Can I setup an Automatic Sign-In (SSO) version of WebChat?

WebChat supports the ability to automatically sign-in users to the widget on pages where you have already authenticated the user. This is accomplished by matching a single given piece of known customer information (e.g. email address, unique ID, MID) with information inside the Boomtown Platform to authenticate the Boomtown Customer Contact into the WebChat Integration. If that given information matches an existing Customer, Location, or Contact inside the Boomtown Platform, that Customer will be automatically signed into the WebChat Integration. 

WebChat SSO assumes that the page the widget is being embedded on has already been authenticated by your internal systems. If Web chat will be displayed to public, non-authenticated users, we recommend considering creating an additional integration that does not use SSO.

How do I configure Automatic Sign-In on a WebChat Integration?

Follow the steps below to define the customer information to use for matching customers to records inside the Boomtown Platform. 

1.  Go into Settings > Channel and open the WebChat Integration you want to enable SSO 
2. Go to the Configuration tab from the top menu
3. In the Customer Attribute field, select what properties to search when provided an SSO value. You can select one or more properties and Boomtown will automatically search all attributes to find the correct Customer to authenticate in
4. Click Save & Next to go to the Install Code page. Then follow the steps below to update your WebChat code snippet to support the SSO options you defined. 

How do I update my WebChat code snipped to support SSO?

Locate the WebChat code snipped on the Install Code screen of the WebChat integration. Near the end of the snippet, add an object property called "sso" with the value that is a unique identifying user property. For example, if you configured the WebChat integration to match the customer email, place the email address of the current authenticated user as the SSO value in the code snippet. 

Note about pre-loading the SSO value: The SSO value is embedded in the initialization of the WebChat and cannot be added after chat has already been initialized on the client's browser. We recommend inserting this value on the server before rendering the page. Advanced users may be able to override the initialization of Web Chat to dynamically fetch the information client-side (in the browser) if unable to obtain the SSO value ahead of time.

Example of Web Chat SSO code snippet

Below is an example of how to modify the WebChat code snippet to provide the SSO value and automatic sign-in of Customers into the Web Chat integration (modifications are highlighted in yellow). 

<script type="text/javascript">!function(e,t,n,o,a,c){window.WebConnect={},(a=t.createElement(n)).src="https://webchat.goboomtown.com/assets/webConnectChatBox.js",(c=t.getElementsByTagName(n)[0]).parentNode.insertBefore(a,c)}(window,document,"script"),window.onload=function(){WebConnect.configOptions({integrationId:"ABC123",partnerToken:"",partnerTeam:"ABC-123",apiHost:"https://api.goboomtown.com",frameSource:"https://webchat.goboomtown.com",sso:"<sso_param_here>"})};</script>

The code snippet above is an example of a WebChat integration. You'll need to modify the code snippet from your WebChat integration for the WebChat integration to work properly.