SmarterTrack Help
Community Knowledge Base

Connected Services

Administrators will use this section to manage any services and applications that are connected to the SmarterTrack installation, including live chat translations, external feeds, ticket transferring across SmarterTrack instances and more. To access this section, log into the management interface with an administrator account. Select Settings from the Navigator then click on Connected Services n the navigation pane. The settings will load in the content pane and the following tabs will be available:

Integrations

Use this tab to edit the following settings:

  • Max External Feed Articles - The number of articles that will be displayed per external feed. For example, if an external feed is configured to show blog posts on the SmarterTrack portal, only this number of articles will be displayed at a time.
  • Map Provider - Using Google Maps, SmarterTrack can display customer location information in Who's On or when an IP address is clicked in a live chat. To enable a map provider, select Google from the dropdown menu.
  • API Key - A Google Maps API Key IS REQUIRED in order to use Google as the map provider in SmarterTrack. Getting an API key is free, and, in most cases, using a standard API key will be fine. However, in larger installations, it may be necessary to upgrade your API key to avoid hitting the limitations applied to a standard API license from Google. For more information on obtaining an API Key, see the Get API Key page. Information about Google Maps Usage Limits is also available from the Google Maps API documentation.
  • Translation Provider - Select which translation service to use from the list: Google or Azure. By default, the auto-translation method is set to None.
  • API Key - For Google Translator only. The API key provided by Google. For more information on obtaining this key, please see the KB Automatically Translate Live Chats.
  • Subscription Key - For Azure Translator only. A security key that allows Microsoft Translate to interact with your SmarterTrack installation. For more information on obtaining this key, please see the KB Automatically Translate Live Chats. NOTE: Azure Subscription Keys MUST have the "Region" set to "Global" when the key is created. Locale-specific keys do not work with SmarterTrack.
  • Requests to Translations API - The total number of translation requests sent to the Translation Provider selected. This allows you to know how many requests have been sent so any limits can be protected.
  • Characters to Translations API - This is the total number of characters sent to the Translation Provider selected. This allows you to keep track of any character limitations imposed by the Translation Provider to avoid any unnecessary extra charges.
  • WHMCS URL - Provide the complete URL of your WHMCS control panel. (Used when integrating SmarterTrack with the WHMCS Addon Module.)
  • WHMCS API Key - This is a security feature used to authenticate the integration between SmarterTrack and WHMCS. Enter the exact API Access Key that is configured in the configuration.php file found within the WHMCS directory. For example, if the following line is present in the configuration.php file: $api_access_key = "abc123", enter abc123 in this field. (Used when integrating SmarterTrack with the WHMCS Addon Module.)
  • WHMCS Username - Provide the username of an admin-level user within WHMCS who has API Access. (Used when integrating SmarterTrack with the WHMCS Addon Module.)
  • WHMCS Password - Provide the password associated with the admin username. (Used when integrating SmarterTrack with the WHMCS Addon Module.)

The following options are available from the content pane toolbar:

  • Save - Saves the changes made to the options on the tab.
  • Test Settings - Use this button to test your translation settings with the appropriate provider.
  • Reset Statistics - This button will reset the character count that is tracked for character conversions using the appropriate translation service. This can be used to check against any reports received or viewed at the translation service website to ensure both systems are in sync.

External Feeds

External feeds allow users to have custom RSS feeds, and snippets of the information in articles or news items, displayed on their portal. External Feeds are different than Custom Links in that the feed snippet is displayed on the Portal home page as a section of the Portal. Custom Links create a new button on the Portal home page.

If any external feeds are available, they will be listed on this page. Otherwise, new feeds can be added by clicking Add in the content pane toolbar. External feeds can be associated with all brands or used and customized on a per-brand basis. Furthermore, if multiple feeds are to be displayed on a brand's portal, they will be displayed in order of how they are listed in the Connected Services settings. Use the Move column to adjust the order of the external feeds, if needed.

SmarterTrack Connections

Administrators can use this section to connect to another, separate SmarterTrack installation for ticket transferring. This can be useful for those organizations working out of separate geographic locations or across sister-companies where 2 separate instances of SmarterTrack are installed. When a SmarterTrack installation is connected, agents can choose whether to transfer tickets to the local or connected instance. Note: Both installations must be running the same version of SmarterTrack in order for this feature to work properly.

To add a SmarterTrack instance, click Add in the content pane toolbar. A modal window will display the following options:

  • Connection Name - The friendly name of the SmarterTrack instance.
  • SmarterTrack Base URL - The URL for the SmarterTrack portal.
  • Admin Username - A system administrator's username for the SmarterTrack instance.
  • Admin Password - A system administrator's associated password for the SmarterTrack instance.

OAuth Connection

In the last couple of years (beginning in 2023), Microsoft has significantly changed how it allows third-party products to authenticate against services such as Microsoft 365 (Office365), Outlook.com, Hotmail, and other Exchange services. As a result, SmarterTrack has to utilize a Microsoft Azure OAuth application, maintained by SmarterTools, that allows SmarterTrack to connect to these services. This Azure OAuth application includes a 'secret key' that Microsoft requires to be updated on a regular basis. That update can only be included in a new version of SmarterTrack because the updated key has to be included in the SmarterTrack code base.

Recently, however, SmarterTools has made changes in SmarterTrack that give administrators the ability to create an Azure OAuth integration application of their own to facilitate this functionality and reduce the need for code updates in SmarterTrack. Complete details on how to set up OAuth Connection, see our KB article: How to Integrate Azure OAuth with SmarterTrack.

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