SDK Configuration

Helpshift provides several config options which can be used to customize behaviour of the SDK. Use these options in conjunction with our Helpshift APIs.

Note

All the public APIs in the SDK should be called after initializing the SDK via Helpshift.install() API

Enable Logging

Upon setting enableLogging to true, Helpshift SDK logs will be generated in the Android logcat. These logs can be useful for debugging the SDK during integration. Turning on logging can help the developer resolve common integration issues.

Option:	enableLogging
Values:	true / false
Default:	false
Min SDK	v10.0.0
Supported by:	install()

Example:

    public class MainApplication extends Application {

      @Override
      public void onCreate() {
        super.onCreate();

        Map<String, Object> configurations = new HashMap<>();
        configurations.put("enableLogging",  true);

        // Install call
        Helpshift.install(this,
                          "<PLATFORM_ID>",
                          "<DOMAIN>",
                          configurations);
      }
    }

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
Default	null
Min SDK	v10.0.0
Supported by	showFAQs, showFAQSection, showSingleFAQ

Example:

 Map<String, Object> config = new HashMap<>();

 // .. other configs

 Map<String, Object> filter = new HashMap<>();
 filter.put("tags", new String[]{"tag1", "tag2"});
 filter.put("operator", "AND");

 config.put("filter", filter);

 Helpshift.showFAQs(MainActivity.this, config);

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.

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.

Option	enableContactUs
Values	"ALWAYS" / "AFTER_VIEWING_FAQS" / "AFTER_MARKING_ANSWER_UNHELPFUL" / "NEVER"
Default	null
Min SDK	v10.0.0
Supported by	showFAQs, showFAQSection, showSingleFAQ

Example:

 Map<String, Object> config = new HashMap<>();
 // .. other configs
 config.put("enableContactUs", "AFTER_VIEWING_FAQS");
 Helpshift.showFAQs(MainActivity.this, config);

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. Example Code:

TelephonyManager tm = (TelephonyManager) context.getSystemServic(Context.TELEPHONY_SERVICE);
String country = tm.getSimCountryIso();
String value = "AFTER_VIEWING_FAQS";
if("<LOCAL_COUNTRY_CODE>".equals(country)) {
  value = "ALWAYs";
}
HashMap config = new HashMap();
config.put("enableContactUs", value);
Helpshift.showFAQs(MyActivity.this, config);

Full privacy

Full privacy option helps ensure COPPA compliance by:

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, and with fullPrivacy set to true, Helpshift will not use the userName and userEmail values.
3. Not collecting any of the following personal information:
   • Mobile country code, mobile network code and carrier name.
   • Custom meta-data that is labeled "private-data".

Moreover, in scenarios where the user attaches objectionable content, it becomes a huge COPPA compliance concern. This option helps to solve this problem.

Option	fullPrivacy
Values	true / false
Default	false
Min SDK	v10.0.0
Supported by	showConversation, showFAQs

Example:

Map<String, Object> config = new HashMap<>();
// .. other configs
config.put("fullPrivacy", true);
Helpshift.showConversation(MainActivity.this, config);

Best Practices

In your registration process, ask your user for their age. If the user's age is 13 or younger, set fullPrivacy to YES. This way, you comply with COPPA for your under-age users, but collect valuable user and device data for your other users.

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.

On setting this flag to false, the SDK will stop showing notifications in the notification tray of the device but it will fetch messages in background.

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

Option:	enableInAppNotification
Values:	true / false
Default:	true
Min SDK	v10.0.0
Supported by:	install()

Example:

public class MainApplication extends Application {
  @Override
  public void onCreate() {
    super.onCreate();
    Map<String, Object> configurations = new HashMap<>();
    configurations.put("enableInAppNotification", false);
    // Install call
    Helpshift.install(this,
                      "<PLATFORM_ID>",
                      "<DOMAIN>",
                      configurations);
  }
}

Initiate new conversation on chat screen load

In config map of Helpshift.showConversation(this, config); API, setting the initiateChatOnLoad option to true will start a new conversation if the previous issue is resolved, without the end user clicking the New Conversation button or going through the post resolution flows like feedback bots of the previous issue.

Example:

Map<String, Object> config = new HashMap<>();
// .. other configs
config.put("initiateChatOnLoad", true);
Helpshift.showConversation(MainActivity.this, config);

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.

Example:

Map<String, Object> config = new HashMap<>();
// .. other configs
config.put("conversationPrefillText", "INSERT YOUR PREFILL TEXT");
Helpshift.showConversation(MainActivity.this, config);

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.

Example:

Map<String, Object> config = new HashMap<>();
// .. other configs
config.put("initialUserMessage", "INSERT YOUR INITIAL USER MESSAGE");
Helpshift.showConversation(MainActivity.this, config);

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.

Example:

Map<String, Object> subsequentIssuesInSameSessionConfig = new HashMap<>();
subsequentIssuesInSameSessionConfig.put("initialUserMessage", "");

Map<String, Object> config = new HashMap<>();

// This is used for the first issue in the session
config.put("initialUserMessage", "INSERT YOUR INITIAL USER MESSAGE");

// This will be used for all subsequent issues in that session
config.put("subsequentIssuesInSameSessionConfig", subsequentIssuesInSameSessionConfig);

Helpshift.showConversation(MainActivity.this, config);

For outbound support scenarios make sure to add this config in the user specific config callback getAPIConfig you get when you register Helpshift.setHelpshiftProactiveConfigCollector().

public class MainActivity extends AppCompatActivity implements HelpshiftProactiveAPIConfigCollector{
  @Override
  public void onCreate() {
    super.onCreate();
    //...

    // initialise proactiveConfig collector
    Helpshift.setHelpshiftProactiveConfigCollector(this);

    //...
  }

  //...

  @Override
  public Map<String, Object> getAPIConfig() {

    // config map
    Map<String, Object> localConfig = new HashMap<>();
    Map<String, Object> subsequentIssuesInSameSessionConfig = new HashMap<>();

    // ....
    // user specific config
    
    // This is used for the first issue in the session
    localConfig.put("initialUserMessage", "INSERT YOUR INITIAL USER MESSAGE");
    // This will be used for all subsequent issues in that session
    subsequentIssuesInSameSessionConfig.put("initialUserMessage", "");
    localConfig.put("subsequentIssuesInSameSessionConfig", subsequentIssuesInSameSessionConfig);
    
    return localConfig;
  }
}

Screen Orientation

The screen orientation of Helpshift SDK screens can be fixed by setting the screenOrientation to constants available in the ActivityInfo class. For example, you may want to fix the orientation to ActivityInfo.SCREEN_ORIENTATION_PORTRAIT for mobile users and ActivityInfo.SCREEN_ORIENTATION_LANDSCAPE for tablet users.

Flag	screenOrientation
values	integer values for orientation from ActivityInfo class
default	ActivityInfo.SCREEN_ORIENTATION_UNSPECIFIED

Example:

public class MainApplication extends Application {
  @Override
  public void onCreate() {
    super.onCreate();
    Map<String, Object> configurations = new HashMap<>();
    configurations.put("screenOrientation", ActivityInfo.SCREEN_ORIENTATION_PORTRAIT);
    // Install call
    Helpshift.install(this,
                      "<PLATFORM_ID>",
                      "<DOMAIN>",
                      configurations);
  }
}

Notification Icon

By default the application icon is used as the notification icon. You can customize the notification icon using the config in the install call.

Example:

public class MainApplication extends Application {
  @Override
  public void onCreate() {
    super.onCreate();
    Map<String, Object> configurations = new HashMap<>();
    configurations.put("notificationIcon", R.drawable.notification_icon);
    // Install call
    Helpshift.install(this,
                      "<PLATFORM_ID>",
                      "<DOMAIN>",
                      configurations);
  }
}

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 using the config in the install call.

Example:

public class MainApplication extends Application {  @Override
  public void onCreate() {
    super.onCreate();
    Map<String, Object> configurations = new HashMap<>();
    configurations.put("notificationLargeIcon", R.drawable.notification_large_icon);
    // Install call
    Helpshift.install(this,
                      "<PLATFORM_ID>",
                      "<DOMAIN>",
                      configurations);
  }
}

Notification Sound

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

Example:

public class MainApplication extends Application {
  @Override
  public void onCreate() {
    super.onCreate();
    Map<String, Object> configurations = new HashMap<>();
    configurations.put("notificationSoundId",  R.raw.notification_sound);
    // Install call
    Helpshift.install(this,
                      "<PLATFORM_ID>",
                      "<DOMAIN>",
                      configurations);
  }
}

Notification channels

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

Example:

public class MainApplication extends Application {
  @Override
  public void onCreate() {
    super.onCreate();
    Map<String, Object> configurations = new HashMap<>();
    configurations.put("notificationChannelId",  "your channel name here");
    // Install call
    Helpshift.install(this,
                      "<PLATFORM_ID>",
                      "<DOMAIN>",
                      configurations);
  }
}

Theming the SDK

Please check the design page to apply your styles and theming to SDK.

Tracking

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