chat icon status and cache problem

[jnet]

My visitors keeps seeing me online when I am offline

this is cache problem. any Idea How can I stop it

thanks

[craigbrass]

Control + F5 forces refresh of the status.

[jnet]

Yes I know but visitors do not know they have to do that
and the image they see is mostly wrong.

ok this is a problem that I can solve

thanks

[craigbrass]

I have mentioned in the past it is rather annoying that this wasn't classed as a bug but please let me know how you solve it (as you said above you think you can).

[jnet]

I did not solve it and I know kayako will take 100 years to solve it so I just put a javascript reload in another page. the support section has the problem

did not and can not and will not be able to sove it. The more I use kayako
the more I sit down and wonder why is this software is still popular

[Jamie Edwards]

Hi jnet,

Under Settings->Live Support in the administrator control panel, disable the setting Cache HTML JavaScript Code - this should solve the issue you describe.

Caching of the JavaScript is a server load optimisation. However, if your visitor number is not high, you should not notice any difference by disabling this feature.

If left enabled, the JavaScript will be cached for 1 hour, according to SupportSuite's headerCache() function:

PHP Code:

/**
* Sends a Cache Header, Caches for next 1 hour
* http://www.w3.org/Protocols/rfc2616/rfc2616-sec13.html
*/
function  headerCache()
{
 header("Expires: ".gmdate("D, d M Y H:i:s", time()  + (3600 * 24))." GMT");
 header("Cache-Control: max-age=3600,  must-revalidate");  // must-revalidate is required because we want browser to  strictly follow our rules
} 


Note that if a cached icon is incorrect (i.e. shows Offline when staff are actually Online), clicking on the icon will take you to the correct area: if staff are actually online, you will still be put into a chat queue. Likewise if staff are offline, this visitor will be told this and asked to leave a message.

[jnet]

Thanks

But it makes my support area slow to load !
I just want the chat Icon to show correctly!

users have to know if I am online or offline before clicking!

Forgive me I do not want to be rude but who is going to click on an Icon which says I am offline to check to see I am actually online

I want my support to be cached and fast , nothing changes much in the kb
it is the chat Icon which changes all the time

[Jamie Edwards]

Hi jnet,

If you want caching, then you will have to accept to problems that caching will present - i.e. for a short time, data may be inconsistent.

[craigbrass]

I can think of a few ways how this could be easily sorted. Just cache the live chat status for 5 minutes in the database and then all the chat image is doing is checking to see if the value is current (less than 5 minutes since generation) and showing the status.

[Jamie Edwards]

How does this solve the JavaScript caching issue? With your suggested method, a database query would need to be executed on every page load, and 20KB of JavaScript downloaded again on each page load.

[jnet]

Guys just please find a solution. 99% of my KB remains the same
nothing specially changes it is only the chat icon

[craigbrass]

Easiest way would be to simply have a php file that you would add to the src of an image. This would do the database checking.

[jnet]

God bless you what is the code?

[Jamie Edwards]

Craig,

That is not a solution to the problem, and negates exactly what caching hopes to solve.

If you are OK with having the database queried on each page load, then the option is there to disable. If you are not supporting a large number of concurrent users, you shouldn't notice a performance impact.

[Chris Boulton]

Shouldn't it work something similar to this?

1. Support rep logs in to the application -> Operator is now online.

2. SupportSuite/LiveResponse writes this to a file on the server. (A cache file with the number of support reps online & the status, etc)

3. Visitor Javascript checks this cache to determine what image to show.

4. Support rep logs off -> No operators online.

5. Cache file is rebuilt.

6. Visitor Javascript checks this cache to determine what image to show. (once again)

-

By the way - assuming the query is structured correctly, it shouldn't be an issue to do a query on every page these days - but just cache it as I've described above.