Introduction to Live Chat

Live Chat, part of the Firefox Support community, is an interactive way to help users solve problems and learn about Firefox. The diverse community of Firefox Support contributors consists of people from all over the world with a wide variety of experiences. If you enjoy helping others and using Firefox, Live Chat may be for you. See Helping with Live Chat for a guide on getting started.

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Mechanics of Live Chat

Live Chat makes use of the open source Spark client to handle chat requests from users. Once you are signed into Spark, you can start helping with chat sessions.

Accepting a chat

When Live Chat is open and you are signed in, you will receive chat offer notifications. You can choose Accept to begin chatting, or Reject to send the user back into the queue.

After you create your account, you will need to be invited to chats by existing helpers. This process ensures that everyone is familiar with the process before receiving automatic chat offers. (Your account will be promoted to the Support workgroup after you have answered several questions and learned the basics.)

Inviting another helper

If you need to leave before finishing a chat session, or if you want someone to assist, you can invite another contributor to your chat. To do this, simply type /invite nickname into the chat, where nickname is the name of the helper to invite.

Communicating after a chat session

It is often necessary to communicate with a user after a chat session has finished. A user may need to restart Firefox or may not immediately know whether a proposed solution worked. In these cases, users can follow up by posting in the Firefox forum and/or completing a brief survey.

Users in Live Chat see these options after the chat has closed. You will be alerted in the Contributors chatroom if a user replies to one of your chats.

Ending a chat session

If a chat session is over, you can end it by simply closing the tab. You may also need to end a chat early if you need to leave and no other helpers are available.

  • If you need to end a chat session before it has finished, try to first invite another helper.
  • If you can't find someone else to join, use a canned response under the 'Following Up' category before closing the chat.

Chat limit

You will continue receiving automatic chat offers until you are at your chat limit. The default chat limit for all contributors is three. To receive more chats, you must either close a chat or increase your chat limit.

Tip: You can change your chat limit by typing /limit number into the Contributors chat room. Currently, the maximum chat limit is 8.

Contributor tools

Contributors conference


The Contributors chat room is useful to get advice on a tough question, share tips from a chat you recently answered, or ask someone to take over chats when you have to leave. All helpers automatically join this room when connecting to Spark.

It's easy to rejoin the room if you leave it:

  1. In the main Spark window, click the Conferences tab near the bottom
  2. Double-click Contributors to join the room

Canned responses

Chat contributors can save time by making use of canned responses. Both Global and Personal canned responses are available, with Global responses being shared among all helpers. Everyone is free to specify their own Personal responses or to suggest new Global responses.

Global canned responses consist of common instructions and knowledge base links. Many questions can be answered by simply pointing a user to the correct knowledge base link. The responses are organized into categories:

  • Troubleshooting: Instructions and knowledge base links for performing common troubleshooting steps
  • Common issues: Knowledge base resources for the most common issues are kept here so everyone can get to them quickly
    • Error messages: Links to knowledge base articles corresponding to common error messages
    • Web sites: Knowledge base resources for misbehaving web sites. (can't log in, sites look wrong, etc)
  • Using Firefox: Knowledge base links to help people use Firefox features
  • Resources: Commonly used resources that don't fit into another category are kept here, such as about:config
  • Following up: Instructions for users to follow up after ending the chat session
  • Administration: Links to chat rules and templates for ending a chat due to abuse.
  • RRRT: Temporary information for new issues under investigation.
  • Tags: Shortcuts for adding chat tags (see below) to the current chat.
  • Common instructions: Instructions that are referenced frequently while troubleshooting. (Obtaining a screenshot on different operating systems, accessing Task Manager/Activity Monitor, etc)

Chat tags

Everyone has the ability to tag chats while answering them using the /tag command. Tags help organize chats and can help in finding a transcript later. Some common tags are listed below. To add the 'crash' tag to the current chat, just type /tag crash.

List of common tags:
  • qa (This is an issue that Mozilla QA should investigate)
  • crash (issues where Firefox crashes)
  • print (problems with printing)
  • wontstart (issues where Firefox will not start)
  • addon (problem with an add-on)
  • firewall (problem relating to a firewall)
  • website (problem relating to a specific website)
  • flash (issues involving Adobe Flash)
  • solved (user solved the problem))
  • followup (user will come back later or post to the forum)
  • userleft (user left before solving the problem)

Room monitors

Some of our most active contributors become Room Monitors and are able to watch chats without joining them. Room Monitors are here to help - they are great people to ask if you need a second opinion on how to handle a chat. Room Monitors also keep track of which issues are most common and help other contributors find answers to questions.

Learn more

We're glad to have you as a member of the Firefox Support community! Don't hesitate to ask us questions in Contributors to learn more about helping and the issues that users face. We also maintain several resources to consult as a guide to effectively help users.