When you are at the early stages of your career, passive income is something that can really influence the development of your journey as a dev. When you have a back up in the form of money coming from the source inaffected by your 9-5 job, you are more likely to take more risks, spend more time learning, or try new projects. The main question right now comes to the point of how? Where do I start?
And even if you already decided to go in that direction, more questions arise:
How will I know I’m not wasting my time on something that won’t bring profit?
Is my idea for an app/service valid?
Will I be able to produce something of sufficient quality?
Where could I sell my app?
We think LiveChat can help you with that.
Let’s make a deal. We will suggest a few app ideas based on feature requests. What's more, all these ideas will be junior-developer-friendly. We'll also show you how to get started in our Developer Console and link the most useful resources so that you don’t get lost in the documentation jungle. And things will get even more exciting once you publish your app on the Marketplace.
To sum up, you will get:
- An app idea based on a feature request, possible to be implemented by a junior developer.
- Onboarding in the LiveChat Developer Console.
- Guides, tutorials, and videos that will help you build the app.
- A set of ready-to-use components, AKA LiveChat Design System.
And in return, what we need your motivation and intermediate coding skills.
If that's something you might be up for, keep on reading.
What is the LiveChat Platform?
Let me introduce our platform first.
LiveChat is an online customer service software with live support, help desk software, and web analytics capabilities. It's used by more than 37,000 companies all over the world.
The LiveChat Platform is where developers come in. The Platform is a range of products and services that can be used to build a variety of communication tools for businesses. Our Developer Program and Marketplace create an open ecosystem for developers, partners, and customers.
Onboarding in the Developer Console
The Developer Console is a place where developers create new applications (also called integrations), manage them, submit them for review, keep track of the income, and much more.
Following these 4 steps will help you get onboarded in the new environment:
- Sign up
- Create an app
- Discover building blocks
- Play with sample apps
1. Sign up for the Developer Console
Start off by creating a free account in Developer Console.
2. Create an app
While theory is important, learning through practice is more effective. Get to know our Developer Console by creating a sample app, just for the sake of training.
Follow the App Wizard
For those who prefer interactive tutorials rather than static instructions, the best choice is to log in to the Developer Console and start the App Wizard, our follow-along guide. It will take you through the creation process of an Agent App widget. It's the most commonly built type of integration displayed in the Details section of the LiveChat App. 👇
See also
📖 A written tutorial on how to create a basic app in the Developer Console
🎥 Building LiveChat apps 101 webinar
3. Discover building blocks
After entering the Developer Console, you'll quickly notice various types of so-called building blocks. They allow you to configure different functionalities of your applications, for example, app location, app authorization, or webhooks.
📖 Read more about particular building blocks.
4. Play with sample apps
Use one of our sample apps to experiment with building blocks or to look up the code.
These examples serve as a great reference as they implement authorization and data fetching.
Design System
Regardless of how advanced your design skills are, we encourage you to build LiveChat integrations using our Design System.
It contains a wide variety of React components, such as buttons, toasts, dropdowns, and tooltips. They're all already in line with the LiveChat look and feel, which will make your app integrate seamlessly with the LiveChat App UI.
Take a look at this simple UI built entirely with Design System components. Feel free to use it as a boilerplate or reference.
It's worth pointing out that aligning with our visual guidelines will help you go through the app review process more smoothly.
App ideas
These ideas are based on our user’s requests – don’t worry about creating a product that nobody will use!
Please hold on
Send a custom message to the customer if the chat is idle for a certain period of time.
Chat Source Report
Improve the reporting experience by automatically tagging chats from a certain source.
Simplified tag editing
Replace existing tags with new tags in all the chats they were already added to.
Agent grading
Allow admins to internally grade the performance of any agent, scoring their chats.
Google Play integration
Reply to your Google Play app reviews directly from chats.
Transcripts made prettier
Send neatly formatted transcripts to a selected channel automatically after each chat ends.
Kustomer integration
This app would integrate LiveChat with the Kustomer CRM.
CRM integrations
There are still many options to explore when it comes to the CRMs LiveChat can be integrated with. Check out our Marketplace and see if you can find some inspiration!
If you want to see more ideas for apps, be sure to visit
Resources
Our documentation is a treasure trove, but we handpicked the most valuable and relevant resources to ease you into the LiveChat Platform. Feel free to discover more on your own.
- Building LiveChat apps 101 webinar
- Live coding session: Web app authorization
- Agent App SDK
- Sign in with LiveChat
- Chat Widget Moments
Last but not least, consider joining our Discord for Developers. It's a community of developers gathered around the LiveChat Platform; a place where you can seek advice, exchange ideas, and hang out with fellow devs. If you need more info about those app ideas or the Platform in general, feel free to contact us at developers@livechat.com or on Discord.
👉 Join Discord 👈
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