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.

[sailnet]

we have a paid envolve account but I'm about ready to remove it due to a disturbing trend that been occurring on out site. People are showing up and annoying the women on our website. creeps are creating accounts who are not posting anything but finding the women members of our site and then sending them annoying and offensive messages in the chat area.

I would like to restrict chat to people who only have a certain minimum number of posts but there is no way to do that in the envolve intergration.

groups in vbulletin cannot be assigned by number of posts and you can only restrict chat access by group not by rank (which can be based on # of posts).

[VHLinks]

The chat works good, but doesn't recognize additional usergroups to give them access to the chat. The only way it works is if you change their primary usergroup to something new for the chat only and that just seems silly. It needs to recognize the additional usergroups for the chat.

[bada_bing]

OK so I have installed this on our site but I cant seem to get the usergroup setting. For example I want to setup a chat room for my staff only to view and use for discussion, I also want to add additional chat rooms but this does not seem to work.

For example I want to create a chat room called moms only I do this
Chat Name: moms only
Group: Registered Users

but this group however doesn't even show up

As to creating a staff only group for usergroups administrator, moderator and supermod, how do I do that if I want to call the chat room Staff Chat ?

[bada_bing]

I have disabled this plugin until some of the details are worked out.

Another question, can members control who they see or can be seen by. For example the facebook only shows your friends that are online, what are some of the privacy settings of this mod? If no privacy settings are included this will be a deal killer for most people that want to respect the privacy of their members

[RFViet]

After signing up a free account with API key and importing the plug-in product. I still don't see the chat box or chat room yet

[Goomzee]

i installed this and works fine but i don't understand why i can't chat with my forums members

[sailnet]

has anyone else besides myself and these guys had to recently turn off envolve because their .js file is generating alert warning from Norton/Symantec?

http://www.naxja.org/forum/showthread.php?p=245913636

???

[BirdOPrey5]

Envolve is shutting down.

I'm writing to inform you that the Envolve chat service will be shutting down on September 30th. Read on for details and what replacements for Envolve are available.

We’ve chosen to sunset Envolve in order to focus entirely on Firebase, our developer platform. Over the last 3 years, Firebase has grown tremendously and is now the focus of our engineering team and business. As a result, we haven't been able to give enough attention and maintainance to Envolve.

After some careful deliberation, we reached the conclusion that our Envolve customers will be better served by switching to another chat service. This was a difficult decision for us, but we believe it is the best outcome for everyone. Other chat services are now more full-featured, are better maintained, and have support on more platforms.

Therefore, on September 30th, 2014, all Envolve services will be discontinued. The chat widget will no longer load, and you will no longer be able to log in to the Envolve.com website. To ensure your continued privacy, we will be deleting all account information and chat histories at this time as well.
If you've been happy with Envolve and want to continue with a drop-in chat solution for your site, we recommend switching to ChatCat (Live Demo). ChatCat is a new service designed to replace Envolve. It's currently in beta and you can sign up immediately on the ChatCat website. Email support@chatcat.io for detailed instructions on how to get started. The beta will be opening to the public on September 22nd.
We think you'll find ChatCat a great replacement that provides the same easy installation and a similar interface to Envolve. Note that ChatCat is operated independently and is not affiliated with our company.

If you’re a software engineer and would prefer a fully custom chat solution, we recommend trying FireChat, our Firebase-powered open-source chat module, or using Firebase directly to build your own chat solution.

If you're a paying customer, you should have already received another email from us at the end of August notifying you that your subscription was canceled and your credit card would not be charged again.

Thank you for being a loyal user! We sincerely appreciate your support and feedback over the last 4 years. We want to make this transition as smooth as possible, so please email us at support@envolve.com if you have any questions.

Happy chatting,

Andrew, James and the Envolve Team