Environment Variables

Complete reference for Chatwoot environment variables and configuration options

The .env File

We use the dotenv-rails gem to manage the environment variables. There is a file called env.example in the root directory of this project with all the environment variables set to empty values. You can set the correct values as per the following options. Once you set the values, you should rename the file to .env before you start the server.

Configure frontend URL (domain)

Provide your chatwoot domain as frontend URL.

Rails production variables

For production deployment, you have to set the following variables

You can generate SECRET_KEY_BASE using rake secret command from the project root folder. If you dont have rails installed, use head /dev/urandom | tr -dc A-Za-z0-9 | head -c 63 ; echo ''.

Database configuration

Postgres can be configured in two ways: via DATABASE_URL or setting up independent Postgres variables.

Configure Postgres

Set the DATABASE_URL variable with value as Postgres connection URI to connect to the database.

The URI is of the format

Or you can set the following environment variables to configure Postgres. Replace the values here with yours. Skip this if you have configured DATABASE_URL.

Configure Redis

For development, you can use the following URL to connect to Redis. For production, configure your Redis URL.

To authenticate Redis connections made by the app server and sidekick, if it's protected by a password, use the following environment variable to set the password.

Configure emails

For development, you don't need an email provider. Chatwoot uses the letter-opener gem to test emails locally

For production use, please configure the following variables.

and based on your SMTP server the following variables

Postfix

Follow these steps if you want to use a selfhosted mail server with Chatwoot. This is the default behavior starting from v2.12.0 and relies on SMTP_ADDRESS environment variable not being set.

Choose internet-site when prompted and enter the domain name you used with Chatwoot setup for System mail name.

Also please add MX and PTR records for your domain. If your emails are being flagged by Gmail and Outlook, setup SPF and DKIM records for your domain as well. This should improve your email reputation.

Amazon SES

SendGrid

MailGun

Mandrill

If you would like to use Mailchimp to send your emails, use the following environment variables:

Configure default language

Configure storage

Chatwoot uses active storage for storing attachments. The default storage option is the local storage on your server.

But you can change it to use any of the cloud providers like amazon s3, microsoft azure, google gcs etc. Refer configuring cloud storage for additional environment variables required.

When local storage is used the files are stored under /storage directory in the chatwoot root folder.

Rails Logging Variables

By default, Chatwoot will capture info level logs in production. Ref rails docs for the additional log-level options. We will also retain 1 GB of your recent logs and your last shifted log file. You can fine-tune these settings using the following environment variables

Configure FB Channel

To use FB Channel, you have to create a Facebook app in the developer portal. You can find more details about creating FB channels here

Using CDN for asset delivery

With the release v1.8.0, we are enabling CDN support for Chatwoot. If you have a high traffic website, we recommend to setup a CDN for your asset delivery. Read setting up CloudFront as your CDN guide.

Enable new account signup

By default, Chatwoot will not allow users to create an account[multi-tenancy] from the login page. However, if you are setting up a public server, you can enable signup using:

Enable direct upload to storage cloud

By default, Chatwoot will upload the files to the application server and then it will push them to the cloud storage. We have introduced the direct upload functionality so that we can upload the file directly to the cloud storage. This has been built according to rails new direct upload functionality documented here. Set below environment variable to true to use the direct upload feature.

Make sure to follow this guide and set the appropriate CORS configuration on your cloud storage after setting DIRECT_UPLOADS_ENABLED to true.

Google OAuth

To enable Google OAuth in Chatwoot, you need to provide the client ID, client secret, and callback URL. You can find the instructions to generate the details here.

Set the GOOGLE_OAUTH_CLIENT_ID and GOOGLE_OAUTH_CLIENT_SECRET environment variables in your Chatwoot installation using the values you copied from the Google API Console. Set the GOOGLE_OAUTH_CALLBACK_URL environment variable to the callback URL you used in the Google API Console. Here's an example of the same

After setting these environment variables, restart your Chatwoot server to apply the changes. Now, users will be able to sign in using their Google accounts.

LogRocket

To enable LogRocket in Chatwoot, you need to provide the project ID from LogRocket. Here are the steps to follow:

1. Open the LogRocket website and create an account or sign in to your existing account.
2. After signing in, create a new project in LogRocket by clicking on "Create new project".
3. Enter a name for your project, and save the project ID.
4. Set the LOG_ROCKET_PROJECT_ID environment variable in your .env file with the project ID you copied from LogRocket.

After setting this environment variable, restart your Chatwoot server to apply the changes. Now, LogRocket will start capturing user sessions on your Chatwoot installation.