We decided to add “live chat/support” functionality to our http://www.ReviewBasics.com offering and identified the following requirements:

• Ability to push/initiate chat
• Reasonably priced for multiple operators
• Easy to use
  • Canned messages, URLs
  • Customization (look-and-feel, data captured, etc)
• “desktop” functionality

Without doing a lot of research we identified the following 3 services:

• http://www.liveperson.com
• Probably the most well known and established
• Do not publish prices, need to contact their “live chat” representative
• Price for their Live Person Pro (chat-only) solution is $99/month/1 operator.
• They offer a more complete offering that manages support tickets, emails, etc
• Why we didn’t choose: high price
• http://www.websitealive.com
  • Version comparison: http://www.websitealive.com/matrix.asp
  • Offer a free account with limited options
  • $29.95/month for 2 concurrent operators. Each additional is $9.95/mo
  • Higher priced packages require setup feeds ($99.95-$149.95)
  • Reasonable price for a lot of functionality
  • Why we didn’t choose: somewhat higher price
• http://www.helponclick.com – our choice
  • Version comparison: http://www.helponclick.com/overview.php
  • Offer free account and 10 day trial
  • Unlimited number of operators for $39/month.
  • One-time charge of $59 for “system tray application” which makes it easier to track messages/chats
  • Give 2 months free if pay for the whole year

We signed up for HelpOnClick and are satisfied with features, level of customization and desktop extension.

We will provide more feedback as we continue to use this service

~Mike

Screenshots are an important part of documenting bugs and feature requests. Visual Studio 2005 out-of-the box functionality requires you to take a screenshot, save it and then add to a work item.

Here is a better way: jmanning posted an Add-In that makes this a lot easier. You can find source files here.

This Visual Studio Add-in allows “pasting” items (images, text, files) from the clipboard as attachments to Team Foundation work items.

Here are instructions and compiled add-in:

• Download PasteIntoWorkItem.zip
• Unzip into %My Documents%/Visual Studio 2005/AddIns
• Now when you open Visual Studio 2005 you should see “PasteIntoWorkItem” menu item under Tools

• Once you choose that menu item, you will see a window that allows you to provide comments
• Add-In can handle the following clipboard content
• One or more files 
• Image, PrintScreen, etc 
• Text

A few limitations:

• Text is pasted without formatting as “txt” file
• Mixed text and image are not supported — in case that you want to copy from Microsoft Word document that contains both text and images

A few other items:

• You can customize Visual Studio to have a keyboard shortcut for PasteIntoWorkItem
• There are a number of screen capture tools, but the following workflow works for me in most cases:
  • PrtScn or Alt+PrtScn
  • If I only need a part of the screen capture: open MSPaint (it is either “pinned” to my Start Menu or sits in Quick Launch) and copy only the part you need 
  • PasteIntoWorkItem

~Mike

Everyday we work with a number of interesting projects, such as integration of Flash/ActionScript and .Net, Visual Studio Add-Ins, Microsoft Office integration, advanced ASP.NET 2.0 implementations, Visuals Studio Team System implementations, to name a few. All the new tricks we learn will be posted here.

~SharpStyle Development Team