FastComments Docs

Background

Scheduled Comments is a FastComments feature to play back comments over a period of time, making it appear as though real users are leaving comments. For example, you could have one comment posted after a few seconds, and then a few seconds later another comment as a reply, and so on. Every comment can have its own username, avatar, as desired.

This can be useful for webinars or other events where it may be desirable to kick off conversations in an automated way.

Howto

Using FastComments Scheduled Comments is simple. First, you'll want to import the comments here.

This page can also be accessed via Manage Data->Schedule Comments.

After importing, you have the option to start playing back comments. This will play back the comments on each page you've defined in the CSV file, with the delays between each comment based on the delay you specified.

Every comment will be posted live. You may want to consider turning on showing live comments right away.

You can learn about the import format in the Import Format section of this documentation.

Import Format

Format Example

The Scheduled Comments CSV looks like this:

ID	Parent ID	URL ID	Name	Comment	Delay	Delay Unit
1		scheduledtest	Test Person 1	Hello!	1	seconds
2	1	scheduledtest	Test Person 2	How are you?	3	seconds
3	2	scheduledtest	Test Person 3	Leave them alone	4	seconds
4		scheduledtest	Test Person 4	Does anyone have a cute cat to share?	20	seconds

Format Details

The Scheduled Comments CSV file supports the following columns:

ID
Parent ID
URL ID
URL
Name
Avatar
Comment
Delay
Delay Unit

The following columns are required:

ID
URL ID
Name
Comment
Delay
Delay Unit

You'll need the Parent ID column if you want to supported automated nested replies.

How The Format Works

The import format works like this:

You define a row in the CSV for every comment you want posted.
The comment is posted after the delay specified.
1. The delay is separated into the raw numeric value, and the unit you want to use.
2. For example, you might have a delay of "5" and a unit of "seconds". You can even extend this to months, by having a delay of "3" and a unit of "months".
3. Delays are relative to when you hit "play" in the UI, after the import is done - not when the import starts.
You must define an ID. You can just use incrementing identifiers like 1, 2, 3, 4, 5.
If you want to use nested replies, you just set the Parent ID column value to the ID of another comment.
The Comment field supports the same syntax as FastComments supports in its comment widget for styling text and adding images.
The Avatar field, if used, must be a publicly accessible image. It will be copied to and served from our CDN.
You can delete all the comments after the replay, or if the replay is stopped.
Deletion happens live, so you can reuse the same scheduled import over and over.

Supported values for the Delay Unit column are:

seconds
minutes
hours
days
weeks
months
years

An Example

An example CSV file is here.