Re: Chat Modules

Posted by Scott. on
URL: http://ofbiz.116.s1.nabble.com/Chat-Modules-tp145876p145884.html

Hi All,

Thanks for the response. I guess the best method of explaining for me is to give a real world example of the use of a bundled IM. Here’s the example;

I am at an airport and I get a phone call from someone at the company panicking because a customer has called and is screaming about his order. I go to one of those internet kiosks and I get online and log into OFBIZ. My wish would be at that point to be connected totally to the office. I’d be logged into OFBIZ and show online to other users. I look up the customer order and all is correct except I don’t see a payment and that’s the reason it has not been shipped. I click on a chat icon and a chat window pops up. I IM the accounting department and ask if they have posted the customer check. They tell me that they received the payment buy someone screwed up and did not enter it. I then IM the shipping department and tell them that I am authorizing the shipment. Shipment goes out and we have a happy customer.

At this point, I’ve done all this from an internet kiosk. I didn’t have to find an unbundled IM to try and connect with the office. Questions and answers were immediate and best of all, there is a log of the conversation on my server that can verify who said what if there were a problem. All this and I’ve only had to enter one username and password.

I hope this helps to clarify what’s in my mind.

David E. Jones-2 wrote

On Apr 23, 2007, at 1:39 PM, Scott A wrote:

> It depends what kind of business you are in and where you put the  
> value of
> "instant messaging" I guess. In my business the customer is king.  
> Sales reps
> might be on the phone and we can still feed them info as it  
> arrives. We can
> interrupt them to let them know about important phone calls. We can
> collaborate on projects even when we are outside the office just by  
> virtue
> of being logged in.
>
> There are endless reasons but it depends on what you see as the  
> future of
> ofbiz. I would really like to see my entire business run from one  
> app. One
> user, one app and all from a browser. That’s my ideal situation and  
> chat
> could go a long way in accomplishing that.

I guess my question wasn't very clear... sorry about that.

When I said "what would it mean" I really meant, what would be the  
touch points between the chat system and OFBiz?

Are you saying that you'd want the chat to be in the same browser  
window as the rest of OFBiz? What if the user has half a dozen OFBiz  
browser tabs open in different applications as they are jumping  
around working on things, would there be a chat in each one?

Or are you just saying that authenticating with OFBiz would somehow  
automatically also start the chat client and authenticate the user?

Or maybe something else entirely?

Anyway, let us know what you have in mind about how this might work,  
from a functional or user perspective at least, not worrying about  
how it might actually be implemented.

-David