Manage Docs Contact With Beacon
Beacon is built into Docs, making it quick and easy for your customers to reach out via email or live chat if they need more help. This article will help you enable and customize the Docs site Beacon.
In this article
Enable the Docs Site Beacon
Head to Manage > Docs > [Choose your Docs site] > Beacon. Toggle Enable Beacon on and click Save.
This will place a default Beacon widget on your Docs site with the contact form only, add a Contact link in the top navigation, and add a note to the end of each article with a link to contact you if visitors need more help.
Clicking any of these links or the Beacon itself will show your visitors the Beacon contact form.
If you change your mind, just toggle the Enable Beacon switch to off and click Save to remove it.
Customize the Docs Site Beacon
You can customize the look and feel and some options for the Docs site Beacon, including offering live chat. Click Customize Beacon to explore these options.
The Docs site Beacon will not appear in the regular Beacon admin pages. You can only access the settings for a Docs site Beacon through this menu.
Look and Feel
Name and Color
By default, the Beacon will be named the same as your Docs site. This is an internal only name that customers will never see, but if you'd like to change the name you can do so here. Change the color of your Beacon on Docs by clicking the color square next to the name and choosing a color from the color chart, or type in a color hex code.
Button style
Choose whether you want the button to be an Icon, Icon & Text, Text only, or Hidden. Choose which button style to use and/or enter the text you want to use after selecting the style option.
Choosing Hidden means that the Beacon will not appear at the bottom of every page, but will open when visitors click any of the contact links.
Advanced
Horizontal position
Display the Beacon on the left or right side of the page.
Z-index
If you are using any custom CSS with Docs and find the Beacon isn't fitting just right, you can use this to alter the z-index value to change the stack order of Beacon so that it’s not bumping into other elements on the page. There’s no minimum or maximum value, and you can use negative values, too. If you've worked with a developer to build custom CSS, reach out to them for any guidance on what this needs to be set to for your custom CSS.
Help Scout logo (Plus and Pro plans only)
Plus and Pro plan customers can toggle Help Scout branding on the Beacon on or off. A small Help Scout logo appears on the bottom of the Beacon window when this is toggled on, or for Standard plan customers.
Contact Options
Click Contact on the left navigation menu to make changes to the contact form or turn on live chat.
Messaging
Connected Inbox
Choose which Help Scout inbox the emails and chats will go to from this Beacon.
Show contact form
You cannot disable the contact form. If you no longer wish to show the Beacon, head back to Manage > Docs > [Choose your Docs site] > Beacon where you can toggle the Beacon off.
Show chat
Toggle on to allow chat through your Docs site Beacon. Scroll down to find the Chat options later on the page after you toggle this on.
Contact Form
Ask for a name
Ask visitors to provide their name when they use the Beacon contact form. When you enable this field, it is a required field on your contact form.
Ask for a Subject
Ask customers to provide a subject when they use the Beacon contact form. When you enable this field, it is a required field on your contact form.
Allow attachments
Allow customers to upload images or attach files when sending a message through the contact form. The maximum file size for any single attachment is 10MB. Customers can attach up to 3 images or files per message.
Show Custom Fields
Customers on the Plus plan, or customers with the Custom Fields add-on, can show up to five custom fields on the Beacon contact form. We use the same field names you see when viewing a conversation in Help Scout. If you display custom fields to customers, we’d recommend using customer-friendly field names.
If a custom field is required in the inbox, it is required on the Beacon contact form.
Chat
Satisfaction ratings
Enable or disable the option for customers to rate chats. Read more about chat ratings: Gather Feedback With Chat Satisfaction Ratings
Email transcript
Enable or disable sending a transcript to the customer when the chat session has ended.
Require email?
Enable or disable requiring an email to start a chat.
Translate
Choose Translate from the left navigation menu to change any of the Beacon labels to any language, or just to match your organization's voice and style.
More help on this feature is available in Translate Beacon Words and Phrases.
Use a Link to Open Beacon from Articles
You can add a link in your articles to create a call to action to reach out to your team, you'll just need to add a bit of code to the link to allow it to work everywhere. Just add an HTML block in the Docs editor, and use it to add text around and including the link.
The snippet below will open the Beacon to the Ask screen when your visitor clicks on Contact Us. The Ask screen will offer Email and/or Chat, depending on your configuration and availability.
This link will work in articles both on your Docs website and when being viewed in other Beacons that serve Docs.
<a onclick="window.parent.Beacon('open'); window.parent.Beacon('navigate', '/ask'); return false;" href="#">Contact Us</a>
You can customize that link a little further if you like, using the Beacon JavaScript API. You'll need some knowledge of how to work with JavaScript to customize it, but there are some useful options you can use, like having the click navigate directly to the email form to skip over chat or prefill some data.