Super cool new SMS gateway: Twilio

<p><span style="font-weight: bold;">[edited 10/5/2010 to add: People! We're glad you like the Twilio gateway, but do not rush off and create your own Twilio account. In order for it to work with libraryh3lp as a gateway, we (as in the libraryh3lp people) have to acquire the phone number for you. Full instructions below.]</span><br /><br />We're excited to announce our newest SMS gateway. This one is backed by <a href="http://twilio.com/">Twilio</a> and by all indications is extremely robust. It features:<div><ul><li>A phone number for your patrons to text.</li><li>Nearly instant message delivery. No polling interval.</li><li>Automatic notification to the patron when the library is offline.</li><li>Offline messages are delivered the next time your queue comes online.</li><li>Not free, but very affordable.</li><li>And of course, it integrates into LibraryH3lp like all our other gateways. Text messages can be transferred to other librarians, transcripts stored, statistics gathered, etc...</li></ul><div><b>Specifics</b>:</div><div><ul><li>Cost is $1/month per phone number.</li><li>Messages are $0.03 each. 1,000 messages is $30.00</li><li>This is at-cost and is exactly what Twilio charges; there is no LibraryH3lp markup.</li><li>Currently, only US phone numbers are available via Twilio for SMS. However, international text messages can be sent and received.</li><li>Voice phone calls can be redirected to your regular library phone number.</li></ul><div>To be clear, each message (not conversation) is $0.03. So, the following is $0.06:</div><div><br /></div><div>Patron: anyone there?</div><div>Librarian: Yes</div><div><br /></div><div><b>If you want a Twilio SMS gateway</b>, please <a href="mailto:nubgames@gmail.com">write to Eric</a>, and specify:</div><span class="Apple-tab-span" style="white-space: pre;"><ol><li><span class="Apple-style-span" style="white-space: normal;"> the queue you want it installed on,</span></li><li><span class="Apple-style-span" style="white-space: normal;"> your top-level admin name, </span></li><li><span class="Apple-style-span" style="white-space: normal;">your desired area code for the phone number, and</span></li><li><span class="Apple-style-span" style="white-space: normal;"> the phone number you want voice calls to go to.</span></li></ol><div><span class="Apple-style-span" style="white-space: normal;">We will acquire your Twilio phone number. We cannot currently make the gateway work with a Twilio number you acquire on your own.</span></div><div><span class="Apple-style-span" style="white-space: normal;"><br /></span></div><div><span class="Apple-style-span" style="white-space: normal;">If you are currently a Google Voice SMS gateway user, and you want to have your Google Voice SMS's forwarded to Twilio, let Eric know and he can set that up as well. (Please specify your GVoice SMS gateway's queue.) This way, your patrons keep texting you at the same number, but their messages will come through instantly.</span></div><div><span class="Apple-style-span" style="white-space: normal;"><br /></span></div><div><span class="Apple-style-span" style="white-space: normal;"><b>How do I pay for this?<br /><br /><span style="font-weight: bold;"><span style="font-weight: bold;"><br /></span></span></b>Please do not pay Twilio directly! </span></div><div><span class="Apple-style-span" style="white-space: normal;"><br /></span></div><div><span class="Apple-style-span" style="white-space: normal;"><b>Use <a href="https://libraryh3lp.com/static/twilio-payment.html">this payment page</a>.</b></span></div><div><span class="Apple-style-span" style="white-space: normal;"><br /></span></div></span></div><div>Nothing expires at the end of a year; it's really just a lump of money used to fund both the phone number and the messages. </div><div><span class="Apple-tab-span" style="white-space: pre;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="white-space: normal;"><br /></span></span></div><div><span class="Apple-tab-span" style="white-space: pre;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="white-space: normal;">If you want some other amount, let us know and we can set up a payment page for it. You can purchase any arbitrary amount of messages. </span></span></div><div><span class="Apple-tab-span" style="white-space: pre;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="white-space: normal;"><br /></span></span></div><div><b>What sets this one apart from our other two SMS gateways?</b> </div><div><br /></div><div>Unlike the Google Voice SMS gateway, Twilio has public APIs. It has been created specifically so that developers like Eric can use it within their own applications. This means it will be much more stable and have much faster message delivery than the Google Voice SMS gateway. </div><div><br /></div><div>And unlike our Android phone SMS gateway, libraries do not need to purchase a phone and keep it connected to reliable network and power. </div><div><br /></div><div><b>Why do we keep changing SMS solutions?</b></div><div><br /></div></div><div>To be clear, <b>neither of the other two SMS gateways are going away</b>. </div><div><br /></div><div>We want our SMS gateways to be affordable and to allow patrons to text a phone number. When we started, the Android gateway was the only way we could come up with to accomplish that. Developer solutions were quite expensive. Then, when Google Voice came along, we adopted that very quickly and have implemented that gateway as best we can, but since there is no public API, it's fragile when Google makes changes (we knew this going into it and were very open about this fact).</div><div><br /></div><div>Now, Twilio is here and is a big leap forward. It is a great fit with LibraryH3lp. We hope you'll enjoy it!</div><div><br /></div><div>(Twilio is also available for My Customer Cloud users.)</div><div><br /></div><div>[original message edited 9/15 to clarify sign-up info and to add payment info]<br />[edited again 7/12/2011 to fix payment links]</div><div><br /></div></p>

[edited 10/5/2010 to add: People! We're glad you like the Twilio gateway, but do not rush off and create your own Twilio account. In order for it to work with libraryh3lp as a gateway, we (as in the libraryh3lp people) have to acquire the phone nu…

Introducing My Customer Cloud

<p><a href="http://mycustomercloud.com/">My Customer Cloud</a> is another new product in the LibraryH3lp family. Because LibraryH3lp has gotten so popular over the last few years, I regularly get signups even from outside of the library/academic community. In order to better serve the non-library users, I've expanded the company and taken on a new programming partner. We've created this additional product with a new usage-based pricing model in order to best accommodate everyone.<div><br /></div><div>Rather than paying an annual subscription fee based on FTE or service population, My Customer Cloud users can pay <i>per-chat</i>, only for what they use, and still have access to all the features and integrations that LibraryH3lp users have come to expect.</div><div><br /></div><div>But it's not just for non-libraries. The annual LibraryH3lp subscription model exists primarily because of stodgy, antiquated library purchasing policies. (Sorry, but you know it's true.) Libraries that can be a little more flexible in their spending now have the opportunity to pay less by choosing My Customer Cloud. Low chat volume libraries may wind up paying even less using My Customer Cloud, while busier services will probably find it cheaper to go with LibraryH3lp.</div><div><br /></div><div>So, please, <a href="http://mycustomercloud.com/">check it out</a>.</div><div><br /></div></p>

My Customer Cloud is another new product in the LibraryH3lp family. Because LibraryH3lp has gotten so popular over the last few years, I regularly get signups even from outside of the library/academic community. In order to better serve the non-lib…

Widgets for Individuals vs. Queues: A Change

<p>Since LibraryH3lp started, we've handled widget chats differently based on whether they were for an <b>individual librarian</b> or for a <b>queue</b>. Specifically, chats for queues had a number of special features: <div><ol><li>they could be transferred; </li><li>files could be shared between librarians and patrons;</li><li>the patron's IP address and referring URL displayed to librarians in the webchat client;</li><li>queues could have <a href="http://libraryh3lp.com/docs/profile-pages.html">profile pages</a> viewable via the webchat client; and</li><li>transcripts could be stored in the admin site, with statistical reports also available.</li></ol>Chats for widgets pointing to individual librarians lacked all of those features.</div><div><br /></div><div>This often led admins designing chat services to create a queue for each of their librarians, with exactly one librarian assigned to each queue. This way, chats targeted to those librarians would have all the extra flexibility associated with queues.</div><div><br /></div><div>This practice has become especially prevalent in <a href="http://libraryh3lp.com/docs/service-rollover.html">service rollover models</a>, where chats are routed to a subject expert, if available, but will fall over to a general reference service if the expert is not available. With their very own queue, the subject expert could transfer their patron to another librarian or to another queue as needed.</div><div><br /></div><div>That workaround was fine, but it created extra work for the local admin, and it increased the overall confusion level.</div><div><br /></div><div>Today, we rolled out a series of fundamental behind-the-scenes changes that blur the line between individuals and queues where widget chats are concerned. Now, widget chats for individuals:</div><div><ol><li>can be transferred;</li><li>will display patron's IP and referring URL in the webchat client; and</li><li>allow file sharing between patrons and librarians.</li></ol></div><div>There is still more work to do to further integrate this change into the admin site. Profile pages, transcript storage and statistics for individual widgets will become available in a later update. </div><div><br /></div><div><b>A very important point:</b> this change is only for chats using <b>widgets</b>. Direct IMs between librarians via the buddy list remain and will continue to remain private. They cannot be logged or transferred. Individuals should be buddied as user@libraryh3lp.com.</div><div><div><br /></div><div>We'll be updating the docs to reflect this change. In the meantime, the preferred syntax for creating <b>widgets </b>for individuals AND queues is:</div><div><br /></div><div>http://libraryh3lp.com/chat/whatever@chat.libraryh3lp.com</div><div><br /></div><div>The old widget syntax for individuals (http://libraryh3lp.com/chat/user@libraryh3lp.com) will continue to work.</div><div><br /></div><div>We know it can be confusing for our existing users when we change fundamental concepts, but LibraryH3lp continues to be an evolving system undergoing improvements. This change should make life easier overall, especially for new users. We do not think that the change will break any existing code, and we hope that most librarians will welcome the new functionality.</div></div></p>

Since LibraryH3lp started, we've handled widget chats differently based on whether they were for an individual librarian or for a queue. Specifically, chats for queues had a number of special features: they could be transferred; files could be share…

Migration Round-Up

<p>Whew. The migration really went pretty well. Widget chats on queues were working by 9am Saturday. SMS, Google Talk, and Twitter gateways followed a bit later on Saturday. The remaining IM gateways came back Sunday morning. We believe that all of the pieces of the system are available. Load looks very good!<div><br /></div><div>There is one thing about gateways you may need to know about: for now, you can only have one gateway on any given protocol on any single queue. Example: on one queue, you can have one AIM gateway, one Yahoo! gateway, one Meebo Me gateway, etc... You cannot have two AIM gateways on one queue currently. If you need to have more than one gateway on a given protocol, create additional queues, add your extra gateways, and assign the desired librarians. Or just chill out for two days while Eric fixes it. </div><div><br /></div><div>This happened because when we migrated to the EC2, we found that our previous family of libpurple gateways were consuming far too many resources because of a bug involving updated versions of two core OS libraries. So, we switched our libpurple family gateways over to use the <a href="http://spectrum.im/">Spectrum XMPP transport</a>, which runs far more efficiently. This just needs a bit more tweaking so that it will support multiple gateways of the same protocol per queue.</div><div><br /></div><div>Other than that, we believe things are in good shape. Please let us know if you find bugs. We'll continue to use the <a href="http://twitter.com/libraryh3lp">Twitter feed</a> to communicate issues as the week begins.</div></p>

Whew. The migration really went pretty well. Widget chats on queues were working by 9am Saturday. SMS, Google Talk, and Twitter gateways followed a bit later on Saturday. The remaining IM gateways came back Sunday morning. We believe that all of…

Migration to new host Saturday morning, Feb 13

<p>Heads-up.<div><br /></div><div>In an effort to increase system stability, we will be moving LibraryH3lp to a <a href="http://aws.amazon.com/ec2/">new host</a> this coming Saturday morning, Feb 13, 2010. Saturday mornings (we're in the Eastern time zone) are <b>very </b>low-use.</div><div><br /></div><div>While we can't provide an exact time frame, we expect the server to be completely unavailable for up to 1 or 2 hours as we migrate data. </div><div><br /></div><div>We have already completed the work with the DNS, which means that the step with the most potential for causing lengthy server unavailability is done. </div><div><br /></div><div>As previously discussed on our <a href="http://groups.google.com/group/libraryh3lp">support group</a>, in order to prevent embedded LibraryH3lp content from slowing down loading of your web pages in times of server outages, you can move the javascript to the very end of your web page. Ideally, this is right before the close body tag of your document. All the details, and a way to test your code, are <a href="http://libraryh3lp.com/docs/test-blackhole.html">here, in the docs</a>.</div><div><br /></div><div>Now, why are we moving? We've recently experienced a few failures completely beyond our control, coupled with some pretty poor communication from our hosting service. We can accept that a hardware failure can happen at any time, on any system. But we expect this kind of failure to be... rare. No one has made anything quite like LibraryH3lp before; we work hard to make this thing as stable as possible, even while we're building it and creating new features. It's no fun to put so much work into this system and get let down by the infrastructure that we (you) are paying for.</div><div><div><br /></div><div>As always, we'll post system status updates as we go on our <a href="http://twitter.com/libraryh3lp">Twitter feed</a>. If you want to get notices of activity on the Twitter feed over email, SMS, or some other format, check out <a href="http://notify.me/">notify.me</a>.</div><div><br /></div></div><div>We do apologize for the inconvenience. We'll do everything we can to make this migration as quick and painless as possible.</div></p>

Heads-up.In an effort to increase system stability, we will be moving LibraryH3lp to a new host this coming Saturday morning, Feb 13, 2010. Saturday mornings (we're in the Eastern time zone) are very low-use.While we can't provide an exact time fram…

New Gateways: Twitter and Google Talk via Google Apps

<p><div>Two new gateways! Well, one new and one upgraded.</div><ul><li>Twitter. Every once in awhile, someone asks about Twitter integration. We tried this before with a gateway that worked via direct messages, but it proved too cumbersome in practice as direct messages require reciprocal following. The new one released today works on <b>mentions </b>(@username messages). The setup is like any other LibraryH3lp gateway.<br /><br />Your librarians can identify these messages when they arrive because they'll start with @username. Librarians can simply reply to these; they do not need to start the message with @ since the gateway will take care of this. The next version of the librarian's webchat client will provide a character countdown for twitter messages.</li></ul><ul><li>Second, Google Apps. Google Talk for Google Apps users works with our standard Google Talk gateway now. For your username, use your <b>full</b> address. Example: my.name@myschool.edu. The gateway will take care of the rest.</li></ul><div><div><div>All code available on <a href="http://github.com/esessoms">github</a>.</div><div><br /></div><div>Enjoy!</div><div><br /></div></div></div></p>

Two new gateways! Well, one new and one upgraded.Twitter. Every once in awhile, someone asks about Twitter integration. We tried this before with a gateway that worked via direct messages, but it proved too cumbersome in practice as direct message…

Improved Mobile Widget

<p><div style="text-align: center;"><br /></div><div style="text-align: center;"><br /></div>Today we pushed out a mobile-specific version of our widget. Our default widget has worked with iPhone/iPod touch since the beginning, but the new one has been designed specifically for mobile devices. We've tested it heavily in the default browser on our Android phone.<div><br /></div><div><div style="text-align: center;"><img alt="" border="0" id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5427877050405546562" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEglGrSpdSjjBbA27xIBY18Sgw5f3UP09K4W4fRJi-s3ddpqG6vLsHnVwJSCUfPAwMZCr9WwR5vdsdxC3b7XSTeuy_pXXfXaPCktu7BFlmHY0GxBOWJXtPKxhlG1VL4J5ZvjCY7p0mPHgfY/s320/mobile-ss.png" style="display:block; margin:0px auto 10px; text-align:center;cursor:pointer; cursor:hand;width: 256px; height: 320px;" /></div><div><br /></div><div>The new, mobile-specific widget is prefaced with <b>m.</b>, like this:</div><div><br /></div><div>http://m.libraryh3lp.com/chat/queue@chat.libraryh3lp.com</div><div><br /></div><div>As with regular LibraryH3lp widgets, you can deck out the appearance of your mobile widget nearly any way you'd like. The easiest thing will be to use the Widget Designer in the admin site to create a custom skin using your preferred colors, title, etc... Then, after you generate the code, look for the raw widget URL (as above) and place the m. at the beginning. Of course, you can also customize your widget by hand if you prefer, as described in the Widget Customization section in the <a href="http://libraryh3lp.com/docs/">docs</a> (the default mobile CSS is <a href="http://libraryh3lp.com/css/mobile.css">here</a>).</div><div><br /></div><div>Mobile technologies offer more flexibility for people on the go. Busy people like your patrons probably already IM you or text you from their phones; our IM and SMS gateways make answering those questions easier. Now, they can chat you more easily from your mobile website. And if you're so inclined, you can even staff your service from your phone now that librarians can use any XMPP client at all. (Please don't LibraryH3lp and drive.) Have fun!</div></div></p>

Today we pushed out a mobile-specific version of our widget. Our default widget has worked with iPhone/iPod touch since the beginning, but the new one has been designed specifically for mobile devices. We've tested it heavily in the default browser…

Android SMS Gateway Updated

<p>We just pushed a new version of our Android SMS Gateway out to the Android Market.<br /><br />The gateway has been reworked to perform better under various network conditions. It also has a great deal of delivery verification code to ensure that messages get to their recipients.<br /><br />The user interface has also been changed to provide better feedback about the status of the gateway.<br /><br />If you're currently using this application, your phone should let you know that an update is available. <b>You will need to reconfigure your gateway on the LibraryH3lp admin site: delete your old gateway and create a new one. </b>We plan to leave the old gateway running for about a week, and we will email all current users to make sure they're aware of the change.<br /><br /><div>Details for getting it up and running are in our Google Docs Presentation:</div><div><br /><iframe src="http://docs.google.com/present/embed?id=ddgrrvb8_167ckjscghf&interval=5" frameborder="0" width="410" height="342"></iframe></div><div><br /></div><div>If you prefer text instructions, here is a brief outline (the presentation is more complete):</div><div><ul><li>Search the Android Market for <b>My Customer Cloud </b>and install the application on your phone.</li><li>Start the My Customer Cloud SMS Gateway app on the phone and press the MENU button. The MENU button appearance may vary depending on the phone, but it not the same as the HOME button.</li><li>Select Libraryh3lp, Refchatter, or My Customer Cloud, depending on which system you're using.</li><li>Pick <b>Settings</b>.</li><li>Provide the name of the queue you will use for this gateway in the Admin site.</li><li>Click the <b>green checkmark</b> to have the app start automatically when the phone boots.</li><li>Click the phone's <b>back button</b> to return to the main LibraryH3lp SMS Gateway app screen.</li><li>Press the MENU button and select <b>Password</b>.</li><li>The password is unique to your phone and cannot be changed. Any 0's are zero's.</li><li>Go to the LibraryH3lp Admin site and navigate to your chosen queue. </li><li>Add a new Android SMS gateway and give it the password from the phone. You will not be able to change the username in the gateway. That is normal.</li><li>On your phone, return to the main LibraryH3lp SMS Gateway app screen and press <b>Start</b>.</li><li>When the app indicates it is <b>running</b>, you can send your first test SMS message to the phone.</li></ul><div>Please let us know of questions! Current users, let us know if you can't make the change in a week's time.</div></div></p>

We just pushed a new version of our Android SMS Gateway out to the Android Market.The gateway has been reworked to perform better under various network conditions. It also has a great deal of delivery verification code to ensure that messages get to…

ALL XMPP/Jabber clients now suitable: core routing system upgraded

<p>This morning we released an upgraded version of the routing system. This change means that now, there is a even more flexibility in client choice for staffing LibraryH3lp queues. In fact, you can use any XMPP (Jabber) client that will connect to LibraryH3lp, which should be all of them. <div><br /></div><div>If you've been waiting to upgrade Pidgin, try the new Adium beta, or use the Meebo.com website, it's fine to go ahead now.<div><div><div><br /></div><div>For the most part, this change is transparent and simply makes the routing system more robust. Previously, we relied on librarians' Jabber clients sending "gone" to terminate chats. This sometimes caused problems with patrons getting "stuck" talking to a librarian who wasn't there anymore, if that librarian had been using an unsupported client. This is no longer the case. You can <a href="http://libraryh3lp.com/docs/routing-and-gone.html">read all the technical details in our docs</a> if desired.<br /></div><div><br /></div><div><div><div>One change that staff need to be aware of involves <b>Away </b>and <b>Do Not Disturb (Busy)</b> statuses. These statuses can be very helpful in the case of a librarian who already has all the chats they can handle, or who is trying to wrap up their shift without taking on any new chats. Prior to today's change, both statuses behaved the same way, as described below for DND/Busy. Now:</div><div><ul><li><b>Do Not Disturb (Busy)</b> status allows a librarian to continue working with any active chats from queues. They will not receive new chats.<br /></li><li><b>Away</b> status re-routes active chats from queues to other librarians with Available status on the queue. </li></ul></div></div><div>Think of it this way: use Away if you are going away from your desk to go to lunch, take a break, etc... Use Do Not Disturb/Busy if you are busy with your current chats and don't want to receive any new ones.</div></div></div></div></div></p>

This morning we released an upgraded version of the routing system. This change means that now, there is a even more flexibility in client choice for staffing LibraryH3lp queues. In fact, you can use any XMPP (Jabber) client that will connect to Li…