I recently posted a number of examples (Yahoo Maps Collaboration and Collaborative Data Entry) showing how to use the BlazeDS / LCDS Message Service to build collaborative applications. In this post, I’m extending the Collaborative Forms application to provide an example of a more complete and real life “Live Help / Call Center” application.
The use case goes like this: a customer tries to complete a task (in this case: apply for a mortgage) on a web site, gets in trouble, and starts a “Live Help” session with a support representative. Among other things, the support representative can remotely drive the customer’s application, enter data collaboratively with the customer, chat with the customer using a text-based and/or a video-chat session, close the support ticket, etc.
To make it easier for you to experience the application, I’m hosting it on my server. You can test it using the instructions below.
Testing the application:
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Open a browser and access http://coenraets.org/apps/livehelp/customer.html. Enter your email address and click Start.
Note: Your email address is used as a unique identifier to allow you to test the application in your own sandbox: your experiments are isolated from the experiments of other users testing the application.
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Open another browser window (on the same computer or on a different computer) and access http://coenraets.org/apps/livehelp/callcenter.html. Enter your email address and click “Start”. Make sure you use the same email address you used in the customer application.
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In the customer application, enter some data in different tabs.
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Click “Start session” to initiate a Live Help session with a support rep.
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Notice that a new ticket appears in the call center application.
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In the call center application select the new ticket, and click “Handle Ticket” (upper right corner). A message should appear in the chat window of the customer application. Notice that the data you typed in the customer application automatically appears in the support rep application.
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Type a chat message in the support rep app: the message appears in the customer app.
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The support rep can remotely drive the customer application: in the support rep application, change the selected Accordion tab, and notice that the customer application’s user interface is automatically synchronized. This works in both directions: you can change the Accordion tab in the customer app and the support rep’s user interface will be automatically synchronized as well.
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The application supports collaborative data entry (collaborative form filling): Enter some data in the support rep application: notice that the data automatically appears in the customer application. This works in both directions as well.
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On the Employment History tab, add a few companies (including start date, end date, and salary) and notice that the employment history list is automatically synchronized in the other browser.
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If you have a webcam attached to your system, click the “Start webcam” button in one of the applications.
Note: Live video streaming is powered by Flash Media Server. Since I don’t have access to a hosted instance of Flash Media Server, live video streaming is not enabled in this hosted version.
I will post the source code in the coming days.
Again a very nice application (although your webbased apps always make my Firefox crash and remind me that I also have an Internet Explorer installed).
Yep – makes my FireFox crash as well. Version 2.0.0.14 of FireFox, and version 9,0,124,0 of Flash player.
App looks great though!
Thanks
-Pat
Yeah, but I already knew those crashes of FF from the “Yahoo Maps Collaboration” app. So, for me this is just another reason to deploy AIR applications for the desktop to get rid of all those browsers
Hi, I’m writing an article about Flex and Java for a commercial magazine and I was wondering whether can I use your Flex Test Drive Server (which is already configured) and put it on the magazine’s CD. Of course I can remove all .mxml files (and .java and rest of sources) you created for Flex Test Drive. I just neead a server working out-of-box.
Sorry for leaving this question on your blog. I didn’t found your e-mail address.
yeah,great demos for enterprise RIA….But also makes my IE crash from the “Yahoo Maps Collaboration” …
Always a pleasure to see you post something interesting that has a practical business scope.
When you post the source…
1> will the video be an option(flash media server hosting is expensive / rare at best)
2> Can you post the sql and or ColdFusion LCDS Express source for the backend… I’m assuming you can just run the CF wizards to create the alternative to blaze fo those of us who don’t care to learn Java.
Again this is cool, the first real value propsition for BLAZE/LCDS that I’ve seen.
Dan
Yes,this is the first real value propsition for BLAZE/LCDS that I’ve seen…and i’m always happy to see you post some demos that based on Flex+BlazeDS/LiveCycle+Spring+Hibernate/iBATIS+My SQL+Tomcat/JBoss…which is also my interesting research scope.
Again,here,i’m sincerely looking forward to your source code.
really cool flex applications! but seems not perfect enough!
Good enough Flex applications ! We jsut love it !
很好！ 觉得你的程序好像不支持中文或者亚洲字符集的输入，很可惜啊，另外想知道，BlazeDS和LiveCycle的最大区别是什么？将来Adobe对BlazeDS的支持计划是什么？
还有，能否共享一下您的源代码? 期待中…
こんにちは、ニースアプリケーションでは、私はhashinoya 、 bannanaシステムから、かどうか迷っかどうか私は市販のソースコードを使用して、お客様のライセンス…
hey, really lovely applications i’v ever seen, i’m Ping Zhao, working in China Mobile, and i’m very interested in chosing Flex in one of our projects and i’m hoping to talk with you proviately if possible, and please imform us when time is avaiable for you.
Best Regards
it seems that so many HTTPRequests will make IE and Firefox crash in Flex Application,I just finished a test that uesing HTTPRequest to get data from server-side, when i keep pressing the Request button,the browser will also Crash….
I don’t know how to harness these requests…
Would you please share with me your advice on how to do this trouble shooting?
Waitting for your reply….
by the way, i want to know when will you post the source…
i’m looking fowared to…
it seems that this application’s background picture is too big !!! More than 2M…….even bigger than the main application…
wow,interesting…
yes, really lovely flex samples,powerful flash !
but it was not stable. i don’t know why ?
Is flex and flash fit for enterprise application development???
1. the runtime is not stable enough!
2. take too much CPU runtime resources and hard to optimize!
Another ground-breaking showcase in flex community!!! Well done! Great work,Christophe!
I will integrate all the basic funcions of the “Yahoo Maps Collaboration”,and the Call Center/LiveHelp application into my flex application-a romote teaching and collaboration system…
thank you very much for your work.
by the way , i’m wondering whether i can use flex to record the screen video at client-side without using c/c++…
please tell me the feasibility …
Yes, i also need a screen recorder in my application that powered inside flex application without using c/c++, and i’m not sure whether this is possible…
I love it! So cool!
hi Christophe ,nice work! would you please tell us when will you post your source code ?
i cann’t wait any longer to enjoy the creative and nice application!
i’m sincerely waiting here for long…
In case you’re interested, we’ve done all the work for you over at Activa Live Chat – we also offer an SDK if you want to integrate into a Flex or AIR RIA, and you can even use it to build your very own and unique live chat window for our platform.
Think you’ll love it – try it out at http://www.activalive.com
good,thank you,Erin!
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Flash Player 10 Beta was released 4 hours ago!!!
Great News!!! Enjoy !!!
Can you leverage the new features of flash player 10 on building Enterprise RIAs?
long long waiting,harder harder working….
nice work!
it ain’t working for me in any browser
The customer part of the code seems to be missing from the source (customer.html). Can you please post that too?
Thanks
Done green card and
abolish number of credit card
Flash Player 10 Beta was released 4 hours ago!!!
I love it! So cool!
Where is the source code located ?
This went nice . Really , Fayali am thanking..
thank you. eyvallah gardasimmm
This is a great example. Thank you.
very nice app. When can we get the source code. I specifically like the chatting app. Do you know if I should be able to host this app on any apache / php server?
Any special server requirement? I am thinking about making a very similar chatting app.
somehow I am not able to login to this application.. the ticket does get enable when after I click on start session button several time… ?
AM i doing anything wrong ?
-Raj
write the back-end code which I was planning to write so that I can run it in LCDS based on Christophe’s example. Thanks to Anil Channappa for pointing me in this direction. Feel free to cobrowse flickr
Excellent site coenraets.org and I am really pleased to see you have what I am actually looking for here: this .. as it’s taken me literally 1 hours and 10 minutes of searching the web to find you (just kidding!) so I shall be pleased to become a regular visitor
Live chat is the future. I like the idea of it versus the phone.
Good working
here,i’m sincerely looking forward to your source code.
I will integrate all the basic funcions of the “Yahoo Maps Collaboration”,and the Call Center/LiveHelp application into my flex application-a romote teaching and collaboration system…
Vi deler forslagene inn i to kategorier. Den ene kategorien er for tekniske oppgaver som ikke nødvendigvis er knyttet til et bestemt problem, men som i hovedsak er motivert av nysgjerrighet på teknologi…….
Good working
This is wonderfull. I will Integrate this in us workflow.
We haven’t tried Flex but I wonder if there has been any upgrade since the time of this posting…
Live Chat is the future. I know it. Live support allso
Looks like a great tool – just wondering how it might compare to say, LivePerson? We’ve been using LivePerson for a couple of months now, & it provides some really insightful “back-end” stuff (such as the source of the visitor, their location, their high-level system specs etc)…
It doesn’t have webcam to my knowledge, which would be cool
All the best with the app, and yes I agree Live Chat is the future! Espeically in this “must have it now!” world.
Great for customer service, technical support & online business overall!
Thank you for the tips. It is very helpful.
I think on line calling or live calling support a person .
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ronit roy
Online applications like this one is really a great help in applying in a call center. I wonder what features are now added in this application.. Thanks for the info.
Hello, I am rowan atkinson. I am agree with you. Looks like a great tool – just wondering how it might compare to say, LivePerson? We’ve been using LivePerson for a couple of months now, & it provides some really insightful “back-end” stuff (such as the source of the visitor, their location, their high-level system specs.
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CROISSANCE SYSTEMS
Hey,this is peter.Looks like a great tool – just wondering how it might compare to say, LivePerson? We’ve been using LivePerson for a couple of months now, & it provides some really insightful “back-end” stuff (such as the source of the visitor, their location, their high-level system specs etc)…
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peter011
A great application each ecommerce websites should adopt to avoid the frustration of customers over incomplete transaction and their fear of losing money. Any online business website selling its own product should employ this to serve their customers effectively.
Internet Home Business Ideas
This is a really cool technology. My company does remote PC support and honestly this would fit right in with some of our services. I really wish that the source code would have been posted, I would really like to take a look at it and see how it would incorporate with our existing setup. Hopefully it will be up soon!
as per your post, it looks very good. Chat based customer service is considered as a best service as one chat operator can handle 3-5 chat simultaneously. So customers don’t face any unnecessary call waiting and end result will give the fastest service to them.
Thank you,
Robert Brown
call center monitoring
Thx for Tips. I think about it. will try it also as soon. Buy
thank youfor the read I loved it and find your comments really insightful u’ve given me a lot of ideas. I really love the way your blog is laid out too. I have bookmarked ty.
WOW ! Is anybody aware of such a service offering that is currently used by a bank or mortgage broker ? I am currently seeking a software solution for exactly this topic for my company.