Faculty of Echonimic Sciences, Communication and IT Department of Comuter Science Martin Karlsson David Pedersen Live-Chat Module for Web-based Systems Degree Project of 15 ECTS credit points Bachelor of Computer Science Engineer Date/Term: 2013-01-17 Supervisor: Donald F Ross Examiner: Thijs J Holleboom Serial Number: C2013:02 Karlstads universitet 651 88 Karlstad Tfn 054-700 10 00 Fax 054-700 14 60 [email protected] www.kau.se Live-Chat Module for Web-based Systems Martin Karlsson David Pedersen © 2013 The author(s) and Karlstad University This thesis is submitted in partial fulfilment of the requirements for the Bachelors degree in Computer Science. All material in this thesis which is not my own work has been identified and no material is included for which a degree has previously been conferred. ____________________________ Martin Karlsson ____________________________ David Pedersen Approved, 2013-01-17 ____________________________ Advisor: Donald F. Ross ____________________________ Examiner: Thijs Jan Holleboom Abstract To ensure that a customer is satisfied when they purchase a product, they need to be able to receive assistance if the product does not work correctly or is in any other way unsatisfactory. This is why support is needed. There are many different types of support, but with an ever growing number of people having less time to spare in their every day life, a quick short answer is sometimes preferred. This is why the market for Live-Chat support solutions has grown. The purpose of this thesis project is to develop a functional stand-alone Live-Chat demonstration prototype according to Askås' demands and wishes. The demonstration prototype was developed using the programming language Perl, with additional functionality developed in jQuery, HTML and CSS. The project will be evaluated by its functionality and too which degree it compares to similar solutions. The project was successful in the development of a functional demonstration prototype however further development is needed if it is to be used as a complement to Askås' web-shop solution. Acknowledgements We would like to thank our advisor at Karlstad University, Donald F. Ross, for all the help, guidance and encouragement he has provided throughout this thesis project. We would also like to thank Askås for the opportunity to do this project and we would also like to thank our mentor at Askås, Bjarne Gårdebratt for the invaluable help he has given us during the project. Contents Chapter 1: Introduction ......................................................................................................... 1 1.1: Purpose …..................................................................................................................... 1 1.2 Disposition …................................................................................................................ 2 Chapter 2: Background ......................................................................................................... 3 2.1: Introduction .................................................................................................................. 3 2.2: Support ......................................................................................................................... 4 2.3: Chat .............................................................................................................................. 7 2.4: Perl ............................................................................................................................... 8 2.5: JavaScript ..................................................................................................................... 9 2.6: Cookies …..................................................................................................................... 11 2.7: Database ....................................................................................................................... 12 2.8: Project discussion ......................................................................................................... 13 2.9: Chapter summary ......................................................................................................... 14 Chapter 3: Prototype design and implementation ….......................................................... 15 3.1: Introduction .................................................................................................................. 15 3.2: General description of the project …............................................................................ 16 3.3: Live-Chat and expected response-times ….................................................................. 19 3.4: Reasons behind the choice of software and languages ................................................ 20 3.5: Customer client ............................................................................................................ 23 3.6: Support client ............................................................................................................... 25 3.7: Chat initializer …...........................................................................................................35 3.8: Security ….................................................................................................................... 36 3.9: Scheduled backup of closed cases ................................................................................ 37 3.10: Performance & interval choices ................................................................................. 38 3.11: Chapter summary ....................................................................................................... 40 Chapter 4: Results and evaluation ….................................................................................... 41 4.1: Introduction .................................................................................................................. 41 4.2: Customer client …........................................................................................................ 41 4.3: Support client …........................................................................................................... 43 4.4: Problems and solutions ................................................................................................ 44 4.5: Comparison with a similar solution ............................................................................. 45 4.6: Project evaluation …..................................................................................................... 47 Chapter 5: Conclusion ….....................................….............................................................. 49 5.1 The Project …................................................................................................................. 49 5.2 Project Evaluation …...................................................................................................... 49 5.3 Further Development ….................................................................................................. 50 5.4 Conclusions …................................................................................................................ 52 References: ............................................................................................................................... 53 Appendix A: List of Abbreviations .......................................................................................... 55 Appendix B: Documentation – Live-Chat prototype ............................................................... 56 List of Figures Figure 1.1: System overview ….....................................…....................................................... 1 Figure 2.1: An example of a Live-Chat window ….................................................................. 6 Figure 2.2: Perl HelloWorld ..................................................................................................... 8 Figure 2.3: Perl HelloWorld Running....................................................................................... 8 Figure 2.4: Usage of jQuery in web pages................................................................................ 9 Figure 3.1: Introduction figure ................................................................................................. 16 Figure 3.2: Detailed system overview …......…........................................................................ 18 Figure 3.3: Support status offline …......................................................................................... 23 Figure 3.4: Support status online ….......................................................................................... 23 Figure 3.5: An example of a live-chat as displayed to the customer ........................................ 24 Figure 3.6: An example of an log-file ….................................................................................. 24 Figure 3.7: Customer client – Re-Open Case …....................................................................... 25 Figure 3.8: Customer client – Large number of cases ….......................................................... 25 Figure 3.9: Table - Users ….........................…......................................................................... 26 Figure 3.10: Support client – Failed login ....…........................................................................ 26 Figure 3.11: Support client – Login .........................................................................................