly to Ebsco (for embedded chat boxes):

<style type="text/css">
  .ui-dialog { 
    z-index: 1000;
  }
  .ui-dialog .ui-widget-header button.ui-button .ui-icon-closethick {
    margin: -8px;
  }
  .ui-dialog .ui-widget-header {
    padding: 20px 0 0 15px;
  }
  .ui-dialog .ui-widget-header > span:first-child {
    font-size: 1.2em;
  }
  .ui-dialog .ui-dialog-content p {
    font-size: 1.2em;
    margin-top: 20px;
  }
  .ui-dialog .ui-resizable-se {
    display: none !important;
  }
</style>

Symptom: My proactive chat invitation always appears in the top, right corner no matter how I configure its placement.

The proactive chat invitation uses a common 3rd-party library called jQueryUI to make the chat invitation dialog, and Ebsco defines a function called window.preventDefault, which overrides the jQueryUI code that handles placement. 

<script type="application/javascript">
  window.preventDefault = undefined;
</script>

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