Getting Started with Touchpoints

Introduction

Touchpoints are simple, plug-and-play integrations that provide a variety of intuitive ways to reveal help content on virtually any web property. Review your Expert licensing package to see if it includes Expert Touchpoints and how many. If you do not see Touchpoints included in your licensing package or want more, contact your Customer Success Manager.

If you are ready to get started, the following path will guide you to creating, branding, and embedding your first Touchpoint:

Contextual Help Options

What is the difference between Contextual Help, Embedded Contextual Help, and the Contextual Help Button?

Contextual Help, Embedded Contextual Help, and the Contextual Help Button are all Touchpoints that allow an entire Expert-hosted article to be embedded and viewed directly in another website or web application. The Contextual Help and Contextual Help Button Touchpoints achieve this with a pop-up contextual help window without opening a new tab in the browser or redirecting to the page. Embedded Contextual Help displays article content directly in the website or web application page. All three options allow Expert content to meet users when they need an answer to their questions or need to troubleshoot issues without having to leave the current page.

The Contextual Help Touchpoint is provided by a embed code that leverages a CSS class selector to open hyperlinks inside a contextual help window and can be applied to as many links as you want. The embed code only needs to be loaded once and applies to all links that contain the specified class, including links that are custom styled as icons or buttons.

The Contextual Help Button and Embedded Contextual Help Touchpoints, on the other hand, are configured to only point to specific Expert pages. They are pre-configured embed codes that can be placed throughout different locations in a website or web application but can only be assigned one specified page.

When would I use Contextual Help vs Embedded Contextual Help vs the Contextual Help Button?

Use the Contextual Help Touchpoint when:
    • You want to leverage contextual help in a dynamic way
    • You want each link with a custom class to open in a contextual help window
    • You want to custom-design your link as an icon or button

Use the Embedded Contextual Help Touchpoint when:
    • You do not want content to open in a contextual help window

Use the Contextual Help Button Touchpoint when:
    • You only need to link to one specific page via contextual help
    • You want to reuse a button in multiple locations. For example, a "Get Help" button throughout your application that links to a specific page on your Expert site
    • You want a pre-styled button

Can I use Content IDs with Contextual Help?

Yes! Contextual Help looks for a configured CSS class on any link in the embedding website or application (<a>HTML elements) and will open the value of the link's href HTML attribute. If the hrefvalue is a content ID URL, the associated article will be loaded in the contextual help window.

Embedding and Integrating Touchpoints

Can my Touchpoints work on my single page application (SPA)?

Yes, Touchpoints support single page applications.

In the case of the contextual help Touchpoint, the contextual help JavaScript covers the entire document, not just what is visible to the user. Anytime a link is selected, JavaScript checks for the appropriate class at that exact moment and loads the page within the contextual help window. There is no need to manually refresh or trigger the contextual help dialog.

The only requirement is to ensure that the links you want to open in contextual help have the correct class associated with the Touchpoint. The name of this class is determined when creating the Touchpoint. Read more about configuring the contextual help Touchpoint.

Can my Touchpoints work on my local application?

Touchpoints require a reliable hostname to allow. This is a security feature that is enforced by cross-origin resource sharing (CORS) and is an industry-wide best practice.

Can I use an IP address instead of a hostname?

Although hostnames resolve to IP addresses, a reliable hostname is the only form of identification and allowlisting accepted.

What else can I do with Touchpoints besides embed them in websites and web applications?

Touchpoints that are embedded on the same web page can communicate with each other and exchange data in order to implement more complex and feature-rich integration solutions that could otherwise not be accomplished by embedding a single Touchpoint. In addition, the same mechanism that Touchpoints use to communicate with each other can also be leveraged to communicate with other web widgets and web application elements on the same page, regardless if they are Expert-powered or not. You can learn more about these capabilities by reading about Advanced Integration Programming with Touchpoints.

Are Touchpoints secure? What is the technology behind them?

Our engineering team has provided an informative blog post that explains how Touchpoints work and why they are are a secure way to embed both public and private content in other websites and web applications.