User types

We’ll cover the mechanics of instantiating widgets for specific user types in the Widget configuration section.

Meanwhile, let’s take a look at the different user types.

#User

If a person can sign into your application and you know this person’s id and email address, it’s a user. Optionally, a user may also have a name and an avatar URL. Users authenticate with Fogbender by piggy-backing onto your native authentication. The identity of users within a Fogbender widget is secured by JWT tokens signed with a secret shared only between your backend code and Fogbender (see Security for details). If users share the same customerId (i.e., work at the same company), they’ll be able to collaborate with colleagues after signing in.

#Visitor

If you’d like to offer your anonymous website visitors an opportunity to chat with you prior to creating an account or signing in, you can do this by enabling Visitor key under Embedding instructions and setting up a widget for visitors on your landing page (see Widget configuration: Visitor).

For an example, open https://fogbender.com and check out our visitor widget on the bottom right.

All visitor conversations end up in a special place called the “Visitor inbox” - under the hood, it functions like a customer (account), but without any public rooms.

Upon entering a room, a visitor has an opporunity to enter and confirm their email:

Once an email is confirmed, the visitor can see all Visitor inbox rooms associated with their email address.