Updates

An update is a short post your visitors can read in the chat panel: a new feature, a price change, a planned outage. Turning the tab on adds a second section to the panel alongside the conversation, and a dot appears on it until a visitor has read the newest post.

Updates belong to your organization, not to one widget. You write a post once on Web Chat → Updates, and by default every widget with the tab switched on shows it. If a post only belongs on some of your widgets, its Audience narrows it — see Choosing which widgets show a post.

Writing an update

Web Chat → Updates → Add Update asks for a title, then opens the editor. Everything else is optional:

• Title — the headline on the card and at the top of the post. Up to 120 characters.
• Summary — the excerpt under the title on the card. Up to 300 characters. It is written rather than taken from the first paragraph, because the card is all most visitors read.
• Update — the post itself, in a rich-text editor. Headings, bold, italics, bulleted and numbered lists, links, and images.
• Cover Image URL — an image across the top of the card and the post.
• Labels — up to three chips above the title, 24 characters each.
• Shared By — the byline. Any name you like; it is not tied to a Tandem user, so it survives someone leaving.
• Sender Image URL — an optional picture beside the byline.
• Call to Action — button text and a link, shown at the end of the post. Fill in both or neither.
• Audience — which of your widgets show this post. All widgets by default; see below.

Images and links are pasted URLs, and they must start with https://. An http:// image is blocked as mixed content by every browser on an https:// site, so it would reach your visitors as a broken picture with no explanation. The editor says Must be an https:// URL. when you save one.

What the editor keeps

The panel renders a fixed set of elements, so the editor's formatting is narrowed to that set when you save. Headings, bold, italics, lists, links, images and the call-to-action button all survive. Anything else — a table, a font colour, text pasted from a document with its own styling — is kept as plain text, and the words are never lost.

One consequence worth knowing: a heading becomes a subheading. The post's title is the only top-level heading in that view, so an authored heading always sits below it.

Choosing which widgets show a post

An update goes to all widgets unless you say otherwise. That is the right default for most posts — an outage notice belongs everywhere — and it is what every post written before this setting existed still does.

To narrow one, open the update and use the Audience section:

1. Choose Only selected widgets.
2. Tick the widgets that should show it. Each row shows the widget's name and the sites it runs on, so two similarly named widgets are still tellable apart.

Four things are worth knowing:

• Audience and the widget's own Updates switch both have to allow it. A post targeted at a widget whose Updates section is switched off still shows nothing — the widget has no Updates tab at all. That is the likeliest reason a narrowed post seems to have vanished.
• Ticking nothing is the same as All widgets. The editor warns you when you are in that state, because the two are indistinguishable once saved.
• The list is the widgets you have now. A widget created later does not inherit an existing post's audience; come back and tick it if the post should appear there.
• Deleting a widget does not rewrite your posts. A post that named only that widget stops reaching anything. Re-open its Audience and pick a widget, or set it back to All widgets.

You can check the result without deploying: open the widget on Web Chat → Widgets and click Updates in the preview panel, which shows exactly the posts that widget would serve.

Publishing

A new update is a draft, and a draft is not visible to anyone outside your organization. Publish puts it on the widgets its Audience names — every widget with the tab switched on, unless you have narrowed it; Unpublish takes it off again. Both are on the row in the list and in the editor.

Publishing is disabled while you have unsaved changes. Save first, or you would publish the last saved version while newer text is on screen.

Unpublishing and republishing keeps the post's original publish date, so it does not jump to the top of the feed and does not re-alert visitors who had already read it. That is also why correcting a typo in a published post is safe.

Turning the tab on for a widget

The tab is off for every widget until you switch it on, including widgets you already have. On Web Chat → Widgets, open a widget and use the switch on the Updates section.

With it off, the panel is exactly what it is today: one conversation, no bottom navigation, and the feed is not served to that widget at all.

What a visitor sees

The panel gains a two-tab bar at the bottom: Chat and Updates. The Updates tab shows your published posts, newest first, as cards with the cover image, labels, title and summary. Tapping one opens the full post.

A red dot sits on the Updates tab when the newest published post is one the visitor has not seen. It clears when they open the tab, and it stays clear when they come back later. The dot is per-browser, so a visitor who reads an update on their laptop still sees the dot on their phone.

Links and the call-to-action button open in a new tab, so a visitor reading a post does not lose the conversation they were having.

Limits and defaults

The tab is off by default on every widget, a new update is created as a draft, and its Audience is all widgets.

Troubleshooting

• The tab isn't in the panel. It is off per widget. Check the Updates section of that widget on Web Chat → Widgets. If you have just switched it on, a visitor's browser may hold a cached copy of the widget script for up to five minutes.
• A post isn't showing. Two things have to be true. Only published posts are served — check the status badge on the row, where a draft says Draft — and the post's Audience has to include that widget. The widget's own preview panel is the quickest way to check both at once.
• The dot won't go away. It clears per browser when the tab is opened. Publishing another post lights it again for everyone who has not read that one.
• An image isn't loading. It must be an https:// URL that your visitors' browsers can reach. An image behind a login, or on a host that blocks other sites from loading it, will not render.
• Formatting disappeared when I saved. The panel renders a fixed set of elements — see What the editor keeps. The text is kept; the styling is not.

Next steps

• Installing the widget — the snippet, and the sites a widget is allowed to run on.
• Chat Widget — what the agent brings to a chat, and what it does not.