We just released a new version of the Chats section. Now it's easier to navigate through repeated conversations and perform quick actions such as marking a chat as resolved. There were also other improvements and fixes like keeping the scroll position when selecting a conversation and taking actions on it.

Give it a try and let us know what you think.

See you in the next update!

We are pleased to announce that Chatness is now free for everyone. We believe that everyone should have access to the best chatbot platform, so we are excited to offer Chatness at no cost to all users. This change takes effect immediately, and you can start using Chatness for free today.

There are some limitations, however. Free orgs are currently limited to 50 messages per month and 1 bot. While this may not be sufficient for sites with heavy traffic, it should be more than enough for hobby sites and those who want to try out Chatness to see if it meets their needs. If you require more messages, you can upgrade to a paid plan at any time, starting as low as $24 per month for 3000 messages. Free plans also do not have access to some advanced features like white labeling, custom domains, and other features available in paid plans.

Additionally, we are introducing two new payment methods: PayPal and Crypto payments. We hope these new options will make it easier for you to join Chatness and scale your business support.

We are excited to see what you will build with Chatness and how you will use it to improve your website and engage with your visitors. If you have any questions or need help getting started, feel free to reach out to us.

We have added a new setting to the chat launcher that allows you to adjust the offset of the launcher from the edge of the screen. This setting is useful when you want to move the launcher to a specific position due to design constraints or to avoid overlapping with other elements on your website.

The setting also supports mobile devices, so you can adjust the offset for both desktop and mobile views. You can find this setting in the Launcher section under your bot's widget setup, which can be accessed by clicking a bot from the sidebar and selecting the Widget option and then Branding. This feature is available for all plans.

We are excited to announce our take on white labeling for the web app.

You can now use your own domain for the desktop app, customize the logo, website URL, and support email. When Chatness is accessed from your domain, it will adjust the branding and user experience to match your brand. For instance, there will be a support link in the dropdown menu that directs users to your support email, instead of opening the Chatness widget for support.

This feature is available in the Org section under your Account Settings, which can be accessed by clicking your profile picture in the bottom left corner of the app. From there, select the Org option. Currently, this feature is only available for the Growth plan.

We've added the ability to duplicate and delete bots in Chatness. This feature is available in the Settings page of your bot by clicking the gear icon. From there, you can now:

• Duplicate a bot containing all its settings, members and chat tools.
• Delete a bot permanently.

Please note that both actions require admin permission to execute. The bot deletion is irreversible but happens async (in a 24h window) to prevent accidental deletion. You can always cancel a deletion schedule in case of a mistake.

We hope you enjoy this new feature and look forward to the next update!

We are opening up the ability to bring your own model to Chatness. This means you can set up any server built on top of the OpenAI API Spec and use your own model. That also means you can fine-tune a model in your OpenAI account for example and use it in Chatness. Or you can use a completely different provider as Fireworks AI.

Currently we're offering support for any model that can execute function calling. The available providers are:

• OpenAI
• Fireworks AI
• Mistral AI
• Groq

Or if you have a custom server running a model that supports the OpenAI API Spec, you can use that as well. To access this feature, go to the Settings page of your bot by clicking the gear icon. From there, you can define:

• The provider base URL
• The provider API key
• The model name to be used

Don't forget to toggle the "Activate this model" and save.

We hope you enjoy this new feature and look forward to the next update!

We have transitioned from a card view to a list view to make it easier to see all your contacts at a glance. When viewing a specific contact, the scroll position in the list will be preserved.

We have also introduced the concept of confirmed and unconfirmed contacts to help you keep track of genuine contacts, as Chatness automatically adds contacts when they interact with your chatbot. By default, all contacts are unconfirmed, but you can manually confirm them by clicking the confirm contact option in the 3 dots menu.

We hope you enjoy these updates and look forward to hearing your feedback.

Other improvements

• The Threads page is now called Chats
• Fixed a bug where the world map was not displaying correctly
• Optimized infinite scroll in the chats and contacts list

Now it's possible to upload and train on multiple type of documents to your knowledge base. This feature is available for all users and can be accessed from the knowledge base section in the admin panel.

The allowed file types are pdf docx pptx xlsx txt

We're introducing a new way to set up widgets for your website. This new setup will make it easier for you to customize the look and feel of your widgets without having to write any code.

• improved branding section and preview
• added custom background option
• primary color + background creates a gradient effect

We're introducing a new Database with vectorized embedding capability to store and retrieve knowledge. With a vector representation of the knowledge, we can perform semantic searches and find similar knowledge items. This will allow us to build and provide more intelligent chatbots that can understand the context of a user query and come up with more relevant responses.

Some common use cases for semantic knowledge include:

• multi-language support
• finding similar questions and answers
• providing more accurate search results
• improving the accuracy of chatbot responses
• and more

It's important to note that this feature is still in the early stages of development and we're working on improving the accuracy and performance of the semantic search. We're also planning to integrate this feature with our Intent Tools to provide a more seamless experience for the end user.

See you in the next update!

We're releasing Chatness v3, a major update to our chatbot solution. This version includes a new UI and a new feature called Intent Tools. The new UI is designed to be more user-friendly and intuitive, making it easier for users to navigate the app and find what they need. Intent Tools is a powerful new feature that allows users to create and manage custom chat tools for their chatbots.

With custom chat tools you're able to build workflows that can be triggered by specific user inputs. This allows you to create more complex and interactive chatbots that can handle a wider range of user queries and requests. Some common use cases for custom chat tools include:

• escalating a conversation to a human agent
• collecting user feedback
• checking the status of an order
• providing product recommendations
• making external API calls to fetch data
• and much more

We're also introducing our SaaS infrastructure and plan to deprecate the self-hosted version of Chatness by the end of 2024. The SaaS version provides all the same features as the self-hosted version but with the added benefit of automatic updates. We believe this will allow us to focus on building new features and improving the product with more efficiency.

We're excited to announce our first Chatness integration. This feature allows you to connect your Chatness bot to a Discord channel, so you can receive notifications and messages right in Discord and even reply to them. Stay tuned, we're working on more integrations to make Chatness even more versatile.

• Added Discord integration
• Added prompt templates
• Bug fixes to the Messenger and some style improvements

Now that the dust has set a bit, we feel confident to deprecate Firebase as our backend service. This change will be effective on 2023-06-01. All current clients will have the option to migrate their data or stick with Firebase until May 2024. But if sticking with Firebase, you won't be able to receive any updates or support after this date.

• replaced Firebase services by individual components in Node.js
• replaced Firestore with MongoDB
• many improvements to the formerly admin (now called Chatness for Teams)
• much better latency and performance

We're also working on a SaaS version so you can use Chatness without the need to host it yourself. Stay tuned for more updates on this.

This version aims to fix some underlying bugs with the bot settings and also introduces a tiny messenger previewer while configuring your bot's prompting, this feature provides a convenient way to test your bot responses without having to embed it anywhere.

We have decided to pivot Chatness to a self-hosted platform. This new version of Chatness is designed to be a comprehensive and complete solution for support and chatbots.

The product includes three key components: the Admin panel, the Launcher widget, and the Installer desktop app. Futerely, we will be adding back the app boilerplate for Android and iOS so you can easily build your own custom chat applications.

So for now we're shipping the following features:

Admin panel

The Admin panel is a powerful tool that provides users with full control over their chatbots and support systems. It allows you to manage other users, configure bot prompts, and perform other administrative tasks. With the Admin panel, users can easily customize and fine-tune their chatbots to suit their specific needs and requirements.

Launcher widget

The Launcher widget is a versatile feature that can be embedded into any website, allowing users to initiate a conversation with their chatbot seamlessly. This user-friendly widget provides a seamless interface for users to engage with the chatbot and get the assistance they need in a convenient and efficient manner.

Installer

The Installer is a desktop free application that simplifies the setup, deployment and updates of the Chatness Platform on Google Cloud. This automated tool eliminates the need for complex manual configurations, making it easy for users to get started with Chatness quickly and effortlessly.

We'll keep maintaining the app boilerplate for current customers until March 2024.

This version introduces OpenAI's ChatGPT feature. A new ai user named Alicia is created when the seed is ran, this user acts like an assistant for quickly answering questions based on the context file included at ai/context.md

Some other changes:

• updated mobile app to Capacitor 4
• added support for Firebase Emulators
• added hot key "meta+enter" to send messages quickly (mac command+enter, windows ctrl+enter)
• added support for automatically detect links and open them with in-app browser
• added a new global config APP_INITIAL_ROUTE to customize the initial route, renamed home page to groups and made contacts the initial route
• many small bug fixes and improvements like a bug on contacts list where it was not showing empty state when there were no contacts
• updated docs with more sections about ChatGPT and AI

Dependency maintenance and minor fixes:

• update to Capacitor v3
• update to Angular v12
• made android app look as an actual android
• removed emoji-regex dep in favor of a custom local effect
• integrate Tailwind to Angular CLI
• fixed a bug on chat contacts where the user was not able to remove a contact right after adding it

We've fixed a couple of issues with the Firebase integration. Here are the details:

1. registerWithFirebase effect

The registerWithFirebase effect was not working as expected. Now, when a user registers, some metadata like creation time and last login time are stored in the database.

2. changeNameWithFirebase effect

The changeNameWithFirebase now also updates the hash responsible for searching users by name.

Some other improvements:

• Improved perf and fixed issues on chat messages
• Improved perf and fixed realtime issues on contact list

First of all, happy new year! ✨🍾

Secondly, we've shipped a couple of small improvements to the app.

1. database seeds

now you can easily seed your database with dummy data by running the following command

npm run seed

2. light theme

we've added a light theme to the app, you can switch between the dark and light theme from the settings page.

Introducing Chatness, a boilerplate for building native chat applications. Chatness is a full-stack app built on the shoulders of giants like Firebase and Angular. The app is designed to be easy to customize and deploy.

Auth workflow

• email sign in
• password reset
• account creation

Contacts

• add contacts by email
• search for contacts by name and email
• message and remove contacts

Profile handler

• change name
• change email
• change password
• change profile picture
• delete account

Chat in groups and private

• send attached files
• timestamp based pagination
• read receipts
• typing indicators
• message reactions