Solved Chatwoot - Simple and elegant live chat software

[timconsidine]

@timconsidine I just tried installing 2 other custom apps in order to test my general setup

First one (focalboard) went through fine and is running.

2nd one (papercups) : also failed with host name issue.
But I packaged papercups myself and I don't really have any experience in this.

Investigating further ...

[v_shnu]

@timconsidine Could you please pull the latest changes and try again?

[timconsidine]

@v_shnu will do later today, thank you

[timconsidine]

@v_shnu
Builds fine
But cloudron install --image xxxx gives me :

Failed to install app: 500 message: ER_TRUNCATED_WRONG_VALUE_FOR_FIELD: Incorrect string value: '\xF0\x9F\x94\xA5\xF0\x9F...' for column 'manifestJson' at row 1

Seems to be some encoding issue but can't track it down
Looking further ...

[timconsidine]

I think it was inclusion of emojis in CloudronManifest.json
Removed them and it installs
And .... I get "app installed".
Thank you
Now going to test it out

[v_shnu]

@timconsidine Sorry about that. Forgot to push that change

[timconsidine]

@v_shnu No problem !

[timconsidine]

@v_shnu app installs nicely now
I can run it and set it up in the app webpage.
But strangely I notice that the .env file in /app/data gets reset to default values after re-starting the app.
The changes are saved when I edit the file and save.
But then restarting the app resets the .env to default values (mostly blank).
Presumably this is not correct ?

Although some settings in the app persist, so some db integration working

[timconsidine]

I think the reset of .env to defaults is because in the start.sh script there is this line

cp /app/.env.example /app/data/.env

Ideally this should be on a run once basis

so I adapted the start.sh by checking for .env existence

if [[ ! -f "/app/data/.env" ]]; then
        cp /app/.env.example /app/data/.env
fi

Let's see if that works.

[timconsidine]

This post is deleted!

[timconsidine]

well, yes, this works to ensure that the .env does not get overwritten with default blank values on restarting the app.

However I am finding that the /packs/js/sdk.js does not get loaded in the client website with the default configuration.
I have tried with ip address as the BASE_URL and also tried setting it to a domain name.
Both these fail with the port :3000 specifier : it is not working in the Cloudron environment.

But changing the client widget to var BASE_URL="https://cloudronapp.domain.tld"; (i.e. not IP address and without :3000 port) allows the client to load the script and chat from client is received in the app inbox.

@v_shnu can you confirm it is OK to configure like this ?
Maybe update the github for others ?

[v_shnu]

@timconsidine This is resolved. Please pull the latest changes.

[v_shnu]

BASE_URL is from the FRONTEND_URL env variable you set in .env file. Please update the .env file FRONTEND_URL value to be your Cloudron chatwoot app URL.

Yes you are right. Please use the HTTPS one without specfiying port.

[timconsidine]

@v_shnu thank you !
Thanks for your support and help to get this packaged for Cloudron. Working very sweetly.

One small point is that the profile image for a user does not persist. It loads and saves initially, but seems to be reset when changing to another page of the app. Not a big issue because the rest is working nicely.

I love that you have iOS and Android apps and these connect to the self-host instance very smoothly. It's a big plus when choosing a chat app. Not sure if others here realise this is available.

@girish this seems to me stable and complete enough to be listed officially, but maybe you have some other checks you would like to do before then.

[jagan]

This is exciting.
Hope to see Chatwoot on the app store soon.

Working very sweetly.

[v_shnu]

@v_shnu said in Chatwoot - Simple and elegant live chat software:

@girish Could you please take a look and provide some early feedback? What are the next steps to get this published to Cloudron app store ?
ref: https://github.com/chatwoot/cloudron-chatwoot

Hey @girish, have you had a chance to look at this ?

[Aizat]

Hi there, @girish any updates on this? I've contacted Cloudron (spoke to Johannes) but I was told that you guys are going to be occupied with the upcoming updates.
So I also contacted Chatwoot, apparently they have completed the basic version and are waiting for feedback from the Cloudron team to publish it on the app store.

Would really love to use Chatwoot as a stable solution in replace of FreeScout (so many errors in Github, and I've just encountered one today). Chatwoot support is solid, I can imagine this app will be a gem if added in Cloudron.
Thank you!

[timconsidine]

@aizat at the risk of being a broken record, try installing and using the unofficial version : it works fine : let cloudron get to it when they can, but you can be productive today

EDIT : if you need help to install, shout

[nebulon]

I have now started to take a closer look and cloned the existing repo into our app library at https://git.cloudron.io/cloudron/chatwoot-app

@sojan_official and @v_shnu please let us know if you want push right to our repo

Sorry that this took us so long to get around it. A brief look already shows that this package is very far, however not based on our docker base image as far as I can tell, so looking into this now

[Aizat]

@timconsidine Thank you so much! Its definitely not my level of technical prowess to handle it myself now. I'll do abit of research and will let you know if I'm stuck good to learn new things.

@nebulon Thank you so much

[nebulon]

I have ported the app package to our base image now and the app at least starts up and seems to be running with basic functionality. I haven't had the time yet to dig deeper into its functionality to find more possibly missing bits in the package, but I've published it as unstable for a start so others can quickly give it a try.

As a heads-up the email integration is not done yet, so don't expect anything there so far

[timconsidine]

@nebulon great work, thanks

[ianhyzy]

Just tried this out and it works great! Would love to have email but I got website embeds and twitter working in a snap! much better than rocket chat's version of this
edit: one bug is that images and file attachments seem to be broken, including setting channel icons in the client.

[nebulon]

@ianhyzy thanks for the feedback, package v0.2.0 has the upload issue fixed now.

[nebulon]

I will mark this here as solved, lets continue in the new forum category for Chatwoot now at https://forum.cloudron.io/category/135/chatwoot

[v_shnu]

@nebulon awesome Thank you. Let us know if you need anything from us. I started with the Chatwoot base image to have something working quickly.

[v_shnu]

@nebulon @girish Also it would be great if we could have access to the repo. vishnu at chatwoot dot com and sojan at chatwoot dot com.

[girish]

@v_shnu Can you register yourself at https://git.cloudron.io/ and give us the gitlab handles?

[nebulon]

@v_shnu I was able to find your account but not the one from sojan. You should have developer rights to the repo now.

[v_shnu]

@nebulon Sojan's username would be sojan-official. Thank you.

[nebulon]

@v_shnu thanks, I've added him as a developer to the repo as well