This was a very loaded chapter. It examined at just one aspect of the Openfire server which isn't even implemented as a core feature, but which is invaluable if you wish to use Openfire to interface with your online users. It could be used for a casual, brief session to help a user find your store, or for something more complex and critical such as running a comprehensive online support business. Adding this online chat facility is a breeze thanks to the Fastpath plugin. To give your users a nice web-based interface, the Openfire project also bundles the web chat application, which you can download and install on your application servers.

In this chapter, we've looked at installing and configuring these plugins and using them to create an online helpdesk with different queues to manage different products. We have also looked at some useful functions for both clients and agents, such as transcripts, canned responses, offline email forms, and so on, and configured them before adding...