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Reports Preview

Eric has been working on some behind-the-scenes stuff lately, including reports for the admin interface. He just showed me a really neat chart. It represents all LibraryH3lp traffic from about April 19 through December 7. This charts day of week and time for 34,831 messages on queues. It's not been cleaned up and counts all messages, including tests, system, etc, but of course it does not include traffic on queues where the admin has deleted their call history. <a href="http://chart.apis.google.com/chart?cht=lc&chxt=y,x&chs=600x400&chxr=0,0.0,711.0%7C1,0.0,23.0&chdl=Sun%7CMon%7CTue%7CWed%7CThu%7CFri%7CSat&chco=000000,FF0000,00FF00,0000FF,00FFFF,FF00FF,FFFF00&chd=e:HvErBoBzBcBFBWC-HqWmjjrvun0S5s7f5mwbomiSdtajYwOO,IjEPCQA0CEBcA6DhG2Xlhqxg3W0S..7f2.oDmKf9buapTcMs,H1FICQCQBiBzBRDyHYVVjjrpw301yr3c1XqZhHe9b.c5T.Ms,HHD9DKBLA0BtCEDhHNTofxpwpOtAyC3iwPkoiYd4VyRYQvMK,EPDPChAdBRA6BFDbH1Tzb0mEj6qkuzoOhCUbOUIdD9DhCcA6,A.AMAMAGAGARAuAMAdD9GwKWNDQkUyS0V9NrIvFxFlC4BcA.,BLAuBoA.AMAXAMARBcC4CtEPIdPfXfYCYCXrU4WgVyUtQYKz">Check it out</a>. We were just admiring the interesting "academic weekend" phenomena. :) Enjoy. We'll publish a new blog post when the new reports are integrated into the live admin site.

Eric has been working on some behind-the-scenes stuff lately, including reports for the admin interface. He just showed me a really neat chart. It represents all LibraryH3lp traffic from about April 19 through December 7. This charts day of week a…

Improved Asian Languages Support

Three things of note happened this week:First, many thanks go to the efforts of the Shanghai Library, which has provided us with the text for a Chinese localization of the LibraryH3lp chat widget.Second, we've made some enhancements to the admin UI, …

New Admin Interface

You may notice if you sign into your admin account to manage your services that the UI is, well, somewhat radically different. We've been working hard over the last couple of weeks on designing something that is more intuitive and easier-to-use for new users (and prettier and more "2.0"). Specifically: <ol><li>User, queue, and gateway management is now all on one page, so that it is easier to view your entire service structure at a glance.</li><li>The old configurator and servinator have been merged into a single wizard that walks you step-by-step through the process of generating HTML for inclusion into your web pages.</li></ol>The disadvantages are that the effort you put into learning the old interface won't all carry over, and because it is so new (about 2 hours) there may be a few bugs. Oh, and most of the documentation on the wiki is now obsolete. We're going to be working the rest of the weekend on writing and integrating new documentation, so that it won't be so scary come Monday.

You may notice if you sign into your admin account to manage your services that the UI is, well, somewhat radically different. We've been working hard over the last couple of weeks on designing something that is more intuitive and easier-to-use for …

SMS Texting Services

Texting services are becoming popular, with libraries beginning to really experiment in ways to best deliver this service to cell phone users. Currently, many LibraryH3lp libraries are using various short code hacks, such as the "AIM hack" to offer this service. It works. With the AIM hack, patrons text their message to 265010. In the message, they specify your library's AIM buddy name. If you have an AIM gateway in LibraryH3lp, those text messages show up for all of your librarians just like any other traffic coming through the system. If you are using our Pidgin plugin or our new webchat client, your librarians will be able to see that the patron is coming in through a phone number, which can tip them off that they need to provide brief responses. Once again, this does work. The less-than-optimal thing about it is that the patron's cell phone can't usually store your buddy name to make repeat usage easier. The phone can store the short code (265010) just like a cell phone number, but not your buddy name. When they text their friends, they're generally texting a real phone number, which their phone can easily store for later usage. We are interested in building a better kind of SMS gateway, one that would allow patrons to text an actual phone number, so that it would work exactly like it does when they are texting their friends and family. We have a couple of ideas about ways to make this happen. Is anyone interested in working with us to integrate a true SMS gateway into their LibraryH3lp service? We can't develop this independently because SMS messages must be purchased, and we don't want to push costs up for everyone on the system, even if they're not using SMS. A library would buy the messages for their use independently, and then we would build the gateway.

Texting services are becoming popular, with libraries beginning to really experiment in ways to best deliver this service to cell phone users.Currently, many LibraryH3lp libraries are using various short code hacks, such as the "AIM hack" to offer th…

New webchat client

We have a new beta version of our librarian's webchat client. If you were using jwchat, our first such client, you'll notice the new one is different. We find it to be more robust, and it has been designed for integration with LibraryH3lp's features. Each patron chat window currently has the following features: <ul><li>Displays the patron's queue in the title bar.</li><li>Has a drop-down menu for transfers.</li><li>Integrated "send file" option.</li><li>Typing notification.</li><li>New message alert noise loops until an operator accepts an incoming chat. </li></ul>The client itself currently displays your buddy list, so your librarian operators can chat with each other. It also lets you add buddies and set your status (available, busy, etc). It is fully integrated into the routing system, so if you have multiple operators online, some in Pidgin and some in the web chat client, they can all receive incoming chats and transfer them around. First to respond "wins" the chat. And of course, it works with all the usual incoming patron chats from widgets and IM gateways on your queues. Login: <a href="https://libraryh3lp.com/webchat/">https://libraryh3lp.com/webchat/</a> using an operator account. Use only the username, not username@libraryh3lp.com. Logout by closing the webchat tab/window. Known bug: if the login is flubbed, an error message loops. Refresh the page to get a new chance to login. Enjoy!

We have a new beta version of our librarian's webchat client. If you were using jwchat, our first such client, you'll notice the new one is different. We find it to be more robust, and it has been designed for integration with LibraryH3lp's feature…

ICQ Gateway

We installed our ICQ gateway recently. It should work fine. The list of gateways is currently: AIM, Yahoo!, MSN, Google Talk, Meebo Me, and ICQ.If you're looking at the list of gateways, you might also notice that we have a QQ gateway listed. Thi…

RefChatter Means More Options

By now you may have heard Altarama's announcement of their new RefChatter product---providing integrated IM and web-chat into a single hosted solution---noticed that it is "LibraryH3lp Inside," and are probably wondering what it means for you, the LibraryH3lp user. LibraryH3lp is not going away, and development is not slowing down. LibraryH3lp will continue to be supported on the blog, wiki, and newsgroup, and we will continue to encourage community involvement in the project. What is new is that RefChatter is now available for anyone wanting a more fully supported product. With RefChatter, you can get product demos, staff training, initial product setup, and professional support---all things that are not available (and are not going to become available) from Pam and Eric. (Because (a) we have jobs and (b) our time is better spent improving the core product.) Also with RefChatter, you get interoperability with Altarama's other products, such as RefTracker, for an integrated reference automation solution. If you're interested in these new products, please do contact Altarama for details. Otherwise, please continue to use LibraryH3lp exactly as before. It's all about options...

By now you may have heard Altarama's announcement of their new RefChatter product---providing integrated IM and web-chat into a single hosted solution---noticed that it is "LibraryH3lp Inside," and are probably wondering what it means for you, the Li…

Updated Pidgin Plugin

We just uploaded an updated version of our plugin for the Windows Pidgin client. You can find it in the <a href="http://code.google.com/p/libraryh3lp/downloads/list">Downloads</a> section of the wiki. This version corrects an issue with the first release of the plugin where Pidgin crashes when the patron sends an empty line before a librarian has responded to a new, incoming the chat. The <a href="http://libraryh3lp.blogspot.com/2008/05/plugin-for-pidgin.html">original plugin features</a> are unchanged at this time, but in a month or so, we'll be releasing some new features in another version of this plugin. This might be a good place to mention one of the design goals we had when providing customized client features. Plugins are relatively easy to install and update on large numbers of computers; systems administrators can do things like push them out using a batch file called during a login script, even if they don't have fancy software deployment tools at their disposal. This is a lot easier than fully installing a complete client across goodness-knows-how-many-computers, each time features are updated. So, one of our goals was to limit customization of locally-installed clients to plugins if at all possible. Eric is working hard on a fully web-based client for librarians. We hope to release that in the next couple of weeks. Stay tuned!

We just uploaded an updated version of our plugin for the Windows Pidgin client. You can find it in the Downloads section of the wiki. This version corrects an issue with the first release of the plugin where Pidgin crashes when the patron sends an…

A Reference Renaissance: panel discussion slides

We were part of a panel with our colleagues Josh Boyer (NCSU), Jean Ferguson (Duke), and Amy VanScoy (NCSU) at A Reference Renaissance in Denver earlier this month. The panel was titled "LibraryH3lp: Building a Next Generation VR System," and it was…

Reminder: Planned Downtime Sunday August 17th

Between the hours of 8 and 10 AM, EDT. There should be only a brief period of unavailability within that window.…

New and Improved Call History

If you've been in the admin interface lately, you might have noticed we have a new beta call history area. I think it's very cool. If you have more than one queue, you can look at your queues individually or all together. You can look at all the chats and IMs on your queues for a specific day or a date range; you can see things like how long it took each chat to get answered, the duration of each chat, and the operator that took a chat. You can sort by columns. You can bulk download transcripts. You can delete transcripts and entire call histories. You can save your call history to a csv file so you can play with it in Excel. The system identifies chats that went unanswered; often these are the patron coming back to say "thanks, bye" after the operator has closed their window. But sometimes they are actual missed chats, and it's great to be able to locate these easily to identify problems with a staffing model or little tech glitches. You can also read what those pesky IM system messages say and easily select them for deletion. Another thing Eric added in on my whim because it was fairly easy: you can hover over a guestID and see the detailed transcript rather than having to click into each one to read the transcript. It's all terribly exciting for those of us who have to prepare statistics for reports! If you have transcripts enabled, you'll see a link on your queue pages. You can also go directly to: <a href="https://libraryh3lp.com/calls">https://libraryh3lp.com/calls</a>, login with your admin account, and play with the new toy. Enjoy!

If you've been in the admin interface lately, you might have noticed we have a new beta call history area. I think it's very cool. If you have more than one queue, you can look at your queues individually or all together. You can look at all the c…

Help from our friends: new handout

I've loved meeting several wonderful new library colleagues while working on LibraryH3lp. Often, it starts with a quick chat, and this was the case when I first "met" Amanda Clay Powers earlier this week. She was preparing to present a whole bunch of talks at the <a href="http://mlctechfair2008.blogspot.com/">Mississippi Library Commission Tech Fair</a> and also wanted to have a handout about LibraryH3lp to include in a display about new ideas from ALA. Well, creating that kind of thing had never even occurred to me, and amazingly, that same day, she put together a wonderful one-page handout for the display and generously said it was OK to make it available here. So, I just uploaded it into the wiki in the <a href="http://code.google.com/p/libraryh3lp/downloads/list">downloads</a> section, and <a href="http://libraryh3lp.googlecode.com/files/handout-ver1.pdf">here you go</a>. Thanks, Amanda! You rock. While I'm talking about great colleagues, I'd also like to soundly thank all of you that have mentioned LibraryH3lp to other librarians and especially those who have been patiently answering e-mails from other librarians asking about the system (Ellen!). We've always wanted to have a good community support base, and you all are fulfilling that wish in spades. In other news, Eric's been working hard on improving the admin interface, and we hope to release the first upgrade, which offers better call history/transcript manipulation, very soon.

I've loved meeting several wonderful new library colleagues while working on LibraryH3lp. Often, it starts with a quick chat, and this was the case when I first "met" Amanda Clay Powers earlier this week. She was preparing to present a whole bunch …

Localization available: customize widgets for other languages

We now have the ability to provide the chat widget in the language specified in the patron's web browser. However, we need your help to get the appropriate translations in place. Currently, Czech is available. A partial French localization is also …

Meebo Me Gateway

Eric's been busy buffing up the gateways lately, and a Meebo Me gateway is the first visible result. This means that you can have multiple librarians monitoring your Meebo Me widget simultaneously. This gateway works just like the other gateways for AIM, Yahoo!, etc...., and Meebo Me chats can be transferred just like any other LibraryH3lp chat. Gateway primer: using your admin login, add the gateway to one of your queues, assign at least one librarian operator to the queue, and you're good to go. Your Meebo Me widget will come online when its queue is online, and your queue will be online when there is at least one operator for the queue online. If more than one operator is online for the queue, they'll all get the patron's first message, but only the first to send a reply will get connected to the patron. The other operators will see who nabbed the chat and will get disconnected from the patron. Note: if a queue was online when you added a gateway, you need to toggle the online/offline status of the queue in order for the new gateway to come online for the first time. The queue must go offline very briefly and then come back online. An easy way to accomplish this from the admin interface is to remove a queue's operators and then add them back. Have fun!

Eric's been busy buffing up the gateways lately, and a Meebo Me gateway is the first visible result. This means that you can have multiple librarians monitoring your Meebo Me widget simultaneously. This gateway works just like the other gateways fo…

Send File for Patrons and Librarians

A couple of days ago, a "send file" option began appearing for operators who follow the chat management link at the start of a chat or IM. Today, this option was put into the patron's widget (it's the little folder/arrow icon in the widget). When a file is sent, a link appears in the chat for the receiving party in the form of: download from http://libraryh3lp.com/download/filename.ext Files sent during a chat are temporarily stored on the LibraryH3lp server. They currently have a shelf life of two days before being deleted. There is a size limitation of 10 MB per file. A file of any type can be sent. The ability to send a file during a chat can be very handy. Often, patrons chat when they are stuck on some kind of access problem. In a typical scenario, for whatever reason (off-campus user with proxy server trouble, a vendor with an out-of-date IP range, etc), your patron should be able to access something, and they just cannot. We all try to straighten these problems out at the root, but often, that takes time, and what the patron really needs right then is just a PDF or two so they can carry on with their research. Rather than e-mail these, you can now send them directly during the chat. Sometimes it's also nice for the patron to be able to send files to the librarian. One situation that sticks out in my mind is a patron with a question about how to cite something. She was trying to explain it to me, but then she simply sent her actual bibliography and paper, and it was suddenly much easier for me to understand her question. On another occasion, a patron sent me a PDF from one of our e-journals; the article had some missing pages, and I was able to see the problem immediately, look for a complete version, and notify the vendor of the problem. Enjoy! This is the last user control we have planned for the widget. For now. :)

A couple of days ago, a "send file" option began appearing for operators who follow the chat management link at the start of a chat or IM. Today, this option was put into the patron's widget (it's the little folder/arrow icon in the widget). When a…

Plugin for Pidgin

Today we're releasing the first version of our LibraryH3lp plugin for Pidgin (Windows version). It has the following features: <ol><li>Displays the full roll-back of a chat to the recipient of a transfer.</li><li>Repeats an incoming chat alert noise at a configurable interval in seconds until a librarian sends a message to the patron.</li><li>Automatically approves incoming buddy requests.</li><li>Automatically cleans up all those guest123456@libraryh3lp.com buddies that accumulate in your buddy list. </li></ol>The first feature, showing the full history of a chat to the recipient of a transfer, is a very helpful time saver. It means the the librarian answering a transferred chat does not need to follow the "chat management" link in order to read the prior discussion between the patron and the first librarian. The second feature, the repeating new chat alert sound, is especially handy for staffing models where it is not guaranteed that a librarian will be physically looking for incoming chats visually all the time. In my library's main chat service, we answer the chats on computers near, but not actually right at, the reference desk. We rely on sound alerts to let us know of incoming chats, and the looping sound prevents us from accidentally missing anything when the phone rings or we're away from the desk for a short time. It also lets staff nearby in their offices know when the desk is slammed and no one is immediately picking up a chat, so that we can pitch in on the fly to help out. You can set the repeat sound to suit your preferences: 60 seconds, 30 seconds, etc... Notes: <ol><li>The sound will not repeat for simple new responses from the patron once a chat is underway; it is limited to their initial message (see important configuration notes at the end of this post). </li><li>If more than one computer with the plugin receives a chat because multiple librarians are signed into the queue in question, the sound will stop looping on all the computers when the first librarian sends a response to the patron.</li></ol>The third feature, automatic approval of buddy requests, is useful for buddying other librarians who are staffing your services. This provides an easy method of librarian-to-librarian communication. To buddy another LibraryH3lp user, pick Buddies-->Add Buddy and enter the desired account. Example: marian-the-librarian@libraryh3lp.com. If you're using other accounts besides LibraryH3lp accounts in Pidgin, be sure to buddy to the right one. The plugin should also auto-approve similar requests from other systems. The last feature, automatic clean-up of guest accounts left by your patrons' chat sessions, is a nice housekeeping feature. To get the plugin: <ol><li>Save <a href="http://code.google.com/p/libraryh3lp/downloads/list">the plugin's zip file</a> from our wiki. </li><li>Unzip and save the libraryh3lp.dll file in Pidgin's plugins directory (usually c:\program files\pidgin\plugins\). </li><li>Enable the plugin in Pidgin at Tools-->Plugins. </li><li>Click configure plugin and set the desired interval for the new message alert sound.</li><li>Check Tools-->Preferences--Sounds and select message received begins new conversation. This is not turned on by default.</li></ol>(Edited 26 May 2008 to reflect the automatic buddy clean-up feature.) (Edited 16 Nov 2008 to generalize link to plugin zip file download.)

Today we're releasing the first version of our LibraryH3lp plugin for Pidgin (Windows version). It has the following features:Displays the full roll-back of a chat to the recipient of a transfer.Repeats an incoming chat alert noise at a configurable…

Hierarchy

It's not always immediately clear to new users why we make the distinction between "admin" and "user" accounts on the LibraryH3lp system. The short answer is that, with regard to issues of security and patron privacy, we need to be able to answer the question of anyone: who is the boss of you? When you create an admin account by signing up through the web interface, you're actually creating an administrative domain. You can create any number of queues, for any purposes, and any number of users. You can assign those users to queues in any fashion: for instance, someone might be both a subject expert and a general reference librarian, and should monitor multiple queues when logged in---you can do that. By creating those user accounts within the admin interface, you're explicitly defining the "boss" relationship. If everyone registered their own top-level account, we'd have to find some (more complicated) method of determining who can assign who to monitor what queues. (And who can view transcripts, etc.) But there's more to it than that. Within an administrative domain, your users are all "friends." If you created queues for reference and circulation, the operators on those queues can transfer chats to each other. Your reference staff can transfer chats to subject experts and vice-versa. You have a lot of ways to connect the patron to the librarian best suited to help them, quickly. But there's even more to it than that. Because aside from the boss relationship, there's really no difference between an admin account and an ordinary user account. More specifically, the users you create can in turn create their own users and queues and define their own service models. For example, if you started using LibraryH3lp in your university's main library and wanted to grow your service, you might start by creating accounts for each of your branch libraries. Then your branch libraries create their own users and define their own queues, and you don't have to manage all those details. But, because you created those accounts initially, everything they do falls under your administrative domain. Now you can transfer chats not only from reference to circulation, but you can directly connect patrons to your law library or health-sciences library. You can start thinking about staffing collaborative services with other libraries, either after-hours only or full-on collaboration, all the time. Even in the collaborative scenario, transcripts (if you opt-in to them) are still secure. The recipient of a transfer can, of course, see the prior history of that chat. But outside of that special case, librarians can only see transcripts of the queues they're assigned to, and only the owner of a queue can delete a transcript. And a reminder: this all applies equally to IMs. LibraryH3lp is more than just a pretty widget. Lastly, I want to note that, if by accident of history you do have multiple top-level admin accounts that you would like to consolidate into one domain, as described above, just let us know. We can make it happen.

It's not always immediately clear to new users why we make the distinction between "admin" and "user" accounts on the LibraryH3lp system. The short answer is that, with regard to issues of security and patron privacy, we need to be able to answer th…

Transfers without Transcript Storage

Not quite a month ago, we released transfers and transcripts simultaneously. Transfers let your librarians send a chat or an IM (from a gateway) to another librarian or to another queue on your system. This gives patrons another way to become connected to the librarian best able to answer their question. Originally, admins had to opt into storage of transcripts on libraryh3p.com in order for transfers to work. This is no longer required. Now, transfers are enabled even when transcripts are not being stored. These sessions are only kept in temporary memory for the duration of the actual chat. Storing the session this way means that librarians receiving transfers can read the prior text of the chat, so that patrons do not have to repeat themselves. But once that chat is over, the transcript is *poof* gone. Of course, if you've enabled transcripts for any of your queues, things will continue to work as usual, and you can always delete individual transcripts. In the future, we will be adding more features to the admin interface to give you even more control over the management of your transcripts.

Not quite a month ago, we released transfers and transcripts simultaneously. Transfers let your librarians send a chat or an IM (from a gateway) to another librarian or to another queue on your system. This gives patrons another way to become conne…

E-Mail Transcripts

Both patrons and librarians now have the ability to e-mail chat transcripts to any e-mail address they specify. For the patrons, there is a new "mail" icon right inside the widget. For librarians, there is a link in the web interface. Operators can follow the link at the top of any chat or IM and sign into libraryh3lp.com with their operator username and password. From there, they can e-mail a transcript. This is the same web page they will use to perform other tasks, such as transfer the patron to another librarian or queue. In both cases, the transcript is sent immediately, so this is probably best done at the end of a chat. In the patrons' widget, you might also notice we've replaced the "turn sound on/off" text control with a small image. Some of the embedded widgets in production were pretty narrow, and the text versions of the user options ("turn sound on," "pop out," and now "e-mail transcript") were long enough that we needed to find a way to save space since the text was starting to wrap in the narrower widgets. Using small icons with tooltips for continued accessibility seemed like a good way to address this.

Both patrons and librarians now have the ability to e-mail chat transcripts to any e-mail address they specify. For the patrons, there is a new "mail" icon right inside the widget. For librarians, there is a link in the web interface. Operators can…

Improved Follow-Me Widget

A couple of weeks ago, we quietly released some improvements to the "follow-me" widget. The main improvement is that the patron no longer has to click on a link inside the chat window in order to initiate the "follow-me" behavior. Now, the follow-me behavior starts immediately upon the patron beginning a chat. Why is this important? It has to do with usability and widget placement. Previously, since the follow-me feature only began after the patron clicked a link from inside the chat session itself, it was easy for the patron to accidentally navigate away from the chat by first following a link on the same web page or by doing a search in any search dialog present on the page. For example, one place I think the follow-me widget may be useful is inside a catalog, an environment with pervasive search boxes and links. Now, with the improvement, if the patron starts a chat and then performs a search while inside that same browser window, the chat will continue to work and stay on top of the catalog results page. The same thing applies to the patron following a link found on the same web page as the chat. Librarians do not have to try to remember to get the patron to first follow a link from the chat. See the <a href="http://nubgames.com/w/images/screencasts/new-follow-me-widget/follow-me.htm">movie</a> for a quick demo. The API has also been enhanced, and you can use the Configurator and Servinator to create follow-me widgets and customize their options.

A couple of weeks ago, we quietly released some improvements to the "follow-me" widget. The main improvement is that the patron no longer has to click on a link inside the chat window in order to initiate the "follow-me" behavior. Now, the follow-m…

New controls for your patrons

We have two new features that are really for patrons. The first is a control to play a sound when the librarian sends a new message. We're hoping this will help usability and accessibility. If you and the patron are off working in separate windows while researching a question, the patron can be alerted when you send a new message. The sound alert is currently off by default, but you, as the creator of your widget, can use The Configurator to turn it on by default if you wish. The sound alert requires the patron's browser to have a Flash plugin; we tried using a wav file instead, but it was not as portable. The chat itself still only requires Javascript and will work just fine without Flash. In web browsers without a Flash player, a message that sound requires Flash displays instead of the "turn sound on" control. The second new feature is a "pop out" option intended for users of embedded widgets. This turns an embedded widget into a standard little pop-up window. This should help patrons who are trying to have detailed reference interactions in small embedded widgets. The pop up window can then be resized as needed, and the chat history can conveniently stay open in its own window if the patron wants to refer to it later. Have fun and let us know of any bugs!

We have two new features that are really for patrons. The first is a control to play a sound when the librarian sends a new message. We're hoping this will help usability and accessibility. If you and the patron are off working in separate windows …

Kang Bro Wiratma