Creating Chat Servers

B

bejay

Disciple
Hey guyz,

Presently i'm leading a project of ERP design n development in the manufacturing concern i'm working for....our HO is in bombay n we are here in bangalore, everyday lost of communication happens between HO n us on phone n thru email, n lot of communication between us,HO and customers....so i was thinking how would it be to create a chat server between us, HO & customers....this means real-time communication,quick response system and reduced lead times,i want this chat service with audio/video conferencing features as well photo sharrin features (just like yahoo) so what i need to know from u guyz is how do we go about it, the present ERP is SQL Server & VB 6.0 based.....what kinda servers we need to invest on?what kinda bandwidth it demands??what about the security it requires??etc etc etc.....teach me like i'm a baby plz....i swear if this project becomes a success we'll profit in millions:D that means a huge beer party to all who helped me here:eek:hyeah:
 
the concept what we are planning to use is something like this....the customer places the order with us, following which to manufacture the end product we procure raw materials from all over india and sometimes imported as well, that being the case the quality and specification of the raw material needs to be precise to deliver quality goods, this means we first obtain a few samples of the raw materials, we test them on our standards n if all is well we approve the quality and ask the supplier to bulk ship the raw materials, while he bulk ships the raw materials we use the samples that he has sent and develop a prototype of the product the customer wants and send it to the customer asking him to approve if the design and functionality of the product is all well, if he says ok we can bulk produce we get the raw materials in bulk n start the mass production, so there is a delay in to and fro communication as well waiting for approvals cause the transportation has its share of lead time, so what we thought was if we can use the technology of video/audio conferencing to our advantage the don't have to send the raw materials for approvals to use nor do we have to send the prototype for approval all can be show on the live webcam, next is the documentation part....my plan is to create a chat room with each order number, in that chat room all parties linked to the order will be listed, we select whom we want to converse with and start the conversation, i want our ERP to create a chat room with the chat room name beign the order number once the order entry is made in to the system. Everybody in the company including the management can have a real time track on the process & status of the order....using yahoo, creating user ID of all the linked parties and in turn talkin about multiple order with multiple parties....nothing less than chaos and for sure we'll lose track of the things...i hope u understand what i'm looking at, my idea is as well to document the entire conversation in that chat room and file it under that order number for future reference n just in case if any golmaals happen.......able to understand what my thought process is???
 
oh really?????i didn't know about that......but let our contract company figure this out first....i just wanna know more and better than them so that they don't fool or cheat us.....guyz plz advice n share ur expertise....keep those posts coming in
 
macromedia (now adobe) breeze i think has exactly waht youre looking for - quickly set up a voice/chat/remote desktop/ whiteboard / audio (phew...) meeting by just passing a link to ur invitees...better check it out for licencing info.

on another note ,at the company im working we have pretty have much the same requirements but on a larger scale- but the difference being my teams building it ourselves using jabber as the server (to handle load and optimize,error handling,etc) , flash and ajax for the clientside (to show the actual client app ) as well as php on the server side for communicating with the database (mysql) .
 
hey dude......well we don't hv such man power resources at our end, i'm the only one o think of all these stuff.....so help me out a bit more on the liscensing info and as well i need the transcripts of each chat session....thats the key for me....
 
wat i meant there by sayin transcripts is all the chat sessions should be recorded so that we can know what exactly happened in the meeting if we missed it....did u get me??
 
chat sessions can be saved in most of the tools that you use for chatting of late. That shouldn't be a problem. Have you tried using MS Netmeeting?

Its quite useful as well.
 
i was just chattin to my coz n he suggested net meeting too but the problem is people in my company are big time computer illiterates....they can't get the excel right....so i want some solutions which would be far more user friendly....i know i can link MS outlook n netmeeting as well enable the telephony services create the bridges aNd start the conference...but they can't use multiple applications at one go...datz y i need a solution that can talk to different applications on one platform....i know such enterprise solutions are available but it would be a lot more for us to invest, our current project can be done at 50% of the cost of such solutions

@bosky101......dude that macromedia breeze was just too much....thx for that great tip man.....but still thinking if it can really support the concept i'm thinking in my second thread...did u get my point in there??The order number should become the chat room & all the linked parties to that order are listed in that room....also that once the order entry is made in the system, the system should create the chat room on the server with the name of the order number and then list it in the chat room list of all the parties who have logged into the system......datz the trick

Thx guyz i'm really beginning to appreciate ur help.....just let me know if there is better way of handling my solution????is my concept, plan thought process right??coz sometimes we tend to think what we've thought is right but their might be much better wayout as well

Also someone was telling about somethink called Bistalk servers (Not even sure if i spelled it right) any views about that??
 
@sharan......thx dude but can u tell me where can i find it for download??Another thing.....u r browsing at 5:40AM early morning:cool2:
 
hi guyz.....we are sitting down today to discuss the development process, i was just trying to picturize the GUI for the chat box.......what do u guyz suggest???i had in mind something similar to our explorer interface....
 
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