LibraryH3lp Blog

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This week's update is targeted primarily at those of you who manage chat services. The biggest new feature is a revision of your queue page (libraryh3lp.com/queues/your-queue) that now shows several bits of status information in real-time. You can now see at a glance:

• The availability status of your queue.
• The availability status of your operators.
• The active chats on your service.
• And if you've enabled transcripts, the live text of chats as they take place.

Because this information is all live, you can keep a finger on the pulse of your system just by keeping a browser tab open to your queue page. Combined with the transfer feature introduced last week, you can even decide to transfer a chat to yourself or to another queue or operator on the system if needed.

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To go with our existing AIM, MSN, and Yahoo! gateways.

I realize that since we're XMPP-based, and part of the XMPP Federation, the idea of a "gateway" to another XMPP-based service may seem a bit odd. After all, Google users can already directly reach LibraryH3lp users and queues. That's a big part of what XMPP is all about.

The purpose of this gateway is twofold: it's about presence and contacts. Using this gateway, you can maintain a presence on the Google Talk network with your existing buddy-name, and your patrons don't have to update their contacts in order to reach your service. And all the publicity you've done for your existing IM service is still valid.

As always, this is fully integrated into our queuing and routing system, so that any number of librarians can monitor the service.

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JWChat is a web-based jabber chat client written by Stefan Strigler. We've installed it here to give you another way to monitor your LibraryH3lp chats. Now you don't even need to install a desktop jabber client to use the system, just point your browser to:

http://libraryh3lp.com/jwchat/

(or use https) and login with your operator account. You'll be able to handle web-chats and IMs and get all the usual benefits of multiple-operators, routing, and transfers, all in your web browser.

Note for testing using only one computer: your "librarian" and "patron" should be in different browsers (Firefox and IE; Firefox and Safari, etc). Having both in the same browser on the same computer will be problematic.

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The nuts and bolts of transcripts and transfers are in place! This means that as of now, new layers of functionality---and flexibility---are available. If you have more than one department (say, Circulation and Reference), they can transfer chats to each other as needed. You can begin a chat from your general reference service and transfer it to a subject expert. If you have several librarians handling chats on a few computers at a public service desk, they can transfer a chat to a different computer if there is a need to free up the computer on which the chat began.

Details:

• Transcripts must be deliberately enabled on any given queue by the admin account; the default is to not store transcripts. Individual transcripts can be deleted by the admin account. Much improved transcript management (including bulk delete, delete on a rolling automated schedule, and basic anonymization) will be coming in the future.

• Transfers can only be initiated from patron chats that arrive from queues. Transfers can be sent to queues or to individual LibraryH3lp accounts; those queues and individual accounts must have been created using the same "admin" account. Transcripts must be enabled for transfers to work.
  

• For now, transfers are accomplished through a web interface. Incoming chats from queues will contain a link to the LibraryH3lp website, and that link will contain the text of the transcript and a transfer link.

• The recipient of the transfer will see a note that the chat is a transfer, and they will also have a link to the LibraryH3lp website. That link will contain the previous text in the transcript.
  

• The librarians following these link will need to sign into the LibraryH3lp website using their regular LibraryH3lp account name and password. There is a "remember me" checkbox on the login page. Currently, that checkbox will remember a login for two weeks.

• We know this "link-following" business is not completely seamless. Coming soon, we'll have a web interface for librarians to use for monitoring the service if they wish, and we'll also provide customization for Pidgin (on the PC). These specialized clients will make handling transfers more convenient. For instance, the full roll-back of a transferred chat will simply be part of the chat received if one of these specialized clients is in use. However, the links will always provide the core functionality for those monitoring the service without the benefit of a special client.

And just to be clear, IMs from gateways integrated with queues can be transferred the same as web chats.

Have fun!

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We have big plans for this weekend's release. Eric's been hard at work on a bunch of cool stuff, including something I've been really looking forward to: transcripts and transfers. And don't worry, you'll have to deliberately opt into storing transcripts.

While we always try to keep downtime to a minimum, be warned that the service might be up and down this Saturday and Sunday, especially in the mornings, as we move the new stuff from the test environment to the production server.

Happy Friday!

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Just over a week ago we released real-time presence notifications using our new comet API. Unfortunately this had the effect, in some browsers (notably Firefox and Safari), that the page appeared to never finish loading. (Because, well, it never did. That's how it works.) Despite the valiant efforts of one of you to find a way to disguise this fact, given the current state of browser technology there just doesn't seem to be a good work-around.

So, we're backtracking on the RRTP. By default now, both widgets and button/popup pages will poll for presence. Pages will load to completion, but you may notice a delay of several seconds between the time you go online/offline and when that fact gets reflected in the browser. However, if you want real-time notifications, keep reading...

Because they are now available as an opt-in feature: witness the chat box in the sidebar. To get real-time presence in an inline widget, just add the argument "rrtp=1" to the URL. You can view source of this page for an example. To get real-time presence when using the API, add ",rrtp" to your libraryh3lp include line, as in:

libraryh3lp.com?presence,rrtp

or:

libraryh3lp.com?presence,popup,rrtp

Thanks for your feedback on the previous release!

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I've just uploaded the latest code to the wiki. This download contains all fixes and enhancements to the widget to date, including the new-style popup code. It also contains both the client and server pieces for the Really Real-Time Presence and Follow-Me features.