Embedding a live chat widget into your mobile app

Rather than designing native SDK’s for each mobile OS, we have chosen to develop a specific web-based version that is adapted more closely to work within a mobile app. This means that we’re able to develop faster, reduce bugs and update our live chat widget within your app without you have to change anything.

What’s different to the web-based version

The two widgets are nearly identical with the exceptions of:

We have removed the close button (more about this later)
Made the widget fullscreen
Changed how you initialise it, now done via a URL

How to embed the widget

When you want to initialise a web chat (this could be from a button or part of the process) you will need to open up an in-app browser and point them to our launch URL for mobile apps.

You will need to get your unique URL that you are embedding in your app, to do this If you navigate to “Settings” > “Manage your Live Chat Widgets” and then click “Embed” where you will find your mobile URL information at the bottom.

Closing the widget

Because we’re not able to communicate with your mobile app from within our webpage we can’t put the close button within the widget where it will normally be placed. For this reason, it is up to you to give the user the ability to close the in-app browser.

Sizing the widget

We have made the widget fill the in-app browser so for the majority of mobile phones you will want to make the in-app browser as big as possible, however, for tablets, you may choose to make the in-app browser smaller as not to fill the screen.

Don’t preload the widget

We ask you to not preload the widget up in the background of the app as this causes unwanted load on our servers for every user of your app.

Integrating your app with the live chat widget

To auto log users in and set data on the user you can follow this article to find out more:

https://support.orlo.tech/integrating-your-website-with-our-live-chat-widget