Deploying Chatwoot on Scaleway Production-Optimized Instances

• chatwoot
• crm
• customer-service

Chatwoot is an open-source customer communication platform that enables businesses to engage with their customers through various communication channels such as live chat, email, and social media. It provides a centralized inbox for managing customer conversations, allowing businesses to respond to customer queries and support requests in a unified and efficient manner.

With Chatwoot, businesses can set up multiple communication channels, integrate them into their websites or applications, and engage with customers in real-time. It offers features like conversation routing, canned responses, tagging, and team collaboration, which help streamline customer support processes and improve response times.

As an open-source platform, Chatwoot allows businesses to customize and extend its functionality according to their specific requirements. The source code is freely available, empowering businesses to modify and adapt the software to suit their needs. This makes Chatwoot a flexible and cost-effective solution for companies looking to implement a customer communication system.

Chatwoot is designed to enhance customer satisfaction and improve customer support efficiency by providing businesses with the tools they need to manage and track customer conversations across multiple channels in a single platform.

Before you start

To complete the actions presented below, you must have:

• A Scaleway account logged into the console
• Owner status or IAM permissions allowing you to perform actions in the intended Organization
• An SSH key
• A Production-Optimized Instance with at least 8 GB RAM and 25 GB Block Storage, running on Ubuntu 20.04 LTS
• Installed Ruby 3.2.2 on your Instance
• A (sub-)domain pointed to the Instance’s IP address

1. Log into your Instance using SSH.

2. Update the apt package cache and upgrade the software already installed on the Instance to the latest version available in the distribution repositories.

   apt update && apy upgrade -y
   

3. Download the Chatwoot installation script and make it executable:

   wget https://get.chatwoot.app/linux/install.sh
   chmod +x install.sh
   

4. Check the version of Ruby installed on your Instance. Chatwoot requires Ruby 3.2.2.

   ruby -v
   ruby 3.2.2 (2023-03-30 revision e51014f9c0) [x86_64-linux]
   

   Tip

   If you are not using Ruby 3.2.2, you have to install it to avoid the installation failing. You can install it, using rbenv:

   rbenv install 3.2.2 #Installs Ruby 3.2.2
   rbenv global 3.2.2 #Configures Ruby 3.2.2 to be used system-wide
   

5. Run the Chatwoot installation script:

   ./install.sh --install
   

   • The script asks you if you want to configure Chatwoot with a domain and SSL. Type yes and press enter.
   • Type the domain name for Chatwoot (e.g. chatwoot.domain.com) and press enter.
   • Type an email address for LetsEncrypt to send reminders when your SSL certificate is up for renewal and press enter.
   • Confirm your choices by typing yes and press enter.
   • Type yes to install Postgres and Redis as database engines used by Chatwoot and press enter.
   • The installation script will install the required dependencies, databases, and Chatwoot.
   • Once the installation has been completed, the following message displays:

     ***************************************************************************
     Woot! Woot!! Chatwoot server installation is complete.
     The server will be accessible at https://chatwoot.domain.com
     Join the community at https://chatwoot.com/community?utm_source=cwctl
     ***************************************************************************
     

6. Point your web browser to the domain name of your Chatwoot Instance and create a first user by entering your email address and password.

7. Log into Chatwoot using your credentials. The Chatwoot dashboard displays and you can customize the application towards your needs.

   

Upgrading Chatwoot to a newer version

Whenever a newer version of Chatwoot is released, you can upgrade your installation to stay up-to-date with the latest developments and features added.

1. Log into your Instance as root using SSH.

2. From the root login, change to the Chatwoot user account to perform the upgrade.

   sudo -i -u chatwoot
   

3. Navigate to the Chatwoot application directory.

   cd /home/chatwoot/chatwoot
   

4. Use Git to pull the latest version of Chatwoot’s master branch.

   git checkout master && git pull
   

5. Update the required dependencies.

   bundle
   yarn
   

6. Use rake to recompile the assets.

   rake assets:precompile RAILS_ENV=production
   

7. Migrate the database schema.

   RAILS_ENV=production bundle exec rake db:migrate
   

8. Switch back to the root user account

   exit
   

9. Copy the updated targets.

   cp /home/chatwoot/chatwoot/deployment/chatwoot-web.1.service /etc/systemd/system/chatwoot-web.1.service
   cp /home/chatwoot/chatwoot/deployment/chatwoot-worker.1.service /etc/systemd/system/chatwoot-worker.1.service
   cp /home/chatwoot/chatwoot/deployment/chatwoot.target /etc/systemd/system/chatwoot.target
   

10. Reload the systemd files.

    systemctl daemon-reload
    

11. Restart the Chatwoot server to run the upgraded version.

    systemctl restart chatwoot.target
    

You have now successfully installed Chatwoot on your Instance and have learned how to upgrade it to the latest version once there is a new release of the application. For more information about Chatwoot, refer to the official Chatwoot User Guide.