February 2008

A call center application for businesses to handle customers’ requests. Unlike many other call centers, it is fully web-based, application window gets its content directly from the web and all configuration takes place in the web, too. To start using it, user must register on company’s webpage, then OnState people will prepare the account for him/her. To give customers opportunity to contact people with different skills in one’s company, user can create Call, Callback and Chat buttons to one’s webpage. About managing workers, user can add their Skype usernames, add skills and assign them to different workers, then the customers’ calls and chats will be routed to available worker that has the needed skill. On configuration page user (technically the administrator) can see the status of all workers (how long they have been available/busy/out to lunch, how many calls have been handled and who is currently on call) and make reports about that. And of course, administrator can make internal calls to workers. For more information, see http://www.on-state.com

It is our (and most particularly Antoine’s) pleasure to inform the publishers of commercial Extras that your invoices should no longer be sent to Antoine’s professional e-mail address.

As a side note, we have added a small section to the DevZone, to explain some of the aspects of receiving payments for Extras more clearly.

https://developer.skype.com/Docs/Extras/HowToGetPaid

OnState announced Mash-Up with Zimbra and Skype - Unified Messaging for Skype Integrates Email, Voicemail, Call Recordings, & Business Chat with Open-Source Collaboration Platform.

Lets see what Pat Kelly, CEO of OnState has to say:

In recent Skype Journal article, Jim Courtney declares your new product “A Most Interesting Skype Mashup”. You are getting quite a lot of publicity?

Yes, the response to the article has been quite good. Today, the Skype Journal really is the only media outlet focusing on business applications of Skype, so we feel quite fortunate that they picked-up on the release.

Tell us more about this new product. In comparison with current OnState Call Center solution, what new features will be made available via mash-up with Zimbra?

First a little background on OnState and Zimbra. OnState licensed the underlying technology from our partner CrossCheck last year, and we have been using it within our current Call Center offering. We actually debuted this at the eBay Live show. In the Call Center product Zimbra is used to manage call recordings and business chat transcripts for training, quality assurance and compliance purposes. We also utilize Zimbra for workforce management - the scheduling and monitoring of call center agents.

Continue reading "Less Mess With Unified Messaging: OnState Announces Mash-Up with Zimbra and Skype" »

It’s time for another update from the Jira front. To remind you - Jira is our issue tracking system where everybody can report any API or Extras platform related bug/problem/feature request. Below is an overview of the latest known problems and recently fixed cases. There’s many Extras related bug fixes waiting to get live, so wait for my next update.

Known problems:

Public API (SPA Jira project):

• SPA-478 – Open Skype command from system tray should set silent mode to OFF.
• SPA-486 – Possible difference in the DTMF sent by the Skype Dialpad and from the API
• SPA-306 – Security Dialog sometimes not appearing under Vista. The problem is that the application shouldn’t be started with admin privileges since Skype is not run with admin rights either and otherwise there will be a conflict and Skype can not give the permission rights properly. This also goes to the situation when the application is started from the installer since the installation is happening under admin rights. It’s actually up to every developer to make his application Vista friendly and avoid this problem.

Extras (PIF Jira project):

• PIF-795 – Uninstalled extra is shown under My Extras. This is a problem when the Extra is uninstalled from Control Panel.

Recently fixed issues:

Public API (SPA Jira project):

• SPA-421 – CALL command reply inconsistent with Windows client

Extras (PIF Jira project):

• PIF-697 – User receiving “Failed to make a purchase: you were not charged” message whey trying to buy an Extra. This was a payment related bug which is fixed now.

Other issues:

• SPA-482 – Partner feedback form was broken for a while, but is fixed now.
• JSA-37 – Skype4Java cannot connect to libJSA.so (Ubuntu Linux), throws java.lang.UnsatisfiedLinkError. Should be fixed now.

In January there have been certified the following new software products:

YugmaSE

Yugma is a Desktop sharing application that actually works without Skype also, this particular one is Skype Edition. To start using it, user can select one’s Skype contacts and an invitation message with meeting’s ID will be sent to them. The other parties must enter the ID in their Yugma window and then the sharing session can start. Alternatively, they can join session on Yugma webpage but in this case Java must be installed in their machines. Sharing party can select whether to share the whole Desktop or some applications, also change who will share one’s things there. First 15 days sharer can also give remote access to the viewers, later user must upgrade YugmaSE to Premium to continue using this functionality. For more information, see http://www.yugma.com

SkyLYNX

SkyLYNX is a call center application that enables user to set extensions and DTMF tones so the incoming calls can be transferred. If extension is not available, a caller can leave a voice message to the extension or to the operator. Also it keeps log about all incoming/transferred calls and voice messages. Technically SkyLYNX is a very simple application. Actually it is not even installed, just downloadable exe does everything. For more information, see http://www.zipcom.com.tw/products/Product-SkyLYNX-AST.htm

More talented developers out there doing something really interesting Want to know more?

Meet Eion Robb from New Zealand - developer and a brand new Skype beta tester. Eion is writing an open-source cross-platform plugin for Pidgin and Adium (both multi-protocol instant messengers). It allows them to use Skype as another protocol, in C (and a little bit of Objective-C for OS X).

Here’s what came out of my chat with Eion:

Where did you get this idea and why did you start to develop this?

I had tried using the SkyLlian plugin for Trillian a few years back until I switched over to using Linux and OSX for work. Since then, I had been using Skype side-by-side with Pidgin and Adium and checking Google every couple of months to see if someone had written a plugin for either of them. In the end, with some incentive from the Adium community, I jumped in and started coding it myself.

Continue reading "Skype now on multi-protocol instant messengers" »

We have some good news to share with you

Brandon Holland with whom we had an interview this week has released Skype for AppleTV Beta.
You can go and download it from here.

There is no documentation or installation tutorials yet but I think we can give Brandon a little bit time for this.

Excellent work Brandon!