Chat Modifications - Envolve Chat Integration Module

About the Envolve Chat Plugin
This module will connect your vBulletin forum to Envolve chat. Envolve is a chat toolbar similar to Facebook's chat bar that allows your users to have group and one-on-one chats with each other while browsing your forums.

This mod requires an API key from Envolve in order to function. Visit http://www.envolve.com to get one. A free version is available that provides a full feature set for up to 25 concurrent users. Higher numbers of chatters require a paid account.

This mod integrates your forum's account system with Envolve so that when users are logged into your vBulletin site it also logs them into the chat. In addition, it integrates your profile pictures / avatars and profile information. With the 2.0 release of the mod, other users can now view your profile information and get a link to your profile simply by placing their mouse over your name.

The Envolve chat system is a rich solution for community chat. Some of its features include group chat (both public and private), one-on-one chat, the ability to pop chats out into their own windows, moderation controls (boot / block / ban / timed ban), chat message translation, resizable chat windows, chat sharing, and drag-and-drop chat invitations. As a hosted solution, all chat traffic is handled by Envolve's servers and will not place any additional load on your server.

Installation:
Detailed installation instructions can be found here:
https://www.envolve.com/docs/vbulletin-chat-plugin.html. They are also provided in the Readme.txt file.
You can see and try out the chat at http://www.envolve.com.

This version of the mod will work for both vBulletin 4.x and vBulletin 3.8.x.

Screenshots:
Here the "People List" can be seen open in the lower right hand corner of the page. This shows all users who are currently viewing the forum. This site owner has chosen to only allow logged-in users to chat.


Here a public group chat has been opened, and the user has moused-over another user to see his profile information.


Here a user is creating a new group chat that will be shown to the other users on the site. He has also "popped-out" the "General" chat into its own window.

[andrew.lee]

@Kaelon - Thanks for the suggestion! Right now we're setting all Moderators and Admins as chat admins. I've heard similar feedback from other people that a separate "chat admins" group would be desirable. I'll look into doing that.

@MagiKelly - Your signup came through as an upgrade rather than as a new customer which is why it charged you. I refunded that and gave you the 15 day trial. Also - could you shoot me an email so we can get that popout issue resolved? I'm not aware of any problems with popouts in IE. What version are you running? Perhaps you have a popup blocker running?

[carlreed]

I just bought the Pro version of this app and I'm really impressed. Here's what I've done with it:

Customized the skin to match my forums theme and it blends in really nice.
Integrated it with my forum so users sign into chat automatically.
I got rid of the public chat option.

And now I have my own Facebook style chat on my forum

[MagiKelly]

I've had this installed for a few days now so here are my thoughts.

I have the paid version so can have up to 25 people logged in at a time. For the money is is not enough. I have a fairly small forum but still the chat is full even when no one is actually chatting. Either the number of logged in members needs to be increased (probably doubled to 50) or there needs to be an admin option to have the chat turned off as the default for members so that only members who actually want to chat will turn it on and not fill up the available spaces. Another option would be to allow up to 25 people actually in the chat and chatting not just logged in automatically. Once 25 people are in general chat or private chats it could give a full notice.

I do not want to sound too negative as the the mod itself is very good it is just priced too high. To upgrade another level to get 75 members logged in would be a cost that I could get hosting for and probably more than VBulletin costs me for a year. In fact it is already probably close to that cost and this is for only one or two people to actually be chatting. The chat being full is very misleading as it is only an indication of how busy the forum is with members not how busy the chat is.

[andrew.lee]

Thanks for the feedback MagiKelly! Are you displaying the chat to everyone or just to logged-in users or admins? Would it be helpful if we provided more granular controls over got to see the chat and who didn't?

[MagiKelly]

I have the chat set to be only visible to logged in members. My forum has a little over 8000 members but probably only about 1200 active members (members logged in in a month). The norm would be for between 20 to 70 ish members logged in depending on time of day, however, I will be amazed if I ever have even as many as 10 in total in active chats at ny time. Generally there will be no one chatting with only a few people using it each day, that is why I would not consider an upgraded account.

Even in the short time I have had this runnig I have had the situation where 25 members have been allocated to chat but none want to and another member wants to chat but can't as they are getting the full message. This is really annoying to have a full message when in truth no one is actually using the option.

Being able to restrict it to fewer groups would not really be of any use to me as the people who use the chat are going to be few but spread over the range of groups. The changes that would work for me are having the chat set to off as default with the people willing to chat switchg it on.

The other option is for the limit to be set for the people actually in chat. So all members show up as available but once a set number are in chat rooms no one can enter an existing room or create a new chat. With this set up I would still pay the same money as I do now for a much lesser total, say 10 users active as a maximum.

[andrew.lee]

Thanks for the thorough feedback @MagiKelly!

[ahmedipa]

so nice thank you very much

[dprice]

Great add-on. Still havent decided on whether or not to move to the paid version. Few questions for you:

1. Don't see a way to turn this ON/OFF from the admincp. Coming in the future?
2. Is it possible to force individuals to SIGN IN either as a guest or through FB/TWITTER etc before the chat window becomes active? I have noticed that users will have a GUEST WILL or GUEST NINA etc etc. Does this rectify itself in the paid version via single sign on?
3. I have noticed that the previous chats window on the far left will show old chats that are no longer active even if the chat window is closed out. Is that controlled on your server and does it eventually time out and disappear?

Thanks in advance...so far, I like it..

[andrew.lee]

Dprice - Thanks for getting in touch! Let me answer your questions:

1) We don't have an enable / disable checkbox from the admincp at the moment. You can restrict who it gets displayed to though (admins, logged-in users, or everyone) using a dropdown in the Envolve Chat settings. An enable / disable feature could be added in the future though if it would be helpful.

2) Yes! We allow you to display the chat to everyone but require users to login to actually participate. We even allow you to set a "grace period" for guest users so they can start chatting a little bit before signing in. We can then direct those users to *your* sign-in page so that they can register for a new account. This way we can help you get more registered users. We also provide single sign-on so that the chat automatically picks up your vBulletin usernames and your users don't have to sign in seperately. Both of these features require a paid account.

3) That list shows chats that you have closed that are still "active" on the site. These chats will time out eventually, or if you are an admin (and logged into envolve as such... again, you'll need single sign on to do this automatically) then you'll have the option of removing the chat entirely when you close it. It will then not be shown publicly anymore.

You might want to poke around our admin panel to see all the options. www.envolve.com/admin (click on "My Sites" to edit your site's options)
There's also a dropdown in the vBulletin options (where you entered the API key) where you can select who to display the chat to.

Hope that helps!

[Pvtiste]

Installed and 5 stars!
Really nice customer service aswell
Thanks Andrew!

Just a quick question, when I try to upload a file there is a popup opened and your toolbar hide the buttons "insert inline" and "close"

Thanks again!