Choose how to use Chat

Chat has two product modes. In Standalone mode your people use Chat at chat.centralcodestation.com. In Integrated mode your own application embeds Chat. This page helps you pick one and tells you where to start.

Prerequisite: the CCS Identity Server.Chat runs on your Identity Server. It owns your users, tenants, applications, clients and tokens; Chat owns none of them.

See the prerequisite checklist.

New to it? Read the Identity Server documentation (opens in a new tab).

The two modes

Standalone. An administrator switches Chat on for a tenant application and maps roles to Chat permissions. People sign in with their Identity Server account and chat in the Chat web app. You write no code.

Integrated. Your backend decides who may talk to whom and creates the conversations. Your web or mobile app lets the signed-in user read and write in them. Chat checks every call against the user’s Chat permissions and conversation membership.

Your web app ── user token (chat:access) ──────────────► Chat API
     ▲  the token comes from your backend by token exchange
     │
Your backend ── is X really this coach's client? (your own rules)
     └── backend client token (chat:sync) ─────────────► Chat API
         creates the DIRECT conversation, archives it when coaching ends

Chat stays free of your business rules. A Chat permission says which kind of operation a user may do, never with whom. “Coach Ana may message John but not Sarah” is a rule in your backend.

Decide

Question	Standalone	Integrated
Who uses Chat?	People who sign in to the Chat web app	The users of your own application
Who creates conversations?	People, if their role has the permission	Your backend, after your own rules
Do you write code?	No	Yes: a backend part and a web or mobile part
What do you create in the Identity Server?	A tenant, an application with Chat enabled, roles	The same, plus a backend client, token exchange and web origins
Who configures permissions?	A tenant admin, in Chat Administration	A tenant admin, in Chat Administration
Where does the UI come from?	The Chat web app	Yours. Chat has no ready-made UI components yet

You can start standalone and add the integration later. The Identity Server setup for the first three steps of the checklist is the same.

What each mode needs

• Standalone: a tenant whose members can sign in, a tenant application with Chat enabled, and roles mapped to Chat permissions. Steps 1 to 3, 8 and 9 of the checklist.
• Integrated: everything in the standalone list that applies, plus a backend client with the Chat scopes, Token exchange for web apps, and your web origins. The whole checklist, and the three TypeScript libraries or plain REST. See SDKs.

Where to start

Evaluating ChatArchitecture, security and limits: what Chat does and does not do.

Identity Server operatorCreate the tenant application, the backend client, token exchange and origins.

Tenant administratorSwitch Chat on and let people sign in. No code.

Backend developerCreate a conversation from your backend with ccs-chat-client.

Web developerChat as the signed-in user, with live updates. Angular and React pages follow.

Not using TypeScriptJava, .NET, Python, Go or anything else: tokens with curl and a generated client.

Framework pages: Angular and React. People who only use the Chat app can read Using the Chat app.