Live Help / Call Center Application with Flex and BlazeDS

customer3.jpgcallcenter.jpg

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:

  1. 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.

  2. 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.

  3. In the customer application, enter some data in different tabs.

  4. Click “Start session” to initiate a Live Help session with a support rep.

  5. Notice that a new ticket appears in the call center application.

  6. 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.

  7. Type a chat message in the support rep app: the message appears in the customer app.

  8. 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.

  9. 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.

  10. 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.

  11. 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.

April 29, 2008 | Filed Under BlazeDS, Collaboration, Flex, LiveCycle Data Services 
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Comments

37 Responses to “Live Help / Call Center Application with Flex and BlazeDS”

  1. cp8r on April 30th, 2008 4:00 am

    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).

  2. Pat Buchanan on April 30th, 2008 11:26 am

    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

  3. cp8r on May 1st, 2008 3:06 am

    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 ;-)

  4. Roger on May 4th, 2008 5:22 am

    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.

  5. Forrest on May 7th, 2008 12:20 pm

    yeah,great demos for enterprise RIA….But also makes my IE crash from the “Yahoo Maps Collaboration” …

  6. Dan Zeitman on May 7th, 2008 1:23 pm

    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

  7. Forrest on May 9th, 2008 9:34 pm

    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.

  8. Michael Yang on May 10th, 2008 11:26 pm

    really cool flex applications! but seems not perfect enough!

  9. yakasani on May 11th, 2008 2:08 am

    Good enough Flex applications ! We jsut love it !

  10. 魏俊如 on May 11th, 2008 3:59 am

    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…

  11. hashinaya on May 11th, 2008 8:43 am

    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…

  12. ping on May 11th, 2008 8:13 pm

    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

  13. Houming on May 12th, 2008 1:11 am

    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….

  14. Houming on May 12th, 2008 1:14 am

    by the way, i want to know when will you post the source…

    i’m looking fowared to…

  15. wendy on May 12th, 2008 9:16 am

    it seems that this application’s background picture is too big !!! More than 2M…….even bigger than the main application…

  16. amanda on May 12th, 2008 8:40 pm

    wow,interesting…

  17. Mitsute on May 13th, 2008 3:42 am

    yes, really lovely flex samples,powerful flash !

    but it was not stable. i don’t know why ?

  18. Yakanoo on May 13th, 2008 4:59 am

    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!

  19. flexhacker on May 13th, 2008 9:28 am

    Another ground-breaking showcase in flex community!!! Well done! Great work,Christophe!

  20. flexhacker on May 13th, 2008 11:11 am

    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 …

  21. Houming on May 13th, 2008 8:01 pm

    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…

  22. William from Lagos on May 14th, 2008 9:23 am

    I love it! So cool!

  23. Lingo_Flexer From Shanghai on May 14th, 2008 10:23 am

    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…

  24. Erin on May 14th, 2008 1:23 pm

    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

  25. Lingo_Flexer From Shanghai on May 14th, 2008 8:31 pm

    good,thank you,Erin!

  26. Lingo_Flexer From Shanghai on May 14th, 2008 8:33 pm

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  27. YAMIKA FROM TOKYO on May 15th, 2008 9:45 am

    Flash Player 10 Beta was released 4 hours ago!!!

    Great News!!! Enjoy !!!

  28. Yakoza on May 15th, 2008 4:27 pm

    Can you leverage the new features of flash player 10 on building Enterprise RIAs?

  29. Lingo_Flexer From Shanghai on May 15th, 2008 4:42 pm

    long long waiting,harder harder working….

  30. yotasuibishi on May 16th, 2008 4:35 am

    nice work!

  31. Christophe Coenraets - “LiveHelp / Call Center” Application Source Code on May 16th, 2008 3:27 pm

    [...] recently posted an example of a “Live Help / Call Center” application built with Flex and BlazeDS. A number of you have asked me for the source code. So here it [...]

  32. d on May 23rd, 2008 2:09 am

    it ain’t working for me in any browser

  33. RK on June 16th, 2008 3:29 pm

    The customer part of the code seems to be missing from the source (customer.html). Can you please post that too?

    Thanks

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  37. Live Help / Call Center Application with Flex and BlazeDS : Christophe Coenraets « Wild Technologies oder auch flexible Hamburg on July 18th, 2008 9:01 am

    [...] Live Help / Call Center Application with Flex and BlazeDS : Christophe Coenraets [...]

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