Question 1

How can I use Stripe with Malcolm! to collect payment from my customers?

Accepted Answer

Malcolm! now integrates with Stripe. Stripe is a payment service provider that enables business owners to collect payment from their customers.

https://malcolm-en-gb.s3.eu-west-1.amazonaws.com/instances/HwJyEPPI3q/resources/UDbFKeLChy/stripe%402x.png (Stripe and Malcolm!)

With our Stripe integration you can create Workflows in Malcolm! that include fields for your customers to enter their card details and pay for things like products, services, memberships etc or perhaps make a donation towards something.

Here is how to set things up:

If you don't already have a Stripe account create one here
In MyMalcolm go to the Settings, then Workflows, then Integrations, then click on Stripe
You'll be taken to a page on the Stripe website where you can login and confirm that you wish to link your Stripe account to Malcolm!

https://malcolm-en-gb.s3.eu-west-1.amazonaws.com/instances/HwJyEPPI3q/resources/aioqQzmd4C/screenshot-connect.stripe.com-2021.05.28-17_36_24.png (Connecting Stripe to Malcolm!)

Once you have linked your Stripe account you can create Workflows via the Workflow section as usual and place payment related elements onto those Workflows. Two particular elements to pay attention to are Currency and Payments

https://malcolm-en-gb.s3.eu-west-1.amazonaws.com/instances/HwJyEPPI3q/resources/SlnkSg4slf/screenshot-my.malcolm.app-2021.05.28-18_08_18.png (Currency and Payment elements in MyMalcolm)

Payments is the element where your customer will provider their card details. You can configure the amount your customer is charged via the Payment element settings, or you can optionally ask the customer to enter their own amount via the Currency field - this can be useful in scenarios like donations or account payments where you may wish to offer the customer the choice of the amount to pay.

https://malcolm-en-gb.s3.eu-west-1.amazonaws.com/instances/HwJyEPPI3q/resources/tJtuV3NgUY/screenshot-my.malcolm.app-2021.05.28-18_12_35.png (Settings for the Payment element in MyMalcolm)

If you also collect your customers email (and Name) in the Workflow you can optionally use that information to send them a payment confirmation email. You can configre and customise this via the Payment element settings.

https://malcolm-en-gb.s3.eu-west-1.amazonaws.com/instances/HwJyEPPI3q/resources/sZjKbFViLz/screenshot-my.malcolm.app-2021.05.28-18_11_48.png (Configuring payment confirmation emails in MyMalcolm)

You can place the Payment element on any page of your Workflow, but the actual payment transaction will not be attempted until the final submit of your Workflow. If there is a problem with the payment details your customer will be returned to the page with Payment element on it and given a chance to update their details and proceed back through the Workflow.

You can see a video walkthrough below.

And there you have it! Taking payments via Stripe is a really powerful and quick to implement feature of Malcolm! Workflows. Taking payments will also work when the Workflow is surfaced via our embeds, widgets and overlays too! If you have questions or need a hand setting things up just contact us and we'll be happy to help.

Question 2

What are Tags in FAQs?

Accepted Answer

Tags are a way of describing your content and allow an alternate way for your customers to browse FAQ's aside from search and categories.

You can add and manage the tags that are attached to each of your FAQs via the "configure" area.

You may also be interested in invisible tags.

Question 3

Understanding Malcolm! - some concepts and how to use the product

Accepted Answer

Malcolm! is a super powerful and flexible web based product but it might seem a bit confusing at first. Here is a quick primer on some core Malcolm! concepts and features which we hope will help you understand the product and use it in the way that makes sense to you and your business.

Core Components of Malcolm!

Malcolm! has two core content components: Malcolm! FAQ and Malcolm! Workflow.

Malcolm! FAQ is all about answering your user's questions and/or providing information (eg a how-to or a policy).

Before we created Malcolm! we spent a lot of time building online systems that helped companies digitise what they do.

We found that - in broad terms - this came down to designing and developing systems that:

answered questions and
took users through a process.

For example

Lets say you sell and service industrial heating systems. A potential customer might want to know if you service a particular type of boiler that they have in their office.

You can let that potential customer find the answer to that question themselves via Malcolm!. You'd create a question along the lines of "Which types of boiler do you service?" and in your answer you'd include all the makes and models that you work with.

Your potential customer would come to your website, and be able to find the answer themselves using Malcolm!

Next, having learnt you do indeed service the boiler they have in their office they might want to book a service appointment.

To do this you are likely to need to know a few details - for example their name, their company name, where their office is and perhaps a few other details like their phone number and email, when they are available for a service visit, any issues they are having with the boiler and when it was last serviced.

You can create a form that asks all those questions in Malcolm! and add that form as a "Book a service" link onto your website. When a customer fills that form in Malcolm! can email you all the details. Malcolm! can also do lots of other clever things like pass that request into other systems that you might use.

Why would I want to do this?

Customers like it - nowadays more and more people prefer to do things online
You look professional and slick - Malcolm! can integrate with your existing website and you can style all the screens to match your brand
It's available 24/7/365 - customers can find what they need at a time that suits them
Save time - stop burning time answering the same questions or doing the same process again and again
Consistency- receive complete information from your customers in the format you need it
Efficiency - pass customer information collected via Malcolm! into your other systems automatically
Get feedback - Malcolm! let's your customers feedback to you whether the information they found was helpful or areas for improvement
Analytics- get statistics on what customers are searching for, what they are reading and the most popular times for certain types of requests
Great management tools - You and your internal team / staff can see everything at a glance via MyMalcolm - the comprehensive control panel area of Malcolm!

You can see some examples of possible uses of Malcolm! here

Use Malcolm! FAQs and Workflows together or separately

One of the things to bear in mind is that you can use the FAQ and Workflows parts of Malcolm! together or individually. It may be that you want to build a customer knowledge base using Malcolm! FAQ but you have no need for Workflows at the moment. That is no problem! Similarly you might want to create a series of web forms for various user servicing tasks using Malcolm! Workflow but don't need to answer questions with FAQs. Again this is no issue. You simply use the parts of Malcolm! that make sense to you and your business.

How does Malcolm! work with my current website?

At the heart of Malcolm! is flexibility. We want to make it as easy as possible to work with our system. We also want to offer options for a wide user base - from a one man band with no or limited web development knowledge through to big companies who may have large in house technical teams.

At one of the end of the scale is our Hosted Hub. Every instance of Malcolm! comes with a hosted Hub. This is a website that we host for you. You can customise it entirely to your requirements. You can change the branding, the colours, the fonts, the layout, the copy, the icons etc etc. You can even configure it to work on one of your own domains or sub domains.

If you don't have a current website your Hosted Hub could be your main website. If you already have your main website at www.domain.com you could set up your fully branded Malcolm! Hosted Hub at a sub domain like support.domain.com or help.domain.com or customers.domain.com

Some customers may not wish to do this and instead may wish to integrate Malcolm! into their current website. No problem! We have a whole section in the MyMalcolm Control Panel dedicated to this and there a variety of ways you can bring content and functionality from Malcolm! into your own website. We've also got a plugin for Wordpress and a variety of widgets and further integration options. Want a floating widget? No problem. Want a button which opens a modal/overlay? No problem. Customers on our Enterprise plans can have full programmatic access to Malcolm! content and functionality via our comprehensive API.

Don't forget your Internal Customers!

Remember that your business or organisation may have more than one type of "customer!". As well as using Malcolm! with members of the general public you can also use it internally to help a particular business function or department.

For example:

In our example of being an industrial heating sales & service company above you could use an instance of Malcolm! for your service engineers. Various knowledge about things you service could be stored in Malcolm FAQ! and you could build digital versions of processes or business procedure in Malcolm! Workflow - for example job sheets or part order forms.
You could use Malcolm! as an online presence for your Human Resources or Finance department
You could use Malcolm! as a way of communicating information about your premises or facilities
You could use Malcolm! as a home for an internal project or initiative

Question 4

Can I embed HTML or add iframes to Malcolm! content?

Accepted Answer

Malcolm! FAQ supports embedding content via HTML iframes.

Most popular content channels such as YouTube and Vimeo offer an embed sharing option via HTML iframes.

https://malcolm-en-gb.s3.eu-west-1.amazonaws.com/instances/HwJyEPPI3q/resources/TEt5gCaFXw/Screenshot%202021-01-29%20at%2011.06.24.png (Screenshot 2021-01-29 at 11.06.24 (1).png)

Malcolm! has two buttons on its editor toolbar. One for inserting video or presentation type content and one for other type of content. To use these features simply locate the HTML iframe code on your content channel and copy/paste it into one of these two dialogs.

Question 5

Can I stop or suppress certain FAQs and/or Workflows from contributing to dynamic listings?

Accepted Answer

Malcolm! auto generates certain listings of FAQs such as most helpful, most popular, recently added and trending. If an FAQ is hidden (see here for more info it won't be included in these listings but sometimes you may wish to exclude a regular non hidden FAQ from these listings.

You can do this via in MyMalcolm via the individual FAQ's visibility settings (FAQs / Library / Configure / Visibility):

Question 6

How can I listen to JavaScript events posted from embeds?

Accepted Answer

Malcolm! embeds fire events on user interactions such as when someone first reads an FAQ, completes a Workflow or performs a search. These events can be picked up on your web page for you to perform custom actions - for example creating an event for your Analytics.

How can I listen to these events?

The first event, mapiload, is fired on the window when the mapi.js library has loaded.

The embeds are then rendered followed by the mapi.onrender event.

To register a listener use the mapi.on function.

We recommend combining the window.addEventListener and mapi.on functions for maximum compatibility especially if your application uses JavaScript page transitions, however if your application reloads the page on each request you could combine these into one.

Once the embeds have rendered use the embed.on function to register listeners.

If you know the ID of the embed (can be found in MyMalcolm) use mapi.findEmbed function.

Alternatively loop through the mapi.embeds array.

Putting it all together your code snippet could look something like this.

What events are available?

Question 7

What are featured boxes and how can I use them?

Accepted Answer

Featured boxes are part of your hosted hub theme and are very flexible multi purpose content areas that appear on your hosted hub homepage (and also your FAQs only and Workflows only home if you are using those).

You can use them to link to content within your Malcolm! instance, for example a particular category, tag, FAQ or Workflow and you can also use them to link out to content or functionality you may have elsewhere. They can be a great tactical tool as well, for example if you've written an FAQ about your holiday opening hours and want to draw attention to it use a featured box!

On our own Malcolm! Help & Support Hub the "Using Malcolm! and need help?" and "What do you think of Malcolm?" are featured boxes.

Featured boxes on Malcolm!

https://malcolm-en-gb.s3.eu-west-1.amazonaws.com/instances/HwJyEPPI3q/resources/Y5JjW8JNLu/screenshot-support.malcolm.support-2022.08.03-06_26_45.png (Featured boxes on Malcolm!)

Featured boxes on Malcolm!

Featured boxes are created and managed via your theme (Brand --> Themes).

Featured boxes management in MyMalcolm

https://malcolm-en-gb.s3.eu-west-1.amazonaws.com/instances/HwJyEPPI3q/resources/btIcIfywWZ/screenshot-my.malcolm.app-2022.08.03-06_29_33.png (Featured boxes management in MyMalcolm)

Featured boxes management in MyMalcolm

You can place featured boxes in the header area and/or body area of the page and choose a display type by row or columns.

Arrange featured boxes by row or column

https://malcolm-en-gb.s3.eu-west-1.amazonaws.com/instances/HwJyEPPI3q/resources/YYqGBI2Bcx/screenshot-my.malcolm.app-2022.08.03-06_42_25.png (Arrange featured boxes by row or column)

Arrange featured boxes by row or column

When creating a featured box you have various options such as uploading your own icons or choosing one of ours, plus configuring links

Adding a featured box in MyMalcolm

https://malcolm-en-gb.s3.eu-west-1.amazonaws.com/instances/HwJyEPPI3q/resources/aYsKuoqfAg/screenshot-my.malcolm.app-2022.08.03-06_41_53.png (Adding a featured box in MyMalcolm)

Adding a featured box in MyMalcolm

Also see promos for similar functionality that enables you to create and manage content at the bottom of your hosted hub home page.

Question 8

Can I embed YouTube or Vimeo videos in my FAQs and Workflows?

Accepted Answer

You can easily embed YouTube or Vimeo videos into your FAQs and/or Workflows. Within the FAQ compose interface press the video icon. This will bring up an area where you can paste the URL of the video you wish to embed.

Insert video dialog in MyMalcolm

https://malcolm-en-gb.s3.eu-west-1.amazonaws.com/instances/HwJyEPPI3q/resources/oFZ9QoY435/screenshot-my.malcolm.app-2023.04.02-17_56_57.png (Insert video dialog in MyMalcolm)

If you want to use some of the embed customisation options that YouTube and Vimeo offer you should use the full embed code from those platforms (rather than just pasting the URL). Paste their embed code into the lower part of the MyMalcolm insert video dialog.

https://malcolm-en-gb.s3.eu-west-1.amazonaws.com/instances/HwJyEPPI3q/resources/m6StT5M3j9/Screenshot%202018-11-08%2020.01.41.png (Screenshot 2018-11-08 20.01.41.png)

For Workflows add a content element to your Workflow, then in the Workflow builder click to edit the content element and hit the video icon. This will bring up the same dialog as above.

Question 9

How can I use Square with Malcolm! to collect payment from my customers?

Accepted Answer

Malcolm! now integrates with Square. Square is a payment service provider that enables business owners to collect payment from their customers.

https://malcolm-en-gb.s3.eu-west-1.amazonaws.com/instances/HwJyEPPI3q/resources/d8ZLyi8A95/Square%402x.jpg (Square and Malcolm!)

With our Square integration you can create Workflows in Malcolm! that include fields for your customers to enter their card details and pay for things like products, services, memberships etc or perhaps make a donation towards something.

Here is how to set things up:

If you don't already have a Square account create one here.
In MyMalcolm go to the Settings, then Workflows, then Integrations, then click on Square.
You'll be taken to a page on the Square website where you can login and confirm that you wish to link your Square account to Malcolm!

https://malcolm-en-gb.s3.eu-west-1.amazonaws.com/instances/HwJyEPPI3q/resources/QBvWDgrtAV/Screenshot%202022-01-06%20at%2012.48.11.png (Connecting Square to Malcolm!)

Once you have linked your Square account you can create Workflows via the Workflow section as usual and place payment related elements onto those Workflows. Two particular elements to pay attention to are Currency and Payments.

https://malcolm-en-gb.s3.eu-west-1.amazonaws.com/instances/HwJyEPPI3q/resources/SlnkSg4slf/screenshot-my.malcolm.app-2021.05.28-18_08_18.png (Currency and Payment elements in MyMalcolm)

Payments is the element where your customer will provider their card details. You can configure the amount your customer is charged via the Payment element settings, or you can optionally ask the customer to enter their own amount via the Currency field - this can be useful in scenarios like donations or account payments where you may wish to offer the customer the choice of the amount to pay.

https://malcolm-en-gb.s3.eu-west-1.amazonaws.com/instances/HwJyEPPI3q/resources/Yaj6slF0EX/Screenshot%202022-01-06%20at%2012.52.37.png (Settings for the Payment element in MyMalcolm)

If you also collect your customers email (and Name) in the Workflow you can optionally use that information to send them a payment confirmation email. You can configre and customise this via the Payment element settings.

https://malcolm-en-gb.s3.eu-west-1.amazonaws.com/instances/HwJyEPPI3q/resources/sZjKbFViLz/screenshot-my.malcolm.app-2021.05.28-18_11_48.png (Configuring payment confirmation emails in MyMalcolm)

You can place the Payment element on any page of your Workflow, but the actual payment transaction will not be attempted until the final submit of your Workflow. If there is a problem with the payment details your customer will be returned to the page with Payment element on it and given a chance to update their details and proceed back through the Workflow.

You can see a video walkthrough below.

And there you have it! Taking payments via Square is a really powerful and quick to implement feature of Malcolm! Workflows. Taking payments will also work when the Workflow is surfaced via our embeds, widgets and overlays too! If you have questions or need a hand setting things up just contact us and we'll be happy to help.

Question 10

Can I turn off automatic email alerts?

Accepted Answer

Malcolm! will automatically send you email alerts when certain activity happens on your instance, such as a user leaving feedback or a Workflow being completed. Wherever possible we aggregate these alerts so you receive fewer emails but if you'd rather not receive them you can easily turn them off.

To do this, from the MyMalcolm control panel area, click your name at the top of the screen where it says "Logged in as"

https://malcolm-en-gb.s3.eu-west-1.amazonaws.com/instances/HwJyEPPI3q/resources/LgmiVqgthh/screenshot-my.malcolm.app-2020.01.16-10_57_39.png (Logged in Navigation in MyMalcolm)

You'll then be taken to your personal preferences. If you select the "Notifications" tab on the left you'll be able to edit the notifications you receive. Remember to hit "Save" once you are done!

https://malcolm-en-gb.s3.eu-west-1.amazonaws.com/instances/HwJyEPPI3q/resources/aez6lFczno/screenshot-my.malcolm.app-2020.01.16-11_03_51.png (Manage your notifications in MyMalcolm)

Note that your notificatons are based on an instance. If you are a user on more than one instance you should first switch to the instance you wish to adjust notifications for. You can do this using the drop down selector at the top right of the screen. You can therefore have different notification preferences for different instances. The notificiation preferences you choose are personal to you and will not affect the notifications of other team members on an instance.

If you are the owner of an instance, you can edit the notifications members of your team receive. To do this go to the Team section, click on the name of the team member in question then select notifications. Remember to hit save when done. Also note than you can assign the permission for a team member to be able to edit other team members notifications via the permissions tab.