Can I search and view my chat transcripts?  Monitor, review, download, and otherwise manage my chat metadata?

 

Yes!  The Chat History area provides robust search and management capabilities.  It is available in both the admin dashboard and within the webclient for staffing.

Searching transcripts

If you have enabled transcript storage on your chat queues, you can easily search your chat transcripts for keywords.  Just place the keyword in the search box at the top of the Chat History page.  If you use multiple words, they will be "OR'd" together.  There is some fuzzy matching to handle things like simple plurals.

 

Combining transcript keyword search with other search parameters

You can combine transcript keyword searches with other items of metadata such as date ranges, operator names, queue names, etc...  Place these other items in the simple search box, making sure to format the search correctly, or use the Advanced Search form to learn how to build your search.

 

The Chat History/Activity page provides all sorts of handy functionality:

• Review in real-time the chat activity.
• Intervene in any active chat by transferring it to another queue or operator.
• Delete transcripts individually or in bulk, leaving the record of the chat in place.
• Delete the full record of a chat, individually or in bulk.
• Anonymize chats, individually or in bulk. Anonymize removes phone numbers from SMS guests, IP addresses from widget chats, and deletes transcripts..
• Download a CSV (comma separated values) file of your chat metadata to manipulate in spreadsheet programs, like Excel.
• Download a zip file of transcripts for local analysis. More info...

 

Searching Chats

At the very top of the Chat History page, there is a search input where you can search through most chat metadata fields and transcript content (if you've elected to save chat transcripts). 

For example and if you wished to search for chat transcripts that contain the word bibliography, you could enter the word bibliography in the search input.

• Search phrases are enclosed in quotes: "enumerative bibliography".
• Multiple search terms or phrases are separated by spaces and ORed together: "enumerative bibliography" catalog

You can restrict your search to specific chat queues, with or without additional keywords:

• queue:ask-us
• queue:ask-us bibliography

Use the operator_msg or guest_msg fields to restrict search to only operator messages or guest messages respectively.  So if you wanted to search for all chats with transcripts where an operator used the word bibliography:

• operator_msg:bibliography

Pro tip! The latest search settings, including date range, are remembered from login to login and determine which chats are shown.

You may be thinking to yourself, that's pretty fancy but how am I supposed to remember these field names three months from now or even tomorrow for that matter?  Never fear.  That's where advanced search comes in!

 

Advanced Search

Using advanced search, you can get very specific without needing to remember all the nitty gritty details of keywords. 

Chat metadata search keywords come with an extra bonus -- most support wildcards:

• Use * for partial matches. E.g. Use chat* to find any word that starts with chat.
• Use ? to replace any single-character. E.g. Use ch?t to match words like chat, chbt, ch4t, etc.
• Use ! to omit exact matches. E.g. Use !chat to omit results that contain word chat.
• Use * with ! to omit partial matches. E.g. Use !*chat to omit results with words that end in chat.

 

Restricting Search by Date

With the date range controls, you can easily search by date, date range, or across all time.  There are handy shortcuts available for the most common date ranges:

• today (range:day)
• last 7 days (range:week)
• this month (range:month)
• this quarter (range:quarter)
• this year (range:year)

The shortcut date ranges are relative to the actual current date.  So if you leave your shortcut set to range:day you'll always have the current day's chats when you first load the page.

Calendar Explorer

When you click the Calendar Explorer button, you'll see a monthly calendar (click the year at the top to see a yearly calendar) showing the total chats for each day. Choose a single day or date range by selecting either 'single date' or 'date range' respectively. Once you make your date selection(s), you'll be returned to the grid view so you can view the chat metadata.

 

Chat Metadata Table

Below all the fancy search goodness lives a table with lots of columns - guest, protocol, queue, etc. Collectively, we call this information chat metadata. More simply put, chat details.

 

 

Pro tip! Click on the chat metadata column headings to sort chats by a particular field. Click on the down arrow in the column headings to show/hide/rearrange columns.

 

When you click on a chat, the transcript will display below the grid. By default, transcript storage is turned off to protect guest privacy so be sure to turn transcript storage on if you wish to retain transcripts.

Above the transcript, you'll see chat management icons.  A sample transcript along with chat management icons is shown below. If a chat is active, you'll be able to refresh the transcript, transfer the chat, and send a file to the guest. For all chats, you can pop the chat out into a separate tab, e-mail the transcript, tag for follow-up, or block the guest for 24 hours.

Pro tip! Don't see any transcripts? Administrators can enable transcripts for a queue via the queues management page in the admin dashboard.

 

When can't I search my chats?

• Direct chats between individuals (operator to operator) are not logged and cannot be monitored outside the conversation.
• If a chat does not have a transcript (never stored, or deleted at some point) you won't be able to search for it using transcript keywords, but you can still search for its basic metadata using the other fields like date ranges, operator names, etc...

FAQ URL: