Staff Chat For WHMCS

Give your support, billing and technical team a real-time chat inside the WHMCS admin area. Staff Chat adds a floating widget to every admin page, so your team can talk, share files, mention each other and search past conversations without leaving WHMCS or paying for a separate chat tool.

It works with ordinary AJAX polling, so there is no daemon, no extra port and no Socket.IO server to install or maintain. Every message travels through WHMCS itself, so nothing needs to be set up on your server beyond the module folder. If your admin area loads, Staff Chat works.

The widget sits in the corner of every admin page and can be collapsed into a small launcher with an unread badge, so it stays out of the way until you need it. Your team can chat in a shared Group Chat, open private one-to-one conversations, react to messages, send images and files, and be notified when a colleague mentions them.

Built for staff privacy and control

Chat conversations often include client details, so Staff Chat is built to keep them protected. Chat history and attachments are encrypted at rest using the WHMCS encryption helpers, and attachments are downloaded only through an authenticated endpoint, never from a public URL. All chat actions are protected against cross-site request forgery.

Full Administrators can review everything from a dedicated Chat History page, search across every room, and export results to CSV. A separate activity log records important actions with the admin, IP address and browser, and it never stores the text of a chat message.

Why you need it

• Staff stop switching between WHMCS and an outside chat app.
• Conversations stay on your own server instead of a third-party service.
• Chat history and attachments are encrypted at rest.
• Full Administrators can review, search and export everything.
• Read-only roles, ghost mode and rate limiting let you control who can say what.

Features

Chat and rooms

• Shared Group Chat room for every approved admin
• Optional private 1:1 rooms between two admins
• Floating widget on every admin page, with expanded and collapsed launcher modes
• Online admin list with presence dots and per-room unread badges
• Configurable polling interval from 1 to 60 seconds
• Message timestamps and an unread count in the browser title
• Configurable message length and number of messages loaded per request
• Automatic retention and a per-room message cap

Messages and interactions

• @mentions with autocomplete, highlighted names and a title marker when you are mentioned
• Emoji picker with the common chat emojis
• Reactions with live counts: 👍 ❤️ 😂 🎉 😮 😢
• Typing indicator showing which admin is typing
• Edit your own messages within a configurable time window
• Delete messages with a confirmation dialog (Full Administrator only)
• Clickable links that open in a new tab
• Optional notification sound with a per-admin mute

Files, images and links

• Image and file attachments, one per message
• Allowed types: JPG, PNG, GIF, WebP, PDF, TXT and ZIP
• Configurable maximum file size, with a hard ceiling of 50 MB
• Configurable total attachment storage quota
• Inline image previews and a full-size lightbox
• Authenticated downloads, with no public attachment URLs
• Attachments encrypted at rest
• Text-only link previews with SSRF protection

History, search and export

• Encrypted chat history that survives page refreshes and admin logins
• Chat History page with a room selector, sorting, paging and filtering
• Global search across rooms, admins, message text and attachment names
• Reaction counts shown next to messages in history and search results
• Attachment previews and downloads in history and search results
• CSV export of chat history and of the activity log
• Retention applied when messages are written, when pages are viewed and by the daily cron

Dashboard analytics

• 30-day message volume line chart
• Time-of-day chart showing your peak communication hours
• Group Chat versus private room distribution
• Top mentioned admins, ranked
• Attachment count, encrypted storage used and a breakdown by file type
• KPI cards for 30-day volume, active admins, attachments and peak hour

Activity log

• Records widget connects, room switches, settings changes, message edits and deletions, cleared history, cleared log and denied access attempts
• Filters by action, admin and date range
• IP address and browser details, with IP logging switchable
• Session grouping, CSV export and retention pruning
• Full Administrator clear action
• Message content is never written to the log

Access and safety

• Full Administrator-only module pages
• Read-only roles that can view and react but cannot send
• Ghost mode: selected admins are hidden from presence and their names are masked
• Per-admin message rate limiting
• Blocked words filter and optional link blocking
• CSRF protection, AJAX-only endpoints and POST-only chat actions

Notifications

• Configurable default sound, volume and sound-on setting
• Desktop notifications through a service worker
• Chrome and operating-system permission diagnostics
• Built-in test notification button

Admin area only. Staff Chat has no client-area pages and no client templates, and it works with WHMCS 8.x and 9.x.