Olark Destination
Olark quick info
Olark accepts Track, Page, and Identify calls. If you reference it in the Integrations object, call it “Olark”.
Olark accepts device-mode data only from Analytics.js.
Getting Started
When you enable Olark in the Segment web app, your changes appear in the Segment CDN in about 45 minutes, and then Analytics.js starts asynchronously loading Olark’s loader0.js onto your page. This means you should remove Olark’s snippet from your page.
- Olark’s chat box will appear on your page, as configured in your Olark account, and you can start chatting with visitors.
Olark is only supported in device mode (on the client).
Page
When you call page, we call Olark’s sendNotificationToOperator function as looking at *url*. You must enable this option with the pageview flag, because it can sometimes be bothersome.
Identify
When you call identify on analytics.js, we send the following data to Olark:
- We call
api.chat.updateVisitorNicknamewithtraits.nameandtraits.email, or just theirtraits.nameor just theirtraits.emailor theiruserId. In that order of preference. - We call
api.visitor.updateEmailAddresswithtraits.emailif you send it, oruserIdif that’s an email. - We call
api.visitor.updateFullNamewithtraits.nameif you send it, ortraits.firstNameandtraits.lastNameappended with a space in between, if you send both first and last name. - We call
api.visitor.updatePhoneNumberwithtraits.phoneif you send it. - We call
api.visitor.updateCustomFieldswithtraits.
More documentation on the Olark API can be found in Olark’s docs.
Track
When you call track or one of its helpers on analytics.js, we call Olark’s sendNotificationToOperator function as visitor triggered *eventName*. You must enable this option with the track flag, because it can sometimes be bothersome.
Features
Customizing the chat box
All the settings you can change from your Olark settings pages, like targeted chat and your chat box design, still work exactly the same when Olark is enabled using Segment.
Olark Javascript API
If you’d like to use the native Olark Javascript functions after turning on Olark using Segment our ready function will allow you to do that. Since we still load the Olark library in the background you can access those functions like this:
analytics.ready(function(){
olark('api.box.shrink')
});
Read the ready docs for more details
Record Live Chat Events
Using Olark through Segment gives you the ability to automatically record track events for live chat conversations. If you select this option, we’ll collect the following events:
- Live Chat Conversation Started
- Live Chat Message Sent
- Live Chat Message Received
These events will be sent to other tools in your stack that can accept track calls, so you can do things like analyze if users who chat spend more money over time.
To learn more about the live chat events you can capture with this destination, head on over to our Live Chat spec docs.

Supported Sources and Connection Modes
Before you start, make sure Olark supports the source type and connection mode you’ve chosen to implement. You can learn more about connection modes here.
| Web | Mobile | Server | |
|---|---|---|---|
| 📱 Device-mode | ✅ | ⬜️ | ⬜️ |
| ☁️ Cloud-mode | ⬜️ | ⬜️ | ⬜️ |
Settings
Segment lets you change these destination settings from the Segment app without having to touch any code.
Group ID
If you want to use Olark across multiple different websites under the same account, create an Olark Group and add the ID here.
Log custom events from analytics.track() to the Olark chat console
Log custom events from analytics.track() to the Olark chat console
Log pageviews to the Olark chat console
Log pageviews to the Olark chat console
Record live chat events.
Automatically send Live Chat message events, conversation starts and ends to other tools you have enabled.
Show the user’s name or email chat console
Show the user’s name or email from analytics.identify() in the Olark chat console
Site ID
You can find your Site ID on the Olark Install page. It should look something like this: 9385-174-10-1457.
Use inline chat box
Configures whether the chat box should be inlined or not
This page was last modified: 20 Oct 2020
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