Networking Features: Chat (DM & Public)
- caitlin.mueller@touchcast.com
Overview
The Touchcast event page offers networking features for attendees to connect on a direct and individual basis, or to connect in a public forum within the player as sessions are live.
Terminology
Chat: The label within the CMS settings that refers to the group/public chat
Network: The label within the CMS settings that refers to the direct message chat
DM: Acronym for Direct Message
How To Enable the Chat Features
To enable these networking features, go to Chat Settings under the Event Settings tab.
Enabling My Profile
The Touchcast page has the ability to hide or show the logged in attendee’s own profile from the main page. This is a feature independent of the Networking features. It allows the attendee (user) to see their own information. It is not necessary to enable if the event only needs DM and/or Networking chats available. Viewing your own profile allows the attendee to toggle their networking features on and off at any point.
To enable profiles, go to Event Settings > General Settings > General > select the Enable profile checkbox.
Chat Settings under the Event Settings tab
The “Chat” tab displays the Public Chat, visible to all attendees who have opted in at the Welcome screen. Available only within the player.
The Network tab displays attendees available for DM and DM chat history. Available in the player and on the main page.
Group Chat
To enable the Group Chat feature, select the checkbox to the right. This can be enabled alone or in combination with the Direct Message feature. The Group Chat feature acts as a public forum where any attendee who opts in at the Chat Welcome Screen can send a public message during live sessions and view other attendees’ messages. The Group Chat makes the name of anyone who enters a message visible to all attendees who have opted in. The name entered during allowlisting informs how each user’s name appears in the networking panel.
DM Chat
To enable the Direct Message feature, select the checkbox to the right. This can be enabled alone or in combination with the Group Chat feature. The DM feature allows for attendees to chat individually with one another. Messages between two attendees are not visible to other attendees. Attendees participating in the DM chat must first opt in at the same Chat Welcome Screen as the Group Chat feature (it is an opt-in for both types of chat).
Overall Chat Settings
Below the chat enable checkboxes you’ll see the “Chat welcome screen title”. By default it will say “Welcome to”. The “Chat welcome screen heading” is, by default, the event title. The “Chat welcome screen desc” is the opt-in/information text that appears below the heading. This has an optimal character count of about 100-150 characters. If the heading and description are both long, you may experience suboptimal text formatting that may require some text editing. This section cannot be custom formatted and does not respond to HTML.
The default text is: “Exchange your thoughts and comments with other attendees here. By participating in the chat your first name and last name will be visible. For help troubleshooting, please use the support chat instead.”
The “welcome screen” is the opt-in greeting that all attendees will see upon first entering the page and the attendee panel. They will continue to see this until they select the “Got it” button that serves as their consent to the terms involved in accessing networking features.
“Show online/offline for user on the Network” displays which attendees are online for the chat. The system defines attendees as online if their event page is open and offline if they have closed their event page. Users may be seen as “offline” if internet connectivity is lost or if the browser shuts off the connection due to varying idle times dependent on the browser in use.
“Unread Message Email Notification Cron” when checked on, will send the attendee an email if they are offline and receive a message from an attendee. The “...Cron time” below is the appointed time that the system will search for unread messages across all users to determine if an email needs to be sent to each attendee. The actual time in which an email is sent/received varies depending on data processing.
What the attendee sees when they receive an Unread Message Email Notification
Customization Capabilities
Colors
The relevant settings for this area of the event page can be found on the next 2 pages. Go to Settings, then Appearance to customize the colors as it relates to the networking section. In total, the below items are the relevant elements. Asterisked items typically remain the default color.
Pdf/email logo
Chat got it button color
Chat got it button text color
Network panel illustration color
Default avatar background color on network/chat
Default avatar text color on network/chat
Other person avatar background color on network/chat
Other person avatar text color on network/chat
*Profile heading color
*Profile label color
*Profile value color
*Network/chat normal text color
*Message color on network/chat
*Message time color on network/chat
*Header separator color on network
*Company, designation color on network full profile
*Search box search/close icons color on network
*Filter icon background color on network
*Filter icon color on network
*ChatArea separator color on network/chat
*Welcome description text color on network/chat
Labels
Go to Event Settings > Common Labels to adjust the text throughout the Networking experience.
ℹTIP: to find a label that you would like to change, use the Command+F function in the Common Labels section and search for the exact text that appears on the event page. Most often, not much will need to change but be sure the “Profile Chat label” and “Profile Chat Description label” is relevant to your event page. |