Build your own UI

To build your own UI for Kustomer Chat and the Knowledge Base, you can use the Kustomer Core SDK. The Core SDK gives you access to all the data, events, and methods available for our built-in UI.

The Kustomer Core SDK exposes APIs in the form of provider interfaces that allow you to create your own chat widget UI and send information into Kustomer APIs.

This guide shows you how to use the Kustomer Core SDK to build your own mobile chat UI.

Prerequisites

Before you get started, you'll need the following:

• A valid API key with just the org.tracking role. See Requirements

• Chat SDK installation. To learn more, see Installation.

Install with Gradle

Add the following dependency to your app.gradle:

dependencies {
      implementation 'com.kustomer.chat:core:<<Android_SDK_Version>>'
      ...
  }

Overview

To build your own UI with the Kustomer Core SDK, you will need to do the following:

1. Initialize KustomerCore from your Application class (either with or without options to override SDK settings).

2. Implement KusChatListener to receive chat events.

3. Register listeners and perform actions with Provider classes that allow your chat UI to interact with Kustomer Services.

We've provided more information, code examples, and links to resources for each step below.

Step 1: Initialize KustomerCore

First, initialize [KustomerCore]https://kustomer.github.io/customer-android-kotlin/com.kustomer.core/-kustomer-core/) from your Application class.

You can initialize KustomerCore with or without options.

👍

Always initialize with an Application class

You must always have an Application class to initialize Kustomer Chat properly. Create an Application class before you call Kustomer.init().

Option 1: Initialize with options

Create KustomerCoreOptions object

To override any settings within the SDK, create a KustomerCoreOptions object with KustomerCoreOptions.Builder.

val kustomerCoreOptions = KustomerCoreOptions.Builder()
                .setBusinessScheduleId("<business_schedule_id>") //override business schedule
                .setLogLevel(KusLogLevel.All) //set log options
                .build()

Initialize with KustomerCoreOptions

To initialize with options, include your Kustomer API Key and KustomerCoreOptions as a parameter for KustomerCore.init in your onCreate method in your Application class.

KustomerCore.init(
                application,
                "API_KEY", // read it from gradle properties
                kustomerCoreOptions //Optional parameter
            )

Option 2: Initialize without options

To initialize without options, include your Kustomer API key as a parameter for KustomerCore.init in your onCreate method in your Application class.

KustomerCore.init(
                application,
                "API_KEY", // read it from gradle properties
            )

Step 2. Implement KusChatListener

After you initialize KustomerCore, implement KusChatListener to receive chat events.

KusChatListener receives chat events that contain a KusConversation.id parameter for the relevant chat event.

To show events for a single active session only, store the chat event
KusConversation.id in your application memory. You can then use the KusConversation.id parameter for the event to either show or ignore event updates for users.

KusChatListener supports the following events:

📘

KusChatListener documenation

See the full documentation for KusChatListener for more information and code examples for supported chat events.

Step 3. Register listeners and perform actions with Kustomer Core Providers

👍

Initialize the KustomerCore class with a valid API key

Make sure you have initialized the KustomerCore class with a valid API key.

For the final step, you will register listeners and perform actions with Kustomer Core Provider classes.

Provider classes enable your custom chat UI to interact with Kustomer Services.

📘

API Provider class documentation

Refer to our API Provider documentation for further implementation reference.

Provider responses

All API provider classes return a response wrapped as KusResult.

APIs with suspend modifier

APIs with heavy processing or network operations are marked with the suspend modifier. You can call these APIs asynchronously from Kotlin coroutines.

A future version of the Kustomer Core SDK will include KusCallback response support for these suspend functions.

Kustomer API Providers

We've provided a list of Kustomer API Provider classes below:

KusChatProvider:

• Register a KusChatListener to receive chat updates
• Create new conversation
• Send chat messages and attachments
• Mark conversations as read
• End conversation
• Get unread count across all conversations
• Call identify to login a user
• Fetch chat settings and business schedules

KusPushRegistrationProvider:

• Register and unregister device tokens with Kustomer to receive push notifications

KusKbProvider :

• Fetch article categories and articles
• Search for articles with any term

Additional Kustomer Core Android SDK resources

Packages

Index

All Types