vbphrase works in forum&blog navbar but not CMS navbar...?

[firebrand4]

Hello. I use Blueimp's AJAX Chat and a modified navbar to display the number of people in the chatroom. As you can see in the attached images, the count displays fine when I am in Forums or Blogs, but when I am in the CMS it doesn't display (showing just "Chat []" instead of "Chat [1]"). Can anyone help me figure out why?

Here's how I have it set up:

includes/functions.php

function render_navbar_template($navbits)
{
    global $vbulletin, $vbphrase;
$vbphrase['chatcount'] = count(getChatOnlineUserIDs());
[...]

Then in my style template for 'navbar':

    <li  class="selected"><a class="navtab" href="http://[site].com/chat/" target="_blank">Chat [{vb:rawphrase chatcount}]</a>
          [...]

And I don't think it matters, but here are the chat functions I define in functions.php immediately preceding the render_navbar_template function above:

function getChatInterface() {
    static $ajaxChat;
        // Path to the chat directory:
        if (!defined('AJAX_CHAT_PATH')) {
            if (empty($_SERVER['SCRIPT_FILENAME'])) {
                $_SERVER['SCRIPT_FILENAME'] = $_SERVER['DOCUMENT_ROOT'].$_SERVER['SCRIPT_URL'];
            }
            define('AJAX_CHAT_PATH', realpath(dirname($_SERVER['SCRIPT_FILENAME']).'/chat').'/');
        }


            // Include Class libraries:
           require_once(AJAX_CHAT_PATH.'lib/classes.php');

            // Initialize the chat interface:
          $ajaxChat = new CustomAJAXChatInterface();
    

    return $ajaxChat;
}

function getChatOnlineUsers() {
    $chatInterface = getChatInterface();
    if($chatInterface) {
        // Clean out any users who didn't log out properly by calling removeInactive()
        // Not necessary but a good idea. You can take out this line if you want.
        $chatInterface->removeInactive();
        // Now get the online users:
        
       return $chatInterface->getOnlineUsers();
    }
    else {
        return array();
    }
}

function getChatOnlineUserIDs() {
    return ($chatInterface = getChatInterface()) ? $chatInterface->getOnlineUserIDs() : array();
}

So I'm stumped on how to get this to display properly in the CMS navbar. How would it render differently between the CMS and the Forum/Blogs? Any help would be much appreciated!