Going interactive with hosting notifications

[twhiting9275]

Greetings,

I'm not sure whether this belongs in this specific  community  or not, but I'll let mods decide on that.

One of the things I'm exploring doing with a current mod (for WHMCS) is working with WhatsApp. Since they've enabled a 'business' API and platform, it's possible for customers to message that and get messages back. I've got this already partially integrated into the addon (invoices created, ticket replies, etc) so the customer (and admins) will get notified. That part is easy.

The not so 'easy' part of this is understanding a way to make this more 'creative', more engaging, so that the customer would have the ability to interact as it were. Not looking for 'how to' (that's already covered, too), but more'what', and gauging interest here. I have a few ideas that I'll be implementing in the next few days, but need more input on basic ideas. So far, I've come up with one line command (ideas) :

invoices - open invoices
tickets - tickets awaiting your response
domains - domains needing renewal (maybe)
credit - credit available on account (maybe)

Security won't be that much of an issue I don't think. Client will have to login to their account manually, enable WA on their account, and add the # to their account.
Additionally, admins will have the ability to turn each of these (and the global 'bot') on / off at will

Any other ideas on what commands I might add? Input? Is this something you'd find useful from your provider?

Edited September 18, 2019 by twhiting9275

[brian!]

doesn't a similar addon already exist... ?

[twhiting9275]

8 minutes ago, brian! said:

doesn't a similar addon already exist... ?

The addon existing isn't really the point. Competition is healthy for a market.

The app I've developed has been around long before this was thought of. At one time I thought of putting WA in it myself, but that was before they had the business options to do so. Those only came around last year.

The point of the thread (why this is in general, not ideas, etc) is to get feedback on the options available and obtain more input on whether or not this would be useful to  both end customers and businesses

[Kian]

1 hour ago, twhiting9275 said:

invoices - open invoices
tickets - tickets awaiting your response
domains - domains needing renewal (maybe)
credit - credit available on account (maybe)

Here's my list:

• Replace LiveChat with WA 😛
• Two-Factor authentication using "randomly" generated codes sent via WA. No more costs for SMS and phone calls
• Consolidated reminders about services and domains that expire next month
• Marketing use (opt-in users only). Send latest news, blog posts, promos and stuff like that. It would be great if it supports Open Graph protocol so that users receive a thumbnail with URL and text on WA. Users can opt-out anytime by replying "stfu" 🤣
• Notify me when google.com becomes available
• Notify me when I login/logout with hostname, IP and location
• Dropshipping... it's complicated
• Chatbot. "Register google.com" "Confirm?" "Yes" "10 euro charged in your account. Your credit balance is now 990 euro" OR "Renew google.com" "Not enough credit. Your balance is 2 euro... you suck"

Don't kill my dreams!

Edited September 18, 2019 by Kian

[twhiting9275]

6 minutes ago, Kian said:

Here's my list:

•  

I appreciate the feedback, thank you!

Replace LiveChat with WA 
   Might be possible? I'll have to look into that.  It'd definitely take some tweaking of the current addon to do so

Two-Factor authentication using "randomly" generated codes sent via WA. No more costs for SMS and phone calls
  Definitely doable, but why with Google Auth integrated in 7.8?

Consolidated reminders about services and domains that expire next month
   The addon already sends individual notices and reminders when invoices are generated to other channels, so that's not an issue 🙂

Notify me when I login/logout with hostname, IP and location
   I had though about adding that into the addon itself, but since it's available through a public mod here (free) not sure how useful. Since I'm retooling the addon's client UI anyways, maybe I'll reconsider that 🙂

Chatbot
   I had thought about adding invoice payment, credit adding through the bot itself. Not sure if I want to go about doing that though because of legality and liability stuff.  Not adverse to it, but this is one of those very, very grey areas. Sure, it'll be secure, but tracking that order in case of fraud reports, etc, might get a bit ugly.

 

[Kian]

3 minutes ago, twhiting9275 said:

  Definitely doable, but why with Google Auth integrated in 7.8?

I keep living in the past... and I'm a developer... what a shame 😑

4 minutes ago, twhiting9275 said:

because of legality and liability stuff

Last time I googled "Can I develop a chatbot for WA?" there was a section in their terms and conditions with a big 🖕 Is it still like this?

[twhiting9275]

6 minutes ago, Kian said:

Last time I googled "Can I develop a chatbot for WA?" there was a section in their terms and conditions with a big 🖕 Is it still like this?

Maybe? See here

I was rather surprised myself to see both Clickatell and Twilio offering WA integrations when I checked last week. I know with both, I can set a return URL for messages, which should be able to just parse the message and send a response.

I'm still toying with the integration itself, haven't had the time to play with the return URL (much), but if it's anything like the return URL for voice (should be), it shouldn't be that hard to analyze the response and handle a return based on that.

[twhiting9275]

I've been getting some excellent feedback on this (posted to a few places to get a broader reach), and this is shaping up quite nicely. Now to get all of this integrated 🙂