Installation

Overview

Kommunicate is live chat and chatbots powered customer support software. Kommunicate allows you to add customizable live chat SDK to your Android apps. It enables you to chat with your app users and customers through a customizable chat interface.

Installing Kommunicate in your Android app is easy and fast. We will walk you through the procedure so you can start answering your support queries within a few minutes.

Installation

Add the following in your app build.gradle dependency:

implementation 'io.kommunicate:kommunicate:1.8.6'

Building with ProGuard

If you are using ProGuard in your application, then add the below rules to your proguard-rules.pro file:

#keep JSON classes                
-keepclassmembernames class * extends com.applozic.mobicommons.json.JsonMarker {
    !static !transient <fields>;
}

-keepclassmembernames class * extends com.applozic.mobicommons.json.JsonParcelableMarker {
    !static !transient <fields>;
}

#GSON Config          
-keepattributes Signature          
-keep class sun.misc.Unsafe { *; }           
-keep class com.google.gson.examples.android.model.** { *; }            
-keep class org.eclipse.paho.client.mqttv3.logging.JSR47Logger { *; } 
-keep class android.support.** { *; }
-keep interface android.support.** { *; }
-dontwarn android.support.v4.**
-keep public class com.google.android.gms.* { public *; }
-dontwarn com.google.android.gms.**
-keep class com.google.gson.** { *; }

Get your APP_ID

Sign up for Kommunicate to get your APP_ID. You will get the APP_ID from the Install section. This APP_ID is used to create/launch conversations.

Initialize SDK

After the Gradle sync is finished with Kommunicate dependency, you can initialize the SDK by calling the below method:

 Kommunicate.init(context, APP_ID);

You can initialize the SDK in onCreate() function of your Activity. Just make sure it is initialized before accessing any method from the Kommuniate SDK.

Launch chat

Kommunicate provides KMChatBuilder class to create and launch chat directly. This way, you can save the extra steps of authentication, creation, initialization and launch. You can customize the process by building the launchChat object according to your requirements.

Here is the list of parameters along with the methods you can pass in KMChatBuilder to customize the chat according to your requirements:

Note: The parameters should be passed as arguments in the methods.

Parameter	Parameter type	Method	Description
context	Activity	new KmChatBuilder(<context>)	Passed in the constructor. Only Activity Context is accepted. Exception is thrown otherwise
APP_ID	String	setApplicationId(<APP_ID>)	Ignore if you have already initialized the SDK with APP_ID
kmUser	KMUser	setKmUser(<kmUser>)	If you have user details, you can pass them here. Ignore if you do not have user details.
withPreChat	boolean	setWithPreChat(<withPreChat>)	Pass true if you would like the user to fill the details (such as name, email and phone etc.) before starting the chat. If you already have user details, then you can pass false.
isSingleChat	boolean	setSingleChat(<isSingleChat>)	Pass false if you would like to create new conversation every time a particular user starts a chat. This is true by default which means only one conversation will open for the user every time the user starts a chat.
agentList	List<String>	setAgentIds(<agentList>)	Pass the list of human agents. The agent IDs would be the email IDs of your team members which they used to register on Kommunicate. Otherwise, you can ignore it if you want to assign the conversation to the default agent.
botList	List<String>	setBotIds(<botList>)	Pass the list of bots. In Kommunicate dashboard, go to the Bots section -> Integrated bots -> Copy botID. Otherwise ignore if you haven't integrated any bots
deviceToken	String	setDeviceToken(<deviceToken>)	Pass the deviceToken (Push notification token) obtained from FirebaseInstanceIdListener. Refer here for more details.
metadata	Map<String, String>	setMetadata(<metadata>)	This metadata, if set, will be sent with all the messages sent from that device. Also, this metadata will be set to all the conversations created from that device.
callback	KmCallback	launchChat(<callback>) OR createChat(<callback>)	Callback to notify Success or Failure

The difference between launchChat and createChat is that launchChat will launch the chat after creating it, whereas createChat will only create the chat and won't launch it.

Below are some examples of how you can customize the builder for launching a single chat thread. If you want to create a new chat every time then call .setSingleChat(false) on the builder. Note that, if you are doing so, the chat history will not be retained.

Launch chat for visitors:

If you would like to launch the chat directly without the visiting user entering any details, then use the builder as below:

       new KmChatBuilder(context).launchChat(new KmCallback() {
                        @Override
                        public void onSuccess(Object message) {
                            Utils.printLog(MainActivity.this, "ChatTest", "Success : " + message);
                        }

                        @Override
                        public void onFailure(Object error) {
                            Utils.printLog(MainActivity.this, "ChatTest", "Failure : " + error);
                        }
                    });

If you want to assign the chat to particluar human agents or have bots available then use the builder with agentList and botList parameters:

List<String> agentList = new ArrayList();
agentList.add("<AGENT_ID>"); // Add the agentID. The agent ID would be the email ID of your team member which they used to register on Kommunicate.

List<String> botList = new ArrayList();
botList.add("<BOT_ID>"); // Go to Bots section(https://dashboard.kommunicate.io/bot) -> Integrated bots -> Copy botID 

      new KmChatBuilder(context).setAgentIds(agentList).setBotIds(botList).launchChat(new KmCallback() {
                        @Override
                        public void onSuccess(Object message) {
                            Utils.printLog(MainActivity.this, "ChatTest", "Success : " + message);
                        }

                        @Override
                        public void onFailure(Object error) {
                            Utils.printLog(MainActivity.this, "ChatTest", "Failure : " + error);
                        }
                    });

Launch chat for visitors with pre-chat lead collection forms:

If you need the user to fill in details such as name, email and phone number before starting the chat then launch the chat with withPreChat flag as true. In this case, you wouldn't need to pass the kmUser details.

A screen would open up for the user asking for the details. Once the user fills the valid details (at least either email or phone number is required), the chat would be launched. Use the builder as below:

     new KmChatBuilder(MainActivity.this).setWithPreChat(true).launchChat(new KmCallback() {
                        @Override
                        public void onSuccess(Object message) {
                            Utils.printLog(MainActivity.this, "ChatTest", "Success : " + message);
                        }

                        @Override
                        public void onFailure(Object error) {
                            Utils.printLog(MainActivity.this, "ChatTest", "Failure : " + error);
                        }
                    });

Launch chat with existing user:

If you already have the user details then create a KMUser object using the details and launch the chat. Use the builder as below to create KMUser object with already existing details:

    KMUser user = new KMUser();
    user.setUserId(userId); // Pass a unique key
    user.setImageLink(image-url); // Optional

Then pass this user object to the setKmUser method as below:

new KmChatBuilder(MainActivity.this).setKmUser(user).launchChat(new KmCallback() {
                        @Override
                        public void onSuccess(Object message) {
                            Utils.printLog(MainActivity.this, "ChatTest", "Success : " + message);
                        }

                        @Override
                        public void onFailure(Object error) {
                            Utils.printLog(MainActivity.this, "ChatTest", "Failure : " + error);
                        }
                    });

If you have a different use-case and would like to customize the chat creation, user creation and chat launch, you can explore our docs further.