General settings

The General settings area covers a miscellaneous range of settings, including the options that you use to adjust some system settings for the operator–visitor interaction. You get access to the 'General settings' section via Main Menu->Tools->System settings->General settings.

The 'General' section allows you to adjust the most general settings that will affect your communication with visitors.

Enter your name into the 'Operator name' field if you want it to be seen by the visitors in the chat sessions.

Use the 'Maximum number of chats' field to set the number of chat sessions you want to be able to lead simultaneously. You will be shown 'Incoming chat requests' from your visitors until the number of requests exceeds the number specified here. If there are more visitors wishing to initiate communication with an operator while the allowable number of chat sessions is already opened, they get automatically queued by the system. When the operator finishes one chat session, he is prompted to talk to the next visitor from the queue (the 'Incoming chat request' dialog is opened).

Select the check boxes 'Play sound on a new chat request' and 'Play sound when a new visitor arrives' to hear a signal when a visitor comes to your site or initiates a chat with you. This option is likely to turn out the most useful for the websites where there is not a great number of visitors coming during the day.

The 'Operator response timeout' (30 sec.) field indicates the period of time during which the 'Incoming chat request' dialog stays open. When the time runs out the system directs a visitor to the 'Communication Queue' section.

If you select the 'Display 'Audio hardware not found' warning' check box, and the necessary audio hardware is not found, an appropriate warning will appear at program startup.

'Show program window at startup' check box allows you to see the main frame when you start Sales-n-Stats. This option is also available by right-clicking on the Sales-n-Stats icon in the system tray and selecting 'Show main frame at start time' check box.

'Receive notifications by email' check box allows you to receive email messages when a visitor leaves you an offline message.

'Remove the following parameters from URL' field contains a list of URL parameters which you want to be concealed from the operator (for example, when some parameters are not significant) - like XSID, xid, phpbb2mysql_sid, osCsid.

'Activity timeout' is the time period after the last activity performed by a visitor on your website. It might be either a last click or a last signal from any site page. After this last click or signal the system waits for 210 seconds and then a visitor disappears from Site Monitor. If you edit 'Activity timeout' please make sure its duration is more than the 'Visitor tracking interval' specified in the Data Collector settings.

'Sleep timeout' is a period of time after which the system indicates visitors as 'sleeping'. This means they stay on the same page and do not perform any actions.

'Timeout to perform visible reactions' field allows you to define the period of time after which a reaction to an action executed on the site will take place.

'Warn if number of lines in report exceeded' field allows to set a maximum number of lines in reports. This may be useful if you print your reports. If you enter 0, a warning is never displayed.

To be notified about the system functioning you need to set network parameters. Sales-n-Stats sends email notifications about certain events within the system, for example, when the traffic exceeds an established limit.

'Network parameters' consists of two sections: 'Use HTTP proxy' where you adjust the necessary settings to get access to the Internet via HTTP Proxy, and 'Mail parameters' where you define the parameters necessary to receive system notifications.

Select the 'Use HTTP Proxy' check box if you don't have a direct internet access. Enter host name and port number.

Select 'Proxy Authorization Required' check box only if it is necessary. Then enter the user name and password that you get from the administrator into the appropriate fields.

Specify your email in the 'Send mail from' field and your visitors will be able to see this email address in the 'From' field in the email messages. The field 'Send notifications to' should be used to enter the email to which you want to receive system notifications.

Define the settings of the SMTP Server that you use: the mail domain name should be entered into the field 'SMTP Host', the port – into the field 'SMTP Port'.

Select the 'SMTP Authorization Required' check box if it is necessary. Then enter the user name and password into the corresponding fields. Click Save to confirm the changes.

POP3 (Post Office Protocol) is used for the collection of email by a mail client from an email server. If your email server software uses POP3 you should:

If you don't have any audio software on you computer you will see the warning message "Sales-n-Stats cannot access your audio hardware. All audio settings are disabled" when you open the 'VoIP Settings' section via Main Menu->Tools->System settings->General settings.

Select the 'can receive voice calls' check box to enable voice calls for your visitors. It means that when a visitor clicks on the 'Click for Live Help' button on your site, the 'Start communication' dialog opens and the visitor can select between a text and a voice chat.

The 'Local IP discovery' section provides you with several different ways of defining the IP address via which you want to connect your clients.

For a computer to communicate with other computers and Web servers on the Internet, it must have an IP address. An IP address (IP stands for Internet Protocol) is a unique 32-bit number that identifies the location of your computer on a network.

'Autodetect' option is enabled by default and defines your IP automatically. The system defines the addresses using the following principles:

Using this method the connection is only available via the IP address that was defined automatically.

Network Address Translation (or NAT) allows a single device, such as a router, to act as an agent between the Internet (or "public network") and a local (or "private") network. This means that only a single, unique IP address is required to represent an entire group of computers.

NAT allows you to connect to a client from the different network. If you use NAT to connect a client from the different network, select the 'I'm behind NAT' check box and enter the necessary IP into the 'External address' field that appears in the same row.

For correct and efficient work of VoIP functionality ask your system administrator to adjust the NAT server using the following settings:

If you want to set the IP address manually, enable the 'Manual selection' option. You will be able to choose the necessary IP from the given list.

If you use NAT to connect a client from the different network, select the 'I'm behind NAT' check box next to 'Manual selection' and enter the necessary IP into the 'External address' field that appears in the same row.

Adjusting a routing table is a more complex but more flexible way to define the local IP addresses. This method requires some knowledge and skills of a system administrator.

Operator Terminal can be connected to different networks via different IP addresses and routing table allows you to adjust the blocks of rules for selecting an appropriate IP address.

Each row in the table presents a separate rule that consists of a network address, network mask, local address (interface), and NAT address. Local addresses and Mask determine the range of the IP addresses of the clients you want to connect. For example, IP address 192.168.0.1 corresponds to the following network address 192.168.0.0 and netmask 255.255.255.0.

The rules are checked in accordance with the following priority: the higher the rule in the table the higher its priority. The system selects the result of the first rule satisfying the initial conditions.

This method is useful for the most precise settings of the non-standard net configuration. Set as many rules in the table as you consider necessary and sufficient for defining IP addresses.

Operator Terminal is connected to two networks: 192.168.10.0 with 192.168.10.137 IP address and 192.168.15.0 with 192.168.15.2 IP address. It uses NAT-gateway 192.168.10.137 with the external IP 212.84.22.96 to get access to Internet.

Net address	Net mask	Local address	NAT address
192.168.10.0	255.255.255.0	192.168.10.137	<none>
192.168.15.0	255.255.255.0	192.168.15.2	<none>
0.0.0.0	0.0.0.0	192.168.10.137	212.84.22.96

Note: If you want to use this method but don't possess the necessary skills feel free to refer to our Support Team for help and assistance. Ask your system administrator for the necessary settings.

If you want to move the sets in the table, use the Up and Down buttons. To delete a set from the table, select the necessary set and then click Remove.

When you set up an advertising campaign, visitors come to your site from referrer sites. There are two ways to know that a visitor came from a specific referrer. The first way is to provide a referrer with a link to a special page on your site (for example,http://www.mysite.com/adv_redirect.php?id=13456) , to which the visitors will come. You can have a separate page for each of your referrers. In this case you know that all the visitors who viewed this page came from this or that referrer. The second way is to know the URL of the page where a referrer placed a link to your site. It is possible to use a pattern, if you do not know the exact link or the referrer has multiple links (for example, *//*my.partner.site.com/*). Then you know which referrer a visitor was directed by if he came from this URL.

Note: If you enter both parameters for the same advertising campaign, the conditions will be joined by OR operator. This means that the visitor's data will have to satisfy ANY of the conditions for the visitor to be identified as referred by this or that campaign.