WebChat.md

Web chat

Web chat support for our site is implemented by the Escc.EastSussexGovUK project and documented there, but the settings are managed by editors here in Umbraco.

To enable this create a document type called Web chat with an alias of WebChat which is allowed only at the root of the site, and add the following properties:

• A property called Where to display it? with an alias of whereToDisplayIt_Content which uses the multi-node tree picker property editor.
• A property called Where else to display it? with an alias of whereElseToDisplayIt_Content which uses the Textbox multiple property editor.
• A property called Where to exclude? with an alias of whereToExclude_Content which uses the multi-node tree picker property editor.
• A property called Where else to exclude? with an alias of whereElseToExclude_Content which uses the Textbox multiple property editor.

Adding duplicate properties using multi-node tree picker and textbox multiple property editors allows pages to be selected either by selecting Umbraco content or by pasting URLs, one per line, from any application that forms part of the website.

Escc.EastSussexGovUK has WebChatSettingsFromApi, which reads settings from an API implemented by WebChatController in this project. WebChatController reads its settings from Umbraco by looking for an instance of the document type described above.

Web chat support is different on an Umbraco page

Website page controllers outside Umbraco should use WebChatSettingsFromApi to get the settings for where web chat should be enabled. That API uses UmbracoWebChatSettingsService to query the Umbraco cache, but controllers in this project have direct access to the Umbraco cache so they can skip the API and create an instance of UmbracoWebChatSettingsService directly:

using Escc.EastSussexGovUK.Mvc;
using Escc.EastSussexGovUK.Umbraco.Web.Services;
using Escc.Umbraco.PropertyTypes;

public new async Task<ActionResult> Index(RenderModel model)
{
	var viewModel = new MyCustomModel();

	var webChat = new UmbracoWebChatSettingsService(model.Content, new UrlListReader());
	var templateRequest = new EastSussexGovUKTemplateRequest(Request, webChatSettingsService: webChat);

    return CurrentTemplate(viewModel);
} 

Any template that wants to support web chat then needs to use an instance of WebChat to read the settings, determine whether web chat is enabled for the page, and identify the CSS, JavaScript and content security policy to load from web.config.

@using Escc.EastSussexGovUK.Features

@{
	Html.Partial("~/Views/EastSussexGovUK/_FeatureDependencies.cshtml", new List<IClientDependencySet>()
    {
        new WebChat() { WebChatSettings = Model.WebChat }
    });
}