How to setup Facebook Application

This guide applies only to self-hosted (standalone/downloadable) LiveAgent licenses hosted on your server. For cloud-hosted (monthly-paying) accounts on LiveAgent servers, check this guide instead.

Quick navigation

Facebook developer panel part
LiveAgent part

Connecting LiveAgent with Facebook enables you to respond to Facebook messages, posts, or comments directly from your LiveAgent.

Before starting with the integration, you have to be an owner or administrator of a Facebook page and have a Facebook developer account.

Your LiveAgent installation must be secured with an SSL certificate as it is a Facebook requirement.

Create a Facebook App

Login to your personal or company Facebook account, then navigate to https://developers.facebook.com/ and click on the "My Apps" item in the top menu.

In the Facebook developer panel, click on "Create App". In the app creating screen choose the "Business" type, click on "Next", fill in the "Display name" and "App contact email" fields, and click on "Create app". You will be asked to submit your Facebook password to finish the process.

Set up the Facebook App

After creating an app, you will be redirected to the new app's Dashboard to choose products. Find "Messenger" and click on "Set up". It is not needed to change anything in Messenger product settings, so navigate back to the "Dashboard" tab in the menu, find "Facebook Login", and click again on "Set up". It will lead you to the Facebook Login product Quickstart tab, which needs to be configured as described below.

In the Facebook Login product Quickstart, choose the "Web" type of the platform, then insert the URL of the site where your LiveAgent account is installed into the "Site URL" field, and hit "Save". No other actions in this section are required.

After saving the Site URL, navigate to the "Settings > Basic" section in the menu, where you need to fill up the following fields:

Display name - Name of your Facebook app.
App domains - Domain of your LiveAgent installation, only a website from this domain would be able to use your Facebook app. Use your Site URL set up in the previous step.
Contact email - email address able to receive updates and emails from Facebook.
Privacy Policy URL - URL to your company/program privacy policy. You can use the URL of our company Privacy Policy "https://www.liveagent.com/privacy-policy-live-agent/" as it is valid for all LiveAgent installations.
Terms of Service URL - URL to your company/program terms of service, you can again use the URL of our company Terms & conditions "https://www.liveagent.com/terms-and-conditions/".
App icon - Icon for your Facebook app, you can upload a JPG, GIF, or PNG file, the size of the image must be between 512 x 512 and 1024 x 1024 pixels, and the file size cannot exceed the 5 MB limit. If you don't have a proper icon, you can use the following LiveAgent 512 x 512 icon.

If you don't have a domain name (only an IP address), leave the App Domains field blank. If you try to set an IP address into the App Domains field, it will show the following error: "This must be derived from Canvas URL, Secure Canvas URL, Unity Binary URL, Site URL, Mobile Site URL, Page Tab URL, or Secure Page Tab URL. Check and correct the following domains: ..."

Notice and store data from the "App ID" and" App Secret" fields. You will need them later on when configuring the Facebook App inside your LiveAgent panel. You might be requested to submit your Facebook password to reveal the App Secret.

Hit "Save changes" and navigate to the "Facebook Login > Settings" tab in the menu. In these settings, you have to insert 2 URLs into the "Valid OAuth Redirect URIs" field:

https://support.mycompany.com/scripts/fb_agent_login.php
https://support.mycompany.com/scripts/fb_visitor_login.php

Do not forget to hit again "Save changes".

Do not forget to replace support.mycompany.com with your real LiveAgent installation URL.
If you don't do this, Facebook will return an error when you try to connect pages with LiveAgent: "Can't load URL: The domain of this URL isn't included in the app's domains. To be able to load this URL, add all domains and sub-domains of your app to the App Domains field in your app settings."

Add permissions

After saving the Facebook Login product, navigate to the "App Review > Permissions and Features" section in the menu, search for the "public_profile" and "email" permissions, and hit "Get advanced access". These 2 permissions are enough to be able to connect your Facebook app to your LiveAgent account from your Facebook account as the creator/administrator of the app.

Advanced access for these 2 permissions is mandatory, but it can be activated immediately.
Advanced access for all other permissions requires reviewing your app by the Facebook team by setting up an App Review Request.

If you would need to allow other LiveAgent administrators who are not also set as administrators of your Facebook app connecting your Facebook app, it is necessary to get advanced access for 8 additional permissions and request a review of your Facebook app by the Facebook team. Check this guide for more info.

LiveAgent part

In your LiveAgent panel, navigate to "Configuration > Facebook" and click on "Enable Facebook". Your LiveAgent panel refreshes, and a new sub-tab "Application Setup" will appear under "Configuration > Facebook".

Navigate to the "Application Setup" section, and insert your Facebook app App ID and App secret stored previously from the Facebook developer panel > Settings > Basic.

Hit "Save", and again a new sub-tab "Facebook pages" will appear under "Configuration > Facebook". Navigate to the "Facebook pages" section and click on "Connect". A new pop-up window appears where you need to authenticate yourself and confirm the integration of your Facebook page.

After successfully proceeding with the integration, the pop-up window will automatically close. A new window will be displayed in your LiveAgent panel, where you can choose which Facebook page you want to connect, whether wall posts and/or messages should be fetched, and in which department tickets from this Facebook page will be created.

Click on "Connect" next to all Facebook pages you want to connect and close the window. That's it. From this point, all new posts, comments, and messages from your Facebook page will be fetched to your LiveAgent account.