
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 | URL | Name | Avatar | 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.
- The delay is separated into the raw numeric value, and the unit you want to use.
- 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".
- 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 theID
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