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SDK Configuration

Helpshift provides several config options which can be used to customize behaviour of the SDK.

Init call configurations

Note

All the keys are added as constant strings that you can use. The usage of configurations are shown in the image is given below

Enable Logging

Upon setting enableLogging to true, Helpshift SDK logs will be generated in the Android logcat/ Xcode console. Turning on logging can help developers resolve common integration issues.

KeyHelpshift Config Enable Logging Key
valuestrue/false
defaulttrue

Enable In-App Notifications

If you do not want the in-app notification support provided by the Helpshift SDK, you can set the flag to false.

For Android, setting this flag as false will stop showing notifications in the notification tray of the device but it will fetch messages in background.

For iOS, setting this flag as false will just disable the in-app notifications, push notifications will still be shown in the device’s notification center.

The default value of this flag is true i.e., the in-app notification will be enabled.

KeyHelpshiftConfigEnableinAppNotificationKey
valuestrue/false
defaulttrue

FAQ Filtering by tags

We have FAQ filtering capability by tags. With the goal of helping the end user see focused & related content e.g. basis the user demographic or device profiles, developers can now choose this capability for FAQ filtering and showing a focused FAQ list to the right audience.

Typical cases why you would want to use FAQ filtering are:

  • You want to show specific FAQs for specific audience. E.g. if you may categorize the users as ‘beginner’, ‘intermediate’ or ‘expert’ based on your business logic.
  • You may want to show specific FAQs based on the device. E.g. a set of FAQs for iPad vs. iPhone.

FAQ filtering is a 2 step approach :

  1. FAQs need to be classified using the <issue tags> field on the dashboard e.g. tags iphone & ipad.
  2. Once the FAQs are tagged, they can be filtered at the SDK using the filter options described here.
Note

Helpshift has 2 types of tags mainly ‘Issue Tags’ & ‘Search Tags’.

  • Issue tags are used to filter the FAQ list on the SDK with the filter rules.
  • Search tags (a.k.a Search Keywords) When performing in-app search, Helpshift SDK gives preference to these keywords. You can also use this to add alternative keywords that users might search for, but which may not exist in the FAQ title or the content.

How to use FAQ filtering

This will be a config option which will be supported by the showFAQs and showFAQSection APIs.

The filter option will be a map containing 2 keys

  • operator : one of AND, OR, NOT which will serve as conditional operators for the given tags.
  • tags : the actual tags in the query

The filter option should be added as an object against key “filter” in the map config that is taken by showFAQs, showFAQSection and showSingleFAQ APIs.

Option:filter
Sub-Options:tags / operator
Defaultnull
Min SDKv10.0.0
Supported byshowFAQs, showFAQSection, showSingleFAQ

Example:

Note

You can have only one tag filter config which will be respected on showFAQs, showFAQSection and showSingleFAQ. Also the tag filtering respects only one operator.

Full privacy

In the config dictionary of ShowConversation API at the time of calling this API, setting the fullPrivacy option to true ensures COPPA compliance by:

FlagHelpshiftConfigEnableFullPrivacyKey
valuestrue/ false

  1. Disabling user-initiated screenshots (users will not be able to attach files, including images, using SDK).
  2. Making sure that Personally Identifiable Information (PII) such as name and email are not collected by SDK (using Identity Bot and/or the helpshiftConfig object). This means that if you set userName and userEmail, with fullPrivacy set to true, Helpshift will not use the userName and userEmail values.

Moreover, in scenarios where the user attaches objectionable content, it becomes a huge COPPA compliance concern. This option helps to solve this problem. This config is common for both iOS and Android.

Enable Contact Us

Controls the visibility of the Helpshift Contact Us button when a user is viewing FAQs. You can customize this option to make it easier or more difficult to contact support. If specified, this configuration takes precedence over the value of Enable Contact Us set on admin dashboard.

Key"enableContactUs"
values"ALWAYS" / "AFTER_VIEWING_FAQS" / "AFTER_MARKING_ANSWER_UNHELPFUL" / "NEVER"
defaultnone

Best Practices

  • Provide tier-based support by setting enableContactUs to ALWAYS for paid users and AFTER_VIEWING_FAQS for unpaid ones.
  • Provide country based support by setting enableContactUs to ALWAYS for local users and AFTER_VIEWING_FAQS for foreign ones.

Conversation prefill text

Setting conversationPrefillText in the config allows you to set some text in the user's input box. This text will be inserted provided that:

  • There is no ongoing (active) issue for the user.
  • Text inputs are enabled for new conversations (e.g. the User Reply Input Type is not "Only Intent Menu").
Note

The end-user can edit this text before sending it. There is a limit of 1,000 characters for this configuration value, so only the first 1,000 characters will be kept in the user input.

We recommend keeping your actual text even shorter for a better user experience, since the user has to read and edit it before sending it.

Key"conversationPrefillText"
valuesAny string value
default""

Conversation Initial User Message

Initial user message configuration, initialUserMessage, helps you send the first message in a conversation on behalf of the user so that certain workflows are automatically triggered based on that message.

You should set this configuration before a conversation starts. In other words, it works only when there is no active conversation for the user i.e. when a new user opens the chat screen for the first time or existing user has already closed an ongoing conversation.

Note

If you set this configuration in the middle of an existing conversation, it will not have any effect.

Key"initialUserMessage"
ValueAny string value
default""

Clearing Initial User Message

If the end user starts a new conversation immediately in the same session, then, by default, the initial user message is applied to all subsequent issues in the same session. You can change this behaviour by setting the initialUserMessage key in subsequentIssuesInSameSessionConfig to an appropriate value.

You can set the initial user message to an empty string, which will clear it and allow the end-user to type a message for their subsequent issues. Alternatively, you can also supply a non-empty string which will be used for all subsequent issues in the same session.

We recommend setting this value to an empty string unless you want to run specific automation flows for subsequent issues in the same session.

Note

Currently, only the initial user message can be reset. Tags, Custom Issue Fields, and Conversation Prefill Text values stay the same for subsequent issues in the same session.

Key"initialUserMessage"
ValueAny string value
default""
Key"subsequentIssuesInSameSessionConfig"
ValueAny TMap<FString, FString>

Similarly, for outbound support you can pass the config like this :

Android Specific Configurations

Notification Icon

By default the application icon is used as the notification icon. You can customize the notification icon in the Init call.

Pass the name of the file placed in the folder that is configured as Drawable Path in the Plugin Settings. You do not need to specify the file extension for the icon image. If your icon image's file name is "icon.png", you just need to pass "icon" to helpshift config.

KeyHelpshiftConfigNotificationIconKey
valuesstring - Name of the file
defaultApplication Icon

Large Notification Icon

By default the application icon is used as the notification icon. If you want to specify the large notification icon also to show up in the notification tray, you can specify that in the Init call.

Pass the name of the file placed in the folder that is configured as Drawable Path in the Plugin Settings. You do not need to specify the file extension for the icon image. If your large icon image's file name is "large_icon.png", you just need to pass "large_icon" to helpshift config.

KeyHelpshiftConfigNotificationLargeIconKey
valuesstring - Name of the file
defaultApplication Icon

Notification Sound

Note
  • The sound provided here would only be set for the default notification channel that the SDK creates on its own on Android OS 8.0 & above. This sound can only be set once on the default channel and it won’t change if a different sound resource is passed.

  • If the sound needs to be changed later on, it is recommended to create your own notification channels. Refer this.

By default the default device notification sound is used for helpshift notifications. You can customize the notification sound in the Init call.

Pass the name of the file placed in the folder that is configured as Sound Path in the Plugin Settings (e.g. “sound” for sound.mp3); You do not need to specify the file extension for the sound file. If your sound file name is "notificaton_sound.mp3", you just need to pass "notification_sound" to helpshift config.

KeyHelpshiftConfigNotificationSoundIdKey
valuesstring - Name of the file
defaultDevice Notification Sound

Notification Channels

Starting from Android Oreo, Helpshift notifications will create a default channel named In-app Support. If you want to customize the name for the default channel, you can do so by using the config in the init call.

KeyHelpshiftConfigNotificationChannelKey
valuesstring - Name of the channel
default"In-app Support"

Screen Orientation

The screen orientation of Helpshift SDK screens can be fixed by setting the HelpshiftConfigScreenOrientationKey to constants available - HelpshiftConfigScreenOrientationLandscape or HelpshiftConfigScreenOrientationPortrait.

FlagHelpshiftConfigScreenOrientationKey
valuesHelpshiftConfigScreenOrientationLandscape or HelpshiftConfigScreenOrientationPortrait
defaultHelpshiftConfigScreenOrientationPortrait

iOS Specific Configurations

presentFullScreenOniPad

The HelpshiftConfigPresentFullScreenOniPadKey will determine whether to present support views in UIModalPresentationFullScreen or UIModalPresentationFormSheet modal presentation style on iPad. This config has no effect on iPhones.

The default value is NO, presents support views as UIModalPresentationFormSheet. When the value is set to true, support views are presented in UIModalPresentationFullScreen. Use this setting to show Helpshift in full-screen mode.

OptionHelpshiftConfigPresentFullScreenOniPadKey
Valuestrue / false
Defaultfalse

inAppNotificationAppearance

The HelpshiftConfigInAppNotificationAppearanceKey represents the appearance of the in-app notification in the SDK. When the agent/bot sends a message and the user is using the app, an in-app banner is shown and the appearance of that banner can be customized using this map

Option:HelpshiftConfigInAppNotificationAppearanceKey
Sub-Options:HelpshiftConfigInAppNotificationBannerBackgroundColorKey / HelpshiftConfigInAppNotificationTextColorKey
Values:String representing hex color. Eg - "FFFEEF"

UI Configurations

This config represents the theming of Helpshift SDK. For more information check design.

Tracking

This config represents the tracking user actions. For more information check tracking.