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WHMCS Live Help Review


Si

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(1) If you use the web software, there is no sound telling you that users are requesting chat. It appears that it should work but it doesn't here either. I've found many users in the database who evidently waited and received no support.

 

We are aware of the issue within the WHMCS release and this will be resolved within a minor update shortly.

 

(2) One would think that if support doesn't pick up or is offline, you would have a link or redirection to the WHMCS help desk. Not only does this NOT happen when offline, clicking the link doesn't do anything if you don't want emails being sent and want users to properly take out tickets.

 

You can redirect the offline Live Help button to any URL within the settings. You would need to change the setting within the Windows application > Settings tab > Email > Offline URL Redirection to the URL of your ticketing page. Within a future update we will try have this automatically configured for WHMCS module installations.

 

(3) The desktop client now doesn't work reliably. I get incorrect server issues. The login via the web works but nothing I can do to solve the Windows client problem.

 

Can you please contact support at http://livehelp.stardevelop.com/kb/ticket/ and we will troubleshoot the issue. We have also fixed the issue with the contact form at http://livehelp.stardevelop.com/contact.htm Alternatively you can email us for support through the Live Help on our site or chat with us when we are online during business hours.

 

(4) There are links back to stardevelop on every single page. I think more thought went into littering the script with copyright notices,branding and linkbacks, which I didn't know was part of the deal when I purchased the software.

 

We will try work with Matt over the next few days to offer a discounted copyright removal option for owned licenses

 

(5) There are no templates to change the appearance of the software as one would think. A great deal of the software is encoded. What you see is what you get and very little you can do about it.

 

Templates are being worked on for the next major update. We will be supporting Smarty templates like WHMCS

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Stardevelop - thanks for your reply. With regard to pricing, I hope you can understand that those of us "first adopters" are stuck with this and that we should be given special accommodations. To be quite honest, I think many of us thought there was a more true integration and that we could customize the product like WHMCS - I certainly didn't expect the copyright issues, branding and complete lack of templates. I only had a chance to get to know how this fully worked a few weeks in and then discovered one thing after another, after thinking that I must have missed something. I've discovered these issues and, well, that's that. And considering what the other competitive script is offering at its price, I'm hoping you're reasonable. As many of us want to work with vendors who provide modules and options to WHMCS, allow us to help you help us.

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We are aware of the issue within the WHMCS release and this will be resolved within a minor update shortly.

 

 

 

You can redirect the offline Live Help button to any URL within the settings. You would need to change the setting within the Windows application > Settings tab > Email > Offline URL Redirection to the URL of your ticketing page. Within a future update we will try have this automatically configured for WHMCS module installations.

 

 

 

Can you please contact support at http://livehelp.stardevelop.com/kb/ticket/ and we will troubleshoot the issue. We have also fixed the issue with the contact form at http://livehelp.stardevelop.com/contact.htm Alternatively you can email us for support through the Live Help on our site or chat with us when we are online during business hours.

 

 

 

We will try work with Matt over the next few days to offer a discounted copyright removal option for owned licenses

 

 

 

Templates are being worked on for the next major update. We will be supporting Smarty templates like WHMCS

 

Some concerns/problems which I think are of top priority.

 

* Visitors are sometimes labeled as Guest even though they insert the correct credentials.

 

* I have noticed that people on wireless connections usually drop out after the first response has been made. This has to be one of the most annoying aspects of this software, not only frustrates the end user but the provider.

 

* For a paid product I wouldn't have worried about the fancy images, please focus on the functionality.

 

It is rare to see an update provided from StarDevelop in regards to there software, I have been a customer outside of WHMCS for a very long time, I hope these things are fixed because I am really considering moving to a free option where these problems do not occur.

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That's not how it works. The admin chat window only shows the client related links when the user has logged in and authenticated to the WHMCS client area. It wouldn't therefore be possible for people to impersonate others simply by matching the email address of a client in the StarDevelop Live Help window.

 

Matt,

 

you mis-read my post.... I was following up on the many people who have asked that we have the access to the account information by email because only a mere 20% actually log into whmcs before using the chat... so the whole idea of having integrated info is pretty much useless as the system currently exists.

 

Of coarse as many have stated if we "loosened" the current method to show the customer information based on the email address they enter "like kayako does" this would cause a security concern because anyone could put anyones email address in to impersonate them.

 

What I was proposing is to allow for this loose integration while still providing security was that when a user comes to chat and enters an email address that is already part of the system. then we present them with a login box prior to transferring them to an agent.

 

THis makes sure that the agents have the information required to support the 80% that normally do not log in prior to opening a chat.

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  • 2 weeks later...

Crikey blimey, seems and sounds like StarDevelop havent changed their ways after all these years...

I just bought this addon the other day, tried to install it and am having problems even getting past the installation and its "Invalid licence" screen to login...

 

Before you ask, yes, I have tried everything suggested, even re-installed my own licence key, but nothing.

 

Reading over this lot, I think I'll remove it in favour of livezilla which I have been testing on another website, and its free, and is years ahead of StarDevelops software. I actually was a stardevelop customer several years ago and the exact same problems I'm reading about here, are the same things I experienced several years ago.

 

I for one, certainly do NOT want our live chat covered in StarDevelop, or anybody elses branding, nor have to cough out another small fortune to remove it either...

 

Bummer...

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Crikey blimey, seems and sounds like StarDevelop havent changed their ways after all these years...

 

What would you expect from a Microsoft Gold Partner? (Just kidding, StarDevelop!) :lol:

 

Reading over this lot, I think I'll remove it in favour of livezilla which I have been testing on another website, and its free/B]

 

You're right that it's free to use if you leave their copyright in place, but if you do that then it looks flakey IMHO. For instance, I went in to chat with a company who sells a ticket plugin replacement for the WHMCS built-in system. They market themselves against Kayako and their software is very slick, but it really turned me off that they use Livezilla. First thought that came to mind was "can they not afford a paid solution?"

 

and is years ahead of StarDevelops software

 

I'm sorry but how is it you know this? You said that you weren't able to get into the program because of a license glitch, so I'm just wondering if your comparison is fair?

 

I for one, certainly do NOT want our live chat covered in StarDevelop, or anybody elses branding, nor have to cough out another small fortune to remove it either...

 

Does this mean that you're paying for Livezilla's unbranded version (Remove LiveZilla Backlink: 44.90€ for 1 Server incl. VAT)? If so, how is it fair to call it "free" in your case?

 

I hope that my response to your post comes across as a healthy debate because I am certainly not married to StarDevelop's Live Help. We do like it, but it is not without the occasional glitch. We did try Livezilla unbranded but my support techs were split on which they preferred so I made the decision to go back to Stardevelop's solution.

 

Anyway, there you have it.

 

Cheers,

Rick

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Hi Rick

 

I should indeed have been a lot clearer here, what I mean by free is, you dont have to stump up any cash to find out if its any-good, you can use it, try it for as long as you like, and sure, if you want the branding removed, its a SMALL fee (Half the live help install cost) and its not riddled with branding all over it...

 

I've been using and testing all sorts of scripts for the web over the last 10 years and some of the greatest scripts have often been a micture of both paid for, and free, often the free scripts with paid-for options turn out to be fantastic, and livezilla seems to be one of them, including its desktop application, but also that its brandable, supports webcams too, and is customisable (Did I spell that right?)

 

By years ahead, what I should have said was, they still seem to be years behind, as other chat software I have tried and tested, all allow you to customise your chat software, brand it, remove branding for reasonable costs, pretty much what livezilla does, but livezilla so far, seems to be the most server efficient in terms of live chat scrits eating up server resources.

 

Typically, a lot of hosts ban chat-room scripts due to the high resource usage these things can typically generate, but livezilla seems to be practically a non-event in that department, and I've also recomended it to customers who were using various other chat scripts with their shopping carts that we had to ask them to stop using because of such problems, and ever since, have also heard nothing but good things about it.

 

I dont use it myself, just yet, but I have it installed on my wifes store, and she has been using it for about a year now, and is very happy with it... Anyway, not wanting to rave on about that, I did use to be a LiveHelp customer several years ago, but am dismayed to find that they still dont allow customising, and branding removal cost is bonkers!

 

I just wish I had read over this lot before buying it, but me being me, saw it and though "hmm, if WHMCS have got involved, it must be better by now, and just bought it, kind of like "Recommendation by association" I guess you might say...

 

The problems I faced with it when I last used it were the same problems it seems people are having here with it, still, I had the same issues with sounds, alerts, wi-fi drop outs for visitors and the branding removal costs, thus just dumped it completely....

 

I hope that sort of explains it a bit better?

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I hope that sort of explains it a bit better?

 

That explains it a lot better my friend, and I can agree with all that you've stated save for the errors. We purchased Live Help years ago, directly from StarDevelop, so instead of purchasing via the WHMCS link it was simply a matter of logging in to StarDevelop's client area and downloading the latest release for server and desktops. It was easy enough to integrate with WHMCS following StarDevelop's blog post. Hmm, I wonder if the release made specifically for WHMCS uses a different code base?

 

Livezilla is of course a great product. All of us using Live Help do miss the Region/City drill-down of Livezilla's Geo Location feature (Live Help just gives a country flag).

 

Thank you for your detailed explanation, Richie. I can certainly understand your licensing issue frustration and I would demand my money back if that happened to us.

 

Cheers mate,

Rick

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Thanks Rick

 

Anybody know how to email stardevelop, because both the livechat, AND contact form on their website dont look like they work, you fill in your email, give all the info, enter the security code and hit send message, and all that happens is the page refreshes, with all your details still filled in, asking for the security code again....

 

??

 

EDIT: Scratch that, I just noticed after trying to submit the form 4 times, that it does actually show a message, in the same black fonts, ABOVE the form saying email sent.... Boy is that NOT obvious...

 

Anybody / Matt

Is there any official uninstall for this to remove any database items it creates upon install?

Edited by Richie
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Anybody / Matt

Is there any official uninstall for this to remove any database items it creates upon install?

 

I'm not sure if such a utility exists, but you could fire up phpMyAdmin and load your WHMCS database, back it up, then put a tick mark in each box that begins with "modlivehelp_" and then drop those tables.

 

All the best,

Anybody :)

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  • 2 weeks later...

WHMCS control the Live Help licensing so you would need to contact their support in regards to any licensing issues. And as John posted above, they have an update for that which they can provide via a ticket.

 

We are currently preparing v3.90 of the Live Help software and this will include city level location information (requires a separate download of the MaxMind GeoCity Lite database) and also Smarty templates like WHMCS uses. We expect this release to be available to WHMCS customers later in January.

 

We are listing to all feedback and appreciate all the great suggestions.

 

We did have some problems with contact forms on our web site over Christmas / New Year that took longer to get resolved that we expected. Please also remember that you can contact us directly via. a support ticket at http://livehelp.stardevelop.com/kb/ticket/ or request a Live Help chat.

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I'm not sure if such a utility exists, but you could fire up phpMyAdmin and load your WHMCS database, back it up, then put a tick mark in each box that begins with "modlivehelp_" and then drop those tables.

 

Yes, currently you would need to manually delete the WHMCS database tables starting with "modlivehelp_" You can then delete the whmcs/modules/livehelp/ directory and also remove the /whmcs/includes/hooks/livehelp.php file.

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WHMCS control the Live Help licensing so you would need to contact their support in regards to any licensing issues. We have reached out to WHMCS to see if the licensing issue in related to any of the new WHMCS releases, as I believe the licensing is tied into WHMCS.

 

We are currently preparing v3.90 of the Live Help software and this will include city level location information (requires a separate download of the MaxMind GeoCity Lite database) and also Smarty templates like WHMCS uses. We expect this release to be available to WHMCS customers later in January.

 

We are listing to all feedback and appreciate all the great suggestions.

 

We did have some problems with contact forms on our web site over Christmas / New Year that took longer to get resolved that we expected. Please also remember that you can contact us directly via. a support ticket at http://livehelp.stardevelop.com/kb/ticket/ or request a Live Help chat.

Thanks, I'm still £9 out of pocket for the iphone app that both Apple nor yourselves seem able to refund? If neither can refund it, who gets the money?

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Thanks, I'm still £9 out of pocket for the iphone app that both Apple nor yourselves seem able to refund? If neither can refund it, who gets the money?

 

Sorry, Apple doesn't give us access to refund App Store purchases. You need to contact the App store support for a refund and they should be able to credit your iTunes account for you. Apple doesn't even give us access to see what iTunes accounts purchased the Live Help iPhone app.

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Told you already, via email, been there, tried that, didnt work, they wont refund it, saying I have to contact you guys, which I already told you guys via email, and got this exact same response to...

 

Going in circles, getting nowhere, somebody has my £9 though!

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Told you already, via email, been there, tried that, didnt work, they wont refund it, saying I have to contact you guys, which I already told you guys via email, and got this exact same response to...

 

Going in circles, getting nowhere, somebody has my £9 though!

 

Email us your Apple Store ID again or the email address you have used to contact us previously and we will see if we can contact them to get it sorted. I believe the App Store was closed over Christmas for developers so we should be able to contact Apple now.

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I love Livezilla. Too bad that a web or mobile version is a long time coming, if ever. It is a great product and what I am using right now instead of Stardevelop for the moment. It's rock solid and very reliable. Hopefully SD will put out something new that will have made the investment worthwhile.

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don't mean to steal your thread op,

but since you all are speaking of star developer live chat.

 

I was wondering if anyone used the iPhone app?

 

Would love to hear your feedbacks.

 

Currently using livezilla, even though its a freeware and its great, however looking into star developer DUE to the mobile app.

 

Livezilla is going to take forever to get a mobile chat and they have no plans for it yet.

 

Live help by star developer might not HAVE all features like livezilla but the mobile app is something a MUST for me.

 

So would love to hear any feedback of the iphone app if anyone tested it out.

 

multitask ? push notifications? disconnects? etc

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don't mean to steal your thread op,

but since you all are speaking of star developer live chat.

 

I was wondering if anyone used the iPhone app?

 

Would love to hear your feedbacks.

 

Currently using livezilla, even though its a freeware and its great, however looking into star developer DUE to the mobile app.

 

Livezilla is going to take forever to get a mobile chat and they have no plans for it yet.

 

Live help by star developer might not HAVE all features like livezilla but the mobile app is something a MUST for me.

 

So would love to hear any feedback of the iphone app if anyone tested it out.

 

multitask ? push notifications? disconnects? etc

 

The iPhone app will support fast app switching and notifications for incoming chats. The notifications will appear when the Live Help iPhone app is closed on your iPhone. Full muti-tasking is not available with our software due to the restrictions Apple have on the multi-tasking and the limited multi-tasking options available don't work well with the design of our software.

 

We would love to hear any other features you would like to see in our software as well.

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The iPhone app will support fast app switching and notifications for incoming chats. The notifications will appear when the Live Help iPhone app is closed on your iPhone. Full muti-tasking is not available with our software due to the restrictions Apple have on the multi-tasking and the limited multi-tasking options available don't work well with the design of our software.

 

We would love to hear any other features you would like to see in our software as well.

 

is there any hotkeys or any pre-welcoming msg?

 

I think these can be set in the windows app, but how about the phone?

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