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Starting Conversations

You can initiate conversations between your experts and your customers so that the experts do not have to switch to the SkillSpring console to initiate and accept conversations.

Prerequisites​

Before a user can initiate a conversation, they need to have an expert record created for themselves.

Request the conversation​

Once an expert record exists, you can start a conversation with the startVideoConversation mutation like this:

mutation StartVideoConversation(
    $expert: ID!
    $name: String
    $email: String
    $timezone: Timezone
) {
    startVideoConversation(
        expert: $expert
        name: $name
        email: $email
        timezone: $timezone
        expectedCostPerMinute: 0
    ) {
        id
        roomName
        token
        joinConversationUrl
        status
    }
}

Joining the conversation​

The conversation has been started, and now both sides of the conversation need to join.

Allowing the customer to join​

Once the conversation has been started, the information to join the conversation needs to be sent to the customer. If an email address or phone number was provided when starting the conversation, then the customer will be sent a link.

If your system also includes a customer facing UI, you could make the experience more seamless by sending the conversation URL to the customer UI and even open or embed the video immediately for the customer.

Joining as the expert​

After you have a conversation ID, you can use the embedded expert video support to display the conversation in your application.