Rival chat includes a chat menu that is accessible to participants at any point during their chat. It surfaces a standard set of actions: privacy policy, terms and conditions, support, and the option to unsubscribe. Custom Chat Actions extend this menu so you can add your own branded links and shortcuts alongside those defaults.
This is useful any time you want participants to have persistent, on-demand access to something outside the chat flow itself, for example a screener consent form, a community landing page, a FAQ document, or a resource hub. Because the menu is always available and consistent across all of your chats, it functions like a lightweight persistent utility layer rather than a one-off link you'd have to embed in individual messages.
Default actions in the chat menu
Before adding custom actions, it helps to understand what the chat menu already contains by default:
Privacy Policy — shown when a privacy policy URL has been linked in your general settings.
Terms and Conditions — shown when terms and conditions have been linked in your general settings.
Unsubscribe — shown only to participants who are subscribed members of your community.
Support — shown to all participants, always.
Creating a custom action
Custom actions are configured at the brand level in your domain settings, meaning they apply to all chats within that brand.
Go to your domain settings and open the Brand section.
Select the Chat Actions tab.
Click on Add Custom Action.
Fill in the following fields:
Icon — choose an icon to represent this action in the menu.
Label — the text participants will see for this action in the chat menu.
URL — the destination participants will be taken to when they tap the action.
Open in — choose whether the URL opens in a new tab or the same tab. See note below. We recommend opening custom actions in a new tab. This keeps participants in their chat session and prevents them from losing their progress. Use same tab only if the destination is intentionally designed to replace the chat experience for example, a full redirect to another page at the end of a flow.
Click Save.
Ordering actions
You can control the order of both system actions and custom actions in the chat menu. Use the drag-and-drop handles next to any action to reorder them. The preview panel updates in real time to reflect the new order.
Editing and removing custom actions
Each custom action in the Chat Actions tab has an Edit button and a Delete button. Click Edit to update any of the fields for that action. Click Delete to remove it. Changes take effect immediately across all chats in that research domain.
System actions (privacy policy, terms and conditions, support, unsubscribe) cannot be deleted.
Previewing the chat menu
The Chat Actions settings page includes a live preview panel on the right side of the screen. This shows a view of the chat as participants would see it.
To open the chat menu in the preview, click the three-line menu icon in the top-right corner of the chat. This expands the chat actions in the order you have set them. You can interact with the preview to see how participants would engage with the menu.
Things to keep in mind
Custom actions are domain level settings. They appear in every chat in that research domain.
Changes to custom actions (edits, additions, deletions, reordering) take effect immediately once you apply the changes.
Custom actions do not generate any data or reporting. They are navigation links only.