The conversation you cannot find usually never had a message in it

You know somebody used the assistant, and the conversation is not in the list for that assistant.

In rough order of how often each one turns out to be the answer. Work down rather than across: each carries a way to tell whether it is yours before you change anything.

• 1

  Nothing was ever typed in it

  Why

  A conversation row exists as soon as a session starts, which is before any message is stored. The list deliberately shows only conversations with at least one message in them, because a list padded out with sessions nobody typed into is a list you stop reading.

  How to confirm it is this one

  Compare the conversations figure on the insights screen, which covers the last 30 days and counts every conversation started, against the number of rows in the list for the same period. The gap between them is sessions with nothing in them, and a figure higher than the list is your answer.

  Fix

  Nothing to fix. A large gap is a signal rather than a fault: people are opening the widget and leaving, which usually means the greeting or the suggested questions are not giving them a reason to start.

• 2

  You are reading a different assistant's list

  Why

  A conversation belongs to the assistant that answered it, and the list is per assistant. With more than one key installed across more than one site, a conversation from one site is invisible from the other assistant's screen, and nothing on the screen says so.

  How to confirm it is this one

  View source on the page it happened on and read the data-key on the tag. Compare it against the key on the assistant whose list you are reading. They have to be the same key, not merely the same site.

  Fix

  Open the list for the assistant that owns that key. If it turns out you have two assistants where you meant to have one, this is also how a duplicated tag tends to come to light.

• 3

  It is older than the figures you are reading

  Why

  The insights figures cover the last 30 days. The conversation list does not; it is paged and ordered by the most recent message first. An older conversation is therefore absent from the numbers and present in the list, several pages down, and the two screens disagreeing is expected.

  How to confirm it is this one

  Page back through the list instead of reading the insights screen. The order is by last message, newest first, so a conversation from two months ago sits behind every conversation that has been active since.

  Fix

  Use the list to find a particular conversation and the insights figures to read a trend. They answer different questions and are not built to agree.

• 4

  The visitor's browser would not keep an identifier

  Why

  The visitor identifier is kept in browser storage. In a private window, or in a browser told to refuse storage, that fails and an identifier lasting one page load is used instead. The same person moving between pages is then a new visitor each time, and a conversation that felt continuous to them is several short ones to you.

  How to confirm it is this one

  Look for a run of short conversations within a few minutes of each other, each with a different visitor identifier and a page address that follows on from the last. That pattern is one person, not four.

  Fix

  Nothing to fix and nothing to work around. A visitor who has told their browser to keep nothing has said what they want, and every message is stored regardless of which row it landed in.

An enquiry left through the handover form records the conversation it came out of, so where a visitor gave you their details you have a route into their conversation that does not involve scrolling at all. Start from the enquiry rather than from the list.

Why are empty conversations hidden rather than shown greyed out?

Because most people who open a chat widget never type in it, so they would be the majority of every page of the list. The count is still available on the insights screen, where it is a number worth watching rather than rows worth reading.

Do the insights numbers and the list have to agree?

No, and they will not. The conversations figure counts every conversation started in the last 30 days. The list shows conversations with at least one message, over all time. Two different questions, two different answers.

Can I find a conversation by the visitor's email address?

Only where they gave one. An address captured during a conversation is stored against it, and an enquiry carries both the address and the conversation it came from. A visitor who never identified themselves is identified only by the generated identifier.