DEV Community: Łukasz Wardęga

How to pass an app review and start selling what you created? [video course]

Łukasz Wardęga — Thu, 26 Jan 2023 05:00:37 +0000

Hi!👋 Today, we're posting the last episode of our course.

Let's say you responded to some of our app requests, created and deployed your app – the last thing you need to do is to get your app through app review. How to do it successfully?

From the movie below, you'll learn the details of the app review process in the LiveChat Developer Program. With this knowledge, you'll not only be able to pass the review seamlessly, but also, you'll know how to make your app the best of the best and thrill your future customers with the quality of your work.

Check it out!

Check out the previous episodes of our course!

Lesson 1: Plan out the app development

Lesson 2: LiveChat API in practice

Lesson 3: Deploying your app

How to deploy your app on Netlify, Firebase or Heroku? A video course.

Łukasz Wardęga — Fri, 20 Jan 2023 04:38:05 +0000

Hello!
Welcome to the third lesson of the Practical Guide to Building LiveChat Apps! (if you haven't seen previous ones, check out Lesson 1 about planning the app development or Lesson 2 about using LiveChat API in practice 🫡)

Watch the 3rd lesson, where you’ll learn how to deploy your app to:

Netlify
Firebase
Heroku And ultimately, how to configure your freshly deployed app in the Developer Console!

If you have any questions, let us know in the comments! Tomorrow we will publish the last lesson of the course 👋

[video course] Learn how to build apps with LiveChat Developer Platform

Łukasz Wardęga — Thu, 19 Jan 2023 09:20:20 +0000

Hello! Welcome to Lesson 2 of our video course on creating LiveChat apps!

(if you haven't seen it, check out the introduction and Lesson 1 about planning the app development 🫡)

By watching the 2nd lesson, you’ll learn about:

how to code the LiveChat configuration API methods to your app.
how to implement authorization with LiveChat Accounts SDK.
how to configure your app in the Developer Console.

Tomorrow we will be back with another lesson!

Learn how to build apps with LiveChat Developer Platform 🧐

Łukasz Wardęga — Tue, 17 Jan 2023 16:16:21 +0000

Hi!

Welcome to our guide to building LiveChat apps! 👋

This course from our Developer Program is a great way to improve your skills as a junior dev, create your first apps and build passive income by selling them to our users via our Marketplace.

If you want to take your first steps in building applications, but don’t feel that you have all the knowledge you need to start, it might be the thing just for you. The course is entirely free, shows step-by-step how to build your app in the Developer Console, and gives you some general programming tips and techniques you can use in the future.

During the course, you’ll learn:

How to create an app from start to finish
Best programming practices
How to effectively use the LiveChat API
Superb developer tools to facilitate your workflow
Different hosting options and how to use them
How to excel at the LiveChat app review
Monetization options at the LiveChat Developer Program

Lesson 1: Plan out the app development process

We’re glad that you want to go through this journey with us!

From this lesson you will learn:

how to plan your app development.
the technologies you can build with at LiveChat.
preparing the environment for the training app.
the tools useful for app development.
good practices before you start your work.

Stay calm, tomorrow we’ll be back with the next lesson! We will show you LiveChat API in practice 👌

You can also visit our site for the whole course 🧐

If you have any questions, let us know in the comments 🙏

Hosting your app for production – what do you need?

Łukasz Wardęga — Tue, 03 Jan 2023 08:20:46 +0000

Hi! 👋
This is a repost of an article from LiveChat Developer Platform. If you would like to get to know about the project, or maybe create and sell an app to our users, check out more here 🛠

Let’s say you have built an app. It works great, is innovative, and will change the world. At this moment, you definitely cannot wait to publish it and share it with others! But there is one more decision: how will you make your app available to everyone?

You need hosting, someplace where your code can leave and be served to the users (frontend apps) or where it would run and handle incoming requests (backend apps). Plenty of services are offering paid or free hosting in various forms. They differ not only by which company operates them but also by which data center your app will be stored and served. Additionally, they can require a different configuration level or support only a specific set of technologies.

The decision is not easy, and your choice impacts your app’s overall performance and accessibility. This article will provide an overview of available hosting options alongside recommendations for different types of applications you have or are planning to build.

Static content

For most front-end apps, you build static content from your code that doesn’t do any server-side computations. This is the case with, for example, static websites or Single Page Applications (SPAs).

Your app consists of some HTML and CSS alongside JavaScript code dedicated entirely to client-side usage in the web browser. If this sounds like your project, the best solution is to use a Content Delivery Network (CDN).

It allows your application to be geographically distributed among a group of servers that work together to provide fast delivery to everyone, no matter where they are in the world. This crucial optimization makes your app accessible for everyone in a somewhat comparable load time. The easiest and most pleasant way to ship your application to the edge is via seamless all-in-one services like Netlify or Vercel or manage the CDN yourself with Cloudflare CDN, Google Cloud CDN, and Amazone CloudFront.

Server-side

If your app requires a runtime platform, for example, you have built a back-end service, full-stack app, or front-end application that uses Server-Side Rendering (SSR), there are three main types of cloud computing options you should be interested in: Infrastructure as a service (IaaS), Platform as a service (PaaS), and Serverless.

How do you choose which one suits your needs? Ask yourself a question: how much of a runtime environment do I need or want to manage myself?

Infrastructure as a service (IaaS)

In IaaS, you typically get a preconfigured virtual or physical machine from a cloud provider that can be exposed publicly on a temporary domain or your domain. Everything else you need to set up on your own, similar to how you set up your local machine. Installation of the required software, the configuration of the deployment process, and even the network layer setup - great freedom comes with great responsibility.

The main advantage of this approach is that if you own the machine, you can more easily configure it for your needs which comes in handy for more complicated projects or less typical setups; for example, combining different runtime platforms in a single project, requiring access to a host environment or you simply need the persistence of stored data. Take a look at Amazon AWS, Microsoft Azure, and Google Cloud.

Platform as a service (PaaS)

If you’re searching for something more plug-and-play, take a look at PaaS. With this type of cloud computing, you still get a dedicated spot in the virtual machine environment. But the whole configuration and setup process is typically based on declarative configuration specifying how to build and run the app, what npm scripts to run, and which Node.js version to use. Using that information, all the setup is done for you.

The network layer setup is also taken care of, and you commonly get a free subdomain bonded to your newly created service for free. Typically, you need to provide the port number to the environment variable your app will listen from, and the cloud service can automatically supply you with the appropriate one.

Additionally, because many applications have standard requirements, typically reasonable defaults are available. For instance, if you use Node.js, then dependencies can be installed using npm install, and most probably, the app can be built using npm run build and run using npm start.

PaaS services go even one step further and often offer direct GitHub, GitLab, or Bitbucket integrations to get an automated code deployment process. Take a look at AWS Elastic Beanstalk, Heroku, Google Cloud App Engine, and DigitalOcean App Platform.

Serverless

If your requirements are even lower, and you just need to run some code on the server safely and securely that can be accessed by your users and app, look no further than Serverless! Commonly known as functions or lambdas, they provide you with everything except your own code.

You don’t own the infrastructure, machine, and not even the runtime platform. You just upload a file with a function for handling HTTP requests, and in return, you receive an URL address. The cloud provider guarantees that if someone requests this URL, your function will be invoked and supplied with all the necessary information as arguments. That’s it!

Cloud providers are famous for offering solutions that combine CDN and Serverless in one product covering your project requirements from both the front-end and back-end, building a seamless developer experience, and taking care of DevOps work for you. Take a look at AWS Lambda, Google Cloud Serverless, and Azure Functions.

Our choice

Considering all of the described solutions, it may not be easy to decide which path to follow. Especially if you have just started thinking about your app. If you have a great idea in your head, but you are unsure how your app will evolve, it can be hard to decide where and how the app should be hosted to not slow down your innovation and allow for experimenting with new things. Additionally, once your app gains more attention, you need to take care of scaling it up.

We have a similar thought process at LiveChat about developers building their apps for our Marketplace, thanks to the LiveChat Developer Program. We wanted to offer a universal starter project which would provide flexibility and showcase how to integrate with our platform but at the same time is simple for development and deployment. How do you minimize the required time and effort to build and deploy your app?

We made a LiveChat Next.js App template. Using Next.js as a foundation for the project, we have a front-end app with built-in routing, Server Side Rendering (SSR), and Server Side Generation (SSG) built with React, but on top of that, ready-to-use API routes built in the form of Serverless functions. If you prefer Vue.js or Svelte, you can choose similar frameworks, like Nuxt.js and SvelteKit.

When it comes to deployment, thanks to excellent tooling support, using one of the aforementioned frameworks, you can deploy your entire application under a single project where the front-end will be distributed on the CDN and the back-end automatically deployed as Serverless functions. The services which offer such capabilities are Netlify and Vercel.

About the autor

Maciej Walaszczyk is a frontend developer and tech lead of OpenWidget. He’s the guy behind Chat Widget Adapters. You can follow him on Twitter or check out his work on GitHub.

At Least 8 App Ideas for Generating Passive Income Based on Requests of Our Users

Łukasz Wardęga — Mon, 31 Oct 2022 16:09:39 +0000

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.

While having 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. 👇

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.

4. Play with sample apps

Use one of our sample apps to experiment with building blocks or to look up the code.

🔌 Samples apps on GitHub

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.

🎨 Design System

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

the App Ideas page >

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.

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 👈

GitHub Actions in practice: a bit of LiveChat experience

Łukasz Wardęga — Wed, 14 Sep 2022 10:54:07 +0000

Back in 2018, GitHub introduced a new feature called GitHub Actions. At the very beginning, it served as a useful tool for orchestrating workflows. Based on events, one could perform various effects on GitHub. Over time, the project grew and started to provide more and more possibilities; for example, continuous integration and continuous delivery (CI/CD).

Recently, we created a short introduction to GitHub Actions on our developers blog – check it out!

We also share there a bit of our experience with them – for the first time, we used Actions to solve the problem of broken links in our documentation. The code sample that we used is also attached; we hope that it would be useful! 😎

Learn how to create mini online apps from a LiveChat expert during our Live Coding Session 👀

Łukasz Wardęga — Mon, 04 Jul 2022 15:30:55 +0000

Hello, DEV community! 👋

I’d like to invite you to a special event where you will be able to learn how to build an actual online app that you will be able to effectively sell in our Marketplace.

In the LiveChat Developer Platform, we encourage external developers to create extensions to our product – LiveChat, which allow our clients (35K+ of them!) to communicate with their customers via new channels. Many of our integrations were built this way, such as the integration with WhatsApp.
Our customers can buy them in our Marketplace to further adjust LiveChat to their business needs.

This time, we will be introducing building blocks. Using their intuitive user interfaces, you will be able to configure API core functions in just a moment. During our event, you will have the opportunity to learn how to add the property building blocks by building a simple application in our Console.

As you will be creating apps for active users, you will also learn about LiveChat properties – they allow you to store pieces of data about user licenses. They were designed to be easy to implement, so you could use them when creating a complex backend setup for your app.

You’ll also have the opportunity to see an example of an already-published app! We’ll be analyzing the code of Quick Notes – one of the most popular LiveChat extensions which relies heavily on LC properties.

Join us on July 6th at 5pm CET and see how easy it is to create useful apps for LiveChat users 👌

[[SAVE YOUR SEAT]]

Join LiveChat Incubator and bring your product idea to life!

Łukasz Wardęga — Wed, 11 May 2022 15:07:38 +0000

Hello, dev community! 👋

After 20 years of breaking communication barriers and developing 4 successful products, Livechat has decided to do something entirely different.

Even when possessing a huge amount of talent , we can only focus on so many projects at the same time. We have come to the conclusion that our resources can serve not only us as a company but anyone who thinks the way we do and shares our vision.

So, I’m thrilled to announce the beginning of LiveChat Incubator! 😎

We are looking for projects that have the potential to break down communication barriers between people and businesses and help both parties express themselves in a more personal manner.

While we remain in the business communication industry, it doesn’t have to be a text-based solution like ours. We are looking for technology-driven products with the potential for scalability, rather than online services.

If you have an idea for great innovation, or you are already developing a promising product, we are here to help you. And by help, we mean more than money (but if you join us, we will take care of that too).

In LiveChat Incubator, you can count on our:

Knowledge 🎓

We are a company of veterans. After 20 years of operating in the business communication industry, with multiple successes and failures, we’ve gathered experience that will allow you to avoid the errors that many startups make. You will learn from our mistakes.

Technology 💻

Our products are built on a scalable infrastructure that serves thousands of companies to communicate with millions of consumers. Every single day. You will be able to use the company’s Developer Platform with access to Messaging APIs, website widgets, and other building blocks for modern communication tools available for web and mobile. We will also offer you access to comprehensive technological facilities — IT tools and infrastructure (including platforms such as IBM, Amazon, or Cloudflare) and specialist knowledge. You will be able to use it freely.

Distribution Channels 🗣️

What is the purpose of creating a great product if no one knows about it? Getting in front of customers is the struggle of every startup. In LiveChat Incubator, we’ll support you with our communication channels and know-how, allowing you to grow your user base quicker than you think, giving you access to our 35,000+ paying customers. You will also be able to use our Marketplace and get in touch with 10,000+ developers and 10,000+ of our partners and affiliates. We will talk about you. Loudly.

An Ecosystem of Products 💫

Do you have an idea for a product complementary to one of ours? It sounds like destiny. We will support you in integrating it into our ecosystem and help leverage and maximize the potential of your project. Let’s build together.

Check out more info on our site, or you can ask questions directly in the thread below!

Learn how to how to create apps for business communication. Join our Live Coding Session!

Łukasz Wardęga — Wed, 23 Feb 2022 16:51:33 +0000

Are you sometimes in a situation, when you have a severe problem or question and would even consider paying money to someone who can contact you with a person that knows the solution? In business people do this all the time, that’s how commissions work.

You can be that someone 😎

In LiveChat Developer Platform, we encourage external developers to create extensions to our product – LiveChat, which allow our clients (35k of them!) to communicate with their customers via new channels. Many of our integrations were built this way, for example this integration with WhatsApp. Our customers can buy them in our Marketplace, to further adjust LiveChat to their business needs.

Long story short, we invite you to help our customers support their clients, which they wouldn’t be able to reach without custom integrations. We help you create, market and sell your apps – it’s a great source of passive income.

If you would like to know more about our framework, we’d like to invite you for our upcoming event! Recently, we released Chat Widget Adapters, thanks to which it’s now possible to integrate the LiveChat’s Chat Widget with websites using popular frameworks such as React, Angular, and Vue.

On this occasion, we’re running Live Coding Session, where together with Maciej Walaszczyk from our Product Team you’ll learn:

How to use framework-specific Chat Widget Adapters to make the Chat Widget an integral part of a website.
How to use the Agent App SDK and rich messages to customize and add interactivity to website or product.
How to combine all that knowledge to build an application in the Developer Console.

Let’s meet and learn together!

[SAVE YOUR SEAT]

3 magic steps to create and monetize an app ✨

Łukasz Wardęga — Mon, 27 Dec 2021 16:18:29 +0000

If you think about creating a source of passive income, or you would like to challenge yourself with creating an app from scratch, I have good and bad news for you. 👌

The good news is that it’s really simple, and the bad news is... that it’s really simple, so it won’t be that challenging.

But let’s get to the point. In LiveChat, we run a Developer Program that allows external developers to create custom extensions and integrations for our product. These apps can be later bought by LiveChat’s users (all 34k of them) in our Marketplace.

In our Program, we help you with the ideas for apps and support you with distribution among our users. (If you wonder what apps we currently are looking for, check out this site.) You can also consult the technical details with our staff while creating your application.

A couple of days before Christmas, Oliwia, our Technical Writer, created three short video tutorials which will help you get along with our Developer Console.

In these three videos, you will see her becoming a wizard 🧝‍♀️ and learn about the basic functionalities of our Developer Console. She will also explain to you how to submit an app through the dashboard and how to monetize it.

Check it out!

1. Introduction to the LiveChat Developer Console

2. Creating an App

3. Monetization

If you have any questions about the Developer Console or you would like to start building your own app, let me know in the comments! You can also check out our Developer Program site.

Build an app for sending GIFs and win 300$!

Łukasz Wardęga — Tue, 07 Sep 2021 14:41:03 +0000

Hello! 👋

LiveChat would like to invite you to a very special event! Our Developer Platform is running a live coding session, during which we’re going to put our design skills into practice and build an integration with Giphy. The app will allow agents to display, search for, and send gifs to the chat.

It will be a great opportunity to master LiveChat Design System, which is used both by engineers working at LiveChat and external developers building apps for the Marketplace. It will also be a chance to learn a bunch of good practices in designing web apps.

[Quick Side Note: The LiveChat Developer Platform is a space where external developers can build custom solutions for LiveChat customers. As a bonus, it’s a great source of passive income for developers who publish their apps in the LiveChat Marketplace. Our team supports developers during the whole process of creating and distributing their solutions: from sharing insights on customers’ needs to marketing new integrations.]

💻 You'll learn how to:

build apps that match the LiveChat look and feel.
optimize and speed up app development with the ready-to-use - components from the Design System.
apply good UX patterns in web application design.
avoid design anti-patterns.
create a Settings page for your app through Developer Console.

🛠 What we are going to do?

We'll build an integration with Giphy for displaying, searching for, and sending gifs to the chat right from the LiveChat Agent Application. Our application will store the history of sent gifs along with the filtering by date option. Additionally, we’ll add a Favorites feature. We’ll also enhance the app by a custom Settings page built through Developer Console, ensuring the app settings are always styled and displayed flawlessly.

⭐️ Prizes

The first person to correctly resolve our coding task will receive the main prize, 300$! 💸

📅 When: September 16, 2021 at 5 p.m. CEST

🔴 Where: YouTube

👨‍🏫 Host: Dominik Sławkowski, Frontend Developer in the Developer Program

[[[SAVE YOUR SEAT]]]

Hope to see you there! 🤞