Real-Time Chat and Presence Monitoring
PheedLoop's real-time chat and presence monitoring systems are fast and flexible, designed to speed up conversations, and provide more context-aware networking opportunities. We're constantly rolling out new updates and features to make the real-time chat and presence monitoring systems even more enjoyable and effective given how popular they are among attendees and event planners. In this article, we discuss some of the key aspects of the systems, and some frequently asked questions.
In general, the chat and presence area is present throughout the entire PheedLoop virtual event experience and adapts depending on the specific location an attendee is at within the portal. This allows attendees to experience highly context-aware conversation and networking abilities and even enables options such as Q&A in sessions or sales conversations in exhibitor booths. Presence monitoring allows attendees to always know who else is around experiencing the same thing they are, which lends itself to a feeling of collaboration and ability to spark private conversations.
Moderating or Deleting Chats
Chat messages can be deleted after they have been posted by event administrators, they cannot be moderated or filtered before being posted. Chat messages can only be deleted in public areas such as the lobby, sessions, and exhibits. In order to delete chat messages, you must log in to the virtual event portal with your event administrator account (i.e. the account you log in to your dashboard with). Once logged in, simply click on the small "x" symbol inside any public chat message, and the message will be instantly deleted including on the screens for any other attendee currently viewing the chat messages (a page refresh is not required). Chat messages can not be deleted in bulk (unless you remove the location altogether, such as deleting a session or exhibit), and cannot be recovered once deleted.
Hiding Chat and Presence Monitoring in Sessions or Exhibits
There are a few options when it comes to hiding chat and/or presence monitoring in your virtual event portal's sessions or exhibits. To toggle either of the two functions for all sessions or all exhibits, check or uncheck the following options under Experiences > Virtual in your dashboard:
- Enable Session Chat Widgets
- Enable Session Presence List
- Enable Exhibit Chat Widgets
- Enable Exhibit Presence List
Sometimes you may want to turn off chat and presence monitoring for specific sessions or exhibits. In order for this to work, the global settings must be turned on (i.e. the options listed above must be checked). Then, you can override the visibility of the chat and presence monitoring for specific sessions (together, both will be hidden) by unchecking the option called Enable Virtual Chat for a specific session via the Sessions module in your dashboard. Similarly, you can uncheck the option called Enable Virtual Booth Chat for a specific exhibitor via the Exhibitors module in your dashboard to hide the functions for a specific exhibit.
These functions cannot be hidden in the lobby.
Presence Monitoring Update Cycle
The attendees listed in the live presence monitoring tab are updated to track whether they are online and available at that particular location or not every 60 seconds, on average.
Rich Text Support for Chat Messages
PheedLoop supports emojis (emoji picker built-in) and links in chat messages. This is a great way for attendees to express themselves, and link out to external resources. Any links which are clicked on open in a new tab and do not redirect attendees from their current view in the virtual event portal.
Unable to See Chat or Presence Widget
If you are not seeing the widget for chat and presence monitoring at all, you may be on a smaller screen size such as a mobile phone or a shrunken window. These functions are hidden on smaller screen dimensions as the virtual event portal is designed to primarily serve view-only experiences for smaller devices at this time.
If you are seeing the widget for chat and presence monitoring but not seeing any content in either (and you are certain content should be present there), then you may have a firewall or network restriction preventing PheedLoop's real-time features from properly functioning. Please try a different network, firewall configuration, or browser to isolate the issue.
Exporting Chats
Chat messages can be exported on a per session and per exhibitor basis. To do this, navigate to Data and Reports > Session Virtual Chat Data or Exhibitor Virtual Chat Data.