Implementing Live Alerts

Overview

LiveAlerts is a system that allows you to react to customer activity on your website, based on business rules. LiveAlerts notifies your online customer-service representatives about important events related to a particular visitor on your website. For example, a visitor returns to your website after no visit for more than 60 days and has stayed on the site for at least 10 minutes. Live Alerts can then issue an alert advising the online sales representative of the presence of this return visitor.

LiveAlerts has two fundamental concepts that define how the system operates:

1. Rules are definitions specifying that when specific conditions occur, then specific alert outcomes will be issued. Rules define the scenarios that you consider relevant for your website.

2. Outcomes specify what needs to happen when rules are triggered. More specifically, outcomes define the alert that will be displayed to live operators.

Getting Started

You can access the LiveAlerts function through the LivePerson Admin window. The LiveAlerts system installs with 5 predefined rules and 5 predefined outcomes. The "disabled" or "enabled" states display in the message at the top of the Alert Rules page:

Alert Rules are currently DISABLED. click here to enable Alert rules

You can safely add/modify rules and outcomes - no alerts are issued until you enable Alert rules. Note that this is different from the enable/disable box for individual rules

When you are ready to configure LiveAlerts, you should have determined the list of Alerts you want to define:

What alert messages your live operators should see (outcomes)
When these alerts should be issued (rules)

We recommend that you first create all of the outcomes, and then proceed to define all the rules. Using this procedure, you will have the outcomes ready when you need to assign outcomes to rules.

Working with Rules

The LiveAlerts Rules window displays the rules that you have configured so far. The rules are grouped in Page-Pattern groups. You can select which page-pattern group to display from the Page Pattern drop-down box, and change the order of the rules within that group. The 5 predefined rules are defined in the "All Pages" page-pattern group. When you create new rules you can also create new page-pattern groups. The page-pattern group and the order of rules within the group affect the rule evaluation process described later.

Add New Alert Rule/Edit Alert Rule

From the Add New Alert Rule and Edit Alert Rule windows you can:

Add a new rule
Enter new values
Modify the values of an exisiting rule
Enable/disable the rule

To enable the rule, select the Enable This Rule check box, and then click Update to update the rule. The default is "disable the rule."

HINT: When you add a new rule that requires a new outcome, it is more convenient if you define the new outcome first.

Components of a LiveRule:

Rule	Component
Name	Identifies the rule for reference by the user and the system.
Description	Describes the purpose of this rule in your own business terms.
Action Properties
Page pattern	The set of pages in which the current rules apply.
Condition	Defines when this rule is triggered.
Outcomes	Defines what will happen when the rule is triggered.

Conditions

Conditions are used to specify when the rule outcomes are to be issued. In other words, the rule action will take place only if the conditions are met. From the Conditions pane of the Add or Edit Alert Rule window, choose the desired conditions from the Condition drop-down box. Certain conditions require entering additional parameters such as string patterns, variable name, comparison operators (=, !=, <, >) and a value to compare to (number or string).

Working with Outcomes

In LiveAlerts, outcomes define the alert message that is displayed to the live operator.

Adding and Editing New LiveAlert Outcomes

You can edit an existing LiveAlert Outcome. Type the Name, Description and Action properties(HTML) and click Update to update.

LiveAlerts Outcomes:

Rule	Component
Name	Identifies the outcome for reference by you and the system.
Description	Describes the action associated with the outcome.
Action Properties (HTML)	The HTML that will be displayed to the online representative when the rule fires.

Making Alerts Dynamic

One of the main features of LiveAlerts is the ability to include dynamic content in the alert message. You include dynamic variables in the body of the message by embedding values in the HTML parameter. Values are embedded as a control sequence in the HTML body.

The control sequence is inserted between brackets {}, e.g. {LPINFO!current-title} will embed the title of the current web page.

Values in the HTML parameter:

Control String	Type of values
{LPINFO!<value name>}	Visitor related values
{LPVAR!<variable name>}	Custom variable values
LPINFO!n-pages	Number of pages visitor has visited in site
LPINFO!current-url	URL of the current page
LPINFO!current-title	Title of the current page
LPINFO!days-last-chat	Number of days since the last chat session of this visitor
LPINFO!days-last-visit site	Number of days since last visit of the visitor to the site.
LPINFO!referrer to the site	The referrer URL (link that referred the visitor
LPINFO!seconds-in-site	Number of seconds visitor is in the site
LPINFO!minutes-in-site	Number of minutes visitor is in the site
LP!account-number	Your LivePerson account number

Rule Evaluation

LiveAlerts rules are evaluated each time a page loads and then periodically every 30 seconds thereafter until the next page loads. The LiveRule engine examines all alert rules whose page pattern matches the current page. Two factors determine the order of evaluation:

1. Longer matching patterns are evaluated first.

2. Matching patterns of the same length are evaluated by the alphabetical order of their names.

When a rule fires, all the alert outcomes associated with the rule are issued. The rule is then marked as "suppressed" for that visitor until the end of the current visit session. It is important to note that all remaining rules are evaluated and outcomes are issued for all rules that fire.