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Putting the Customer Apps on Your Website




OneDesk includes multiple customer-facing apps that you can use to enable communication with your customers. The apps include the web widget, messenger, portal, knowledgebase and webforms. Each app provides channels for customers, clients, or end-users to receive support or collaborate with your team. The web widget is an icon displayed on your site which allows easy access to the other apps. The messenger is a live chat application between your agents and customers. The portal allows customers to view ticket or task progress, status, or other details you allow. The knowledgebase is a hub of information for your customers. And finally, webforms allow customers to submit new tickets or tasks to you. You can enable all or any of these apps for your customers to use. The key first step to start serving your customers is to add the apps to your website. 

Once added, you can adjust various configurations such as appearance, and behavior live and directly in OneDesk, without making additional changes to your site itself. There are a few methods of adding the customer apps to your website, depending on your preferences. This article will discuss each method in-depth.



Using a link to an app

If you want your customers to access one or more apps from your site, a simple method is to simply link the app URL from somewhere on your site. As an example, you can have text in your site menu that says ‘Customer Portal’ which links to the URL of your portal application. Of course you can use this method for any and all apps you wish to use, as each of the customer apps has its own URL.




To find the URL for each of your applications go to Administration → Customer Apps → Customer Apps List tab → under the column Customer Access URL. These URLs provide links to the full-screen version of each app. You can preview them from here as well. Remember the tickets/tasks portal, knowledgebase, webforms, and messenger are mobile-friendly, meaning a customer accessing your site from a mobile device can comfortably use these apps. Like always, you can configure the behavior or appearance of apps from your OneDesk account administration settings without making further changes to your site.



Embedding the web widget 

The widget is quite simple to add to your website. Simply add a small JavaScript snippet to the code of your webpage. You can find your snippet inside the administration panel of your OneDesk account, under Administration > Customer Apps > Classic App Settings. Then click the “Generate Snippet” link.



This action will generate the code to place the OneDesk customer apps widget on your site. Copy and paste the code snippet into your website's code. Depending on your company you may need a specific department or team member to do this for you, however, once your website code is accessed, the process is easy. Just add the generated script to one or more pages of your website before the closing 'body' tag. If you would like the widget to appear on all pages of your website, we recommend adding the script to your page footer. And that's it! Your customers can now access any apps in the widget from your website. Once again, you can configure the widget directly from your OneDesk account without making additional changes to your website. 


(Note: There are two widget types Classic and MFA. You can choose which to add to your site. Learn about the differences: MFA vs. Classic Apps. If you decide to use the MFA widget, Generate the MFA snippet at Customer Apps > MFA Settings.)


Adding the widget using the WordPress Integration 

OneDesk has a direct extension for WordPress. The extension allows you to easily embed the widget to your WordPress site. You can install the plugin from your WordPress settings. For complete instructions see: How to Install the Widget on you WordPress Site.



Adding the widget using the Joomla Integration 

OneDesk has a direct extension for Joomla sites. The extension allows you to embed the widget on your site. Add the widget using the following instructions: Joomla Integration.



Embedding the app(s) to your page

Any or all the apps can be embedded directly onto a webpage. Each customer app can be embedded independently or you can embed the widget itself.

Embedding a customer app is a good option for variety of situations such as:

  • You want the app(s) embedded onto a page that is your own URL.
  • You want the app(s) to appear contained within your own styling or contextual information.
  • You want to embed the app on a page that is behind your own login criteria or within your intranet site.


Embedding using an iFrame

An iFrame is HTML markup which allows you to embed one webpage inside of another. You define a rectangular space on your page where you would like the other web-page to appear, and you define the page that should be embedded. This is done using the iFrame HTML tag.


Above is an example iFrame code that will embed the portal. You will need to replace “yourURI” with your own URI so that it embeds your own portal. You can find your URI inside OneDesk at More Applications -> Administration -> Company Preferences. You can also adjust the display size by changing the width and height values.



Below is an example of how you can embed the widget onto your page. Once again, replace “yourURI” with your organization’s URI, and adjust the height and width as needed




The widget will look something like this once it is embedded on your web page:




Embedding using an iFrame is not limited to the portal or widget of course. You can embed any of the customer apps – portal, KB, webform, messenger. The simplest way is to copy and paste the app URL into the ‘src URL’ of the iFrame code. To find the URL of your apps. Go to Administration > Customer Apps > General Settings (See the ‘Using a link’ section above).



Using CNAME / Putting the apps on your own domain


(Available with Enterprise level plans only)


When a user opens the OneDesk customer portal from your website they are actually browsing OneDesk.com If you would like to keep the portal under your own domain, you can do so by adding your OneDesk portal page as a CNAME record on your domain registrar. Without getting into the technical details, a CNAME maps a name to a canonical domain name. In other words, this method lets you customize the web address. So when a customer goes to your app, the URL is your own.


Create a CNAME record


  • First you must have access to changing the CNAME records on your registrar. Each registrar is different, but here are some instructions for Domain.com, GoDaddy, and namecheap.
  • Next you must choose a sub-domain where you would like the portal to be hosted. For example, you might choose http://portal.yourdomain.com to host your OneDesk customer portal (“portal” is your sub-domain). Then on your registrar you must create a CNAME record which points your chosen subdomain to the customer app URL. (Your app URL can be found in your account under Administration > Customer Apps).


Once this is done, you must email us (support@onedesk.com) the following information:

1. Your chosen sub-domain and redirect URL (eg. http://portal.yourdomain.com)

2. The link to the OneDesk customer app you want to put there (see above on how to find this link).

THEN

  1. We will generate and provide you the 2 CNAME URLs .
  2. You will configure the CNAMEs in your domain (create DNS entries) and send us a confirmation.
  3. We will then perform the changes and activation on our end.

Note: For HTTPS, we can automatically obtain a Let’s Encrypt and/or AWS SSL certificate for your subdomain once the CNAME setting is correctly propagated in the DNS.



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