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Implementing the Message Response Status Indicators In SUSI WebChat

SUSI Web Chat now has indicators reflecting the message response status. When a user sends a message, he must be notified that the message has been received and has been delivered to server. SUSI Web Chat implements this by tagging messages with ticks or waiting clock icons and loading gifs to indicate delivery and response status of messages ensuring good UX.

This is implemented as:

  • When the user sends a message, the message is tagged with a `clock` icon indicating that the message has been received and delivered to server and is awaiting response from the server
  • When the user is waiting for a response from the server, we display a loading gif
  • Once the response from the server is received, the loading gif is replaced by the server response bubble and the clock icon tagged to the user message is replaced by a tick icon.

Lets visit SUSI WebChat and try it out.

Query : Hey

When the message is sent by the user, we see that the displayed message is tagged with a clock icon and the left side response bubble has a loading gif indicating that the message has been delivered to server and are awaiting response.

When the response from server is delivered, the loading gif disappears and the user message tagged with a tick icon.

 

How was this implemented?

The first step is to have a boolean flag indicating the message delivery and response status.

let _showLoading = false;

getLoadStatus(){
  return _showLoading;
},

The `showLoading` boolean flag is set to true when the user just sends a message and is waiting for server response.  When the user sends a message, the CREATE_MESSAGE action is triggered. Message Store listens to this action and along with creating the user message, also sets the showLoading flag as true.

case ActionTypes.CREATE_MESSAGE: {

  let message = action.message;
  _messages[message.id] = message;
  _showLoading = true;
  MessageStore.emitChange();
  
  break;
}

The showLoading flag is used in MessageSection to display the loading gif. We are using a saved gif to display the loading symbol. The loading gif is displayed at the end after displaying all the messages in the message store. Since this loading component must be displayed for every user message, we don’t save this component in MessageStore as a loading message as that would lead to repeated looping thorugh the messages in message store to add and delete loading component.

import loadingGIF from '../../images/loading.gif';

function getLoadingGIF() {

  let messageContainerClasses = 'message-container SUSI';

  const LoadingComponent = (
    <li className='message-list-item'>
      <section className={messageContainerClasses}>
        <img src={loadingGIF}
          style={{ height: '10px', width: 'auto' }}
          alt='please wait..' />
      </section>
    </li>
  );
  return LoadingComponent;
}

We then use this flag in MessageListItem class to tag the user messages with the clock icons. We used Material UI SVG Icons to display the clock and tick messages. We display these beside the time in the messages.

import ClockIcon from 'material-ui/svg-icons/action/schedule';

statusIndicator = (
  <li className='message-time' style={footerStyle}>
    <ClockIcon style={indicatorStyle}
      color={UserPreferencesStore.getTheme()==='light' ? '#90a4ae' : '#7eaaaf'}/>
  </li>
);

When the response from server is received, the CREATE_SUSI_MESSAGE action is triggered to render the server response. This action is again collected in MessageStore where the `showLoading` boolean flag is reset to false. This event also triggers the state of MessageSection where we are listening to showLoading value from MessageStore, hence triggering changes in MessageSection and accordingly in MessageListItem where showLoading is passed as props, removing the loading gif component and displaying the server response and replacing the clock icon with tick icon on the user message.

case ActionTypes.CREATE_SUSI_MESSAGE: {
  
  let message = action.message;
  MessageStore.resetVoiceForThread(message.threadID);
  _messages[message.id] = message;
  _showLoading = false;
  MessageStore.emitChange();
  
  break;
}

This is how the status indicators were implemented for messages. The complete code can be found at SUSI WebChat Repo.

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