Whatfix Player Extension

Note:
The Preview and Production Extensions are now deprecated. They will continue to work, but will no longer receive updates or new features, and will be sunset on November 30, 2026.

Whatfix recommends you to migrate to the Player Extension. Whatfix Player Extension consolidates capabilities of both preview and production extensions into a single unified solution.

What Changes With the Player Extension

Previously, Whatfix offered two extensions: Production extension and Preview extension. The following table describes the difference between the two extensions:

Extension	Purpose	Who Uses It
Production Extension	Delivers Whatfix Content to end users in production environments	End users
Preview Extension	Enables content authors and testers to view and validate content before it goes to production	Content authors and Testers

Extension

Purpose

Who Uses It

Production Extension

Delivers Whatfix Content to end users in production environments

End users

Preview Extension

Enables content authors and testers to view and validate content before it goes to production

Content authors and Testers

Now: Whatfix Player Extension

The Whatfix Player Extension supports both Production and Preview Extension capabilities. A single extension installation serves end users, content authors, and testers with behavior controlled through Whatfix Dashboard configuration.

How does the Whatfix Player Extension determine what content to display?

Content visibility depends on the environment mappings configured in the Whatfix dashboard. Each application environment in your organization is mapped to one of three content stage (Draft, Ready and Production) configurations. The following table describes the content displayed for each configuration and its typical use case:

Configuration	Content Behavior	Typical Use Case
Draft, Ready, Production	Displays all content stages. Lower stage takes precedence when multiple versions of the same content exists.	Development or testing environments used by authors
Ready, Production	Displays Ready and Production stage content. Lower stage takes precedence when multiple versions of the same content exists.	User Acceptance Testing (UAT) or staging environments
Production only	Displays only Production content	Production environments used by end users

The following example defines how dashboard stages are mapped to different URLs of the Salesforce application. Consider an organization that uses the Salesforce application across multiple environments:

URL: https://acmecorp.my.salesforce.com
Stage: Mapped to Production only
Content Behavior: End users see only published content.
URL: https://acmecorp--uat.sandbox.my.salesforce.com
Stage: Mapped to Ready, Production
Content Behavior: UAT testers see content awaiting final approval.
Info:
Lower stage takes precedence when multiple versions of the same content exists. For example, if the content exists in both Ready and Production, the Ready version is displayed.
URL: https://acmecorp--qa.sandbox.my.salesforce.com
Stage: Mapped to Draft, Ready, Production
Content Behavior: Content authors see all content, including work in progress.
Info:
Lower stage takes precedence when multiple versions of the same content exists.

This setup ensures that end users are never exposed to unpublished content, while authors and testers can validate content in the appropriate stage.

Content Preview with the Whatfix Studio

The Whatfix Studio works alongside the Player Extension to provide a seamless authoring and preview experience.

Whatfix Studio's standalone preview mode continues to work as before.

Your title goes here
When preview mode is used alongside the Player Extension Advanced Customisation Code (AC) is packaged during preview, enabling you to view AC changes directly in your application.

Set Up Player Extension

Complete the following actions to configure, validate, and migrate to the Player Extension:

Info:
To start the migration to the Player Extension:
To enable Whatfix Player Extension, contact Customer Success Manager or support@whatfix.com.
Once the feature is enabled, configure environment mappings in the Whatfix Dashboard and map each of your application URLs to the appropriate content stage configuration.
Test the Player Extension functionality in your environment.

Expand the following accordion for more details:

Configure and Validate the Player Extension

Use the following steps to configure and validate the Whatfix Player extension once it is enabled for your account:

On the Whatfix Guidance dashboard, click Settings.
Click Content delivery.

Click Configurations.
Under the Other Browsers section, select only the ZIP checkbox.
Info:
Ensure to clear the Whatfix Store or Chrome Store checkbox to prevent the new Player Extension from being published to end users before it is validated in the Testing environment.
In the dialog box, click Enable.
Click Settings and go to Software Update.
In the Testing environment section, click Update Configuration.
In the dialog box, click Refresh.
Info:
Click Okay to update the Test environment.
Once the update is complete, you can download the extension from Content Delivery or from the link in the email you receive.
Click Settings and go to Content delivery.
Under Extensions, go to the extension card for Chrome and Edge (Chromium) browser, and then click Zip file.
Remove Whatfix Preview extension if it is installed in your browser.
Unzip the file and go the Google Chrome toolbar, click the more icon.
Click Extensions.
Click Manage Extensions.
Ensure that the Developer mode is enabled.
Click Load unpacked.
Upload the extracted extension folder to install the extension.
Configure environment mappings to map each URL to the appropriate content stage. Test and validate the content in each environment to ensure it is displayed as expected.s
After you validate the extension, click Settings.
Click Content delivery.
Click Configurations.
Under the Other Browsers section, select the Whatfix Store or Chrome Store extension checkbox to publish the new Player Extension to all end users.
Click Settings and go to Software Update.
Click Update Configuration.
In the dialog box, click Refresh.
Click Okay.
Once the update is complete, the Player Extension replaces the existing Production Extension and becomes available to all end users.

Use Whatfix Player extension to test content

You can review and validate whatfix content in your test environments to ensure everything works as expected in the following two ways:

Once you have configured environment mapping, you can validate the content in your Test environment.
Whatfix Studio Preview.

Note:
When you select the content stage that you want to preview on Studio, Whatfix overrides the environment configuration that is setup in the Whatfix Guidance Dashboard.

Use the following steps to use Software Version based Preview on Whatfix Studio:

Click Preview Mode.

Expand the Stage dropdown.

Select the stage option that you want to preview content in.

Expand the Software version dropdown.
Select Test or Production Software version to preview your content.
Click Continue.
Refresh your browser to preview content.

Testing Advanced Customization Code in Player Extension

You can test Advanced Customization Code changes in the Testing environment using the Player Extension. Updating the AC Code for the Testing environment does not affect the Production environment, enabling you to validate changes before applying them to Production. Go to Software updates, and click “Update Configuration“ under Testing environment.

Once you have tested and validated the Player Extension, click the Update Configuration in Production environment to publish the AC code changes.

Prevent Unintended Extension Updates to End Users

By default, when you click Update Configuration, the updated extension is pushed to all end users.

In Advanced Customization, enable Exclude AC Code During Content Publish. This setting prevents test Advanced Customization (AC) code from reaching end users and stops Whatfix from pushing an extension update on every test change.

With this setting enabled:

Publish to Production does not updates the extension.
Update now or Update Configuration for Test Environment updates the extension zip file but doesn’t push it to users. Unload the unzip file manually in your browser to validate AC code changes.