We are pleased to announce the launch our Live Help Messenger Hosted service.  The Live Help Hosted service is a completely managed Live Help solution - simply sign-up, add some HTML code to your web pages and then start chatting with your site visitors.

Once you sign-up for your Live Help subscription, your account will be setup and deployed within 24 hours. All accounts include a complimentary 7 day trial period – you can easily cancel your PayPal subscription within the first 7 days if you are not completely satisfied with the service.

	Basic	Standard	Professional	Enterprise
# Operator Accounts	1	2	5	10 *
# Departments	Unlimited	Unlimited	Unlimited	Unlimited
Customize Logo / Settings
Unlimited Live Help Chats
Lifetime Upgrades
Technical Support
Support Multiple Domains
Customize Language Pack
Fully Customize Layout
SSL Support #
Remove Copyright Line / Link
Price US$:	$20/month	$35/month	$75/month	$100/month
*Additional Accounts US$10 #SSL Support Available mid-March 2008

Our Live Help Hosted solution is managed within a state-of-the-art data center located in Fort Worth, Texas and offers 100% network uptime. This allows you to concentrate on running your business rather than managing the infrastructure of a Live Help solution. Our hosted Live Help service is available in several monthly packages shown above.

The Live Help Messenger Desktop v3.0 Beta will be made available later today (Nov. 1)  Initially the beta release will only be available via. email - feel free send us an email (with your customer details) and the release will sent out to you via. email.

The Skype integration callback feature will not be made available until the Beta 2 Refresh in two weeks (depending on feedback and bug reports).  You will however be able to test our VoIP callback feature using a VoIP Server (e.g. Asterisk / FreePBX) and your SIP 2.0 compatible devices.

 We would like to thank all our customers for supporting our Live Help software.

It has been quite awhile since our last company blog post, we do however have some good news to share. The Live Help Messenger Desktop v3.0 Beta release will be made available on November 1st 2007. We do apologise for the delay in the beta release, however we do now have a firm release date available. For those that have been anticipating the beta release we have further information regarding new features below.

The above screenshot illustrates the new account management interface within the Live Help Messenger Desktop application. Operators are sorted by their current status, i.e. Online, Offline, Be Right Back and Away. New features include the ability to search operator details and allow Full Administrators to change another operator’s status mode.

Live Help Messenger Desktop 3.0 Beta Features

A summary of the new features for the upcoming Live Help Messenger v3.0 Beta release is detailed below. The v3.0 is a major step forward in our Live Help Messenger road map and will also allow us to extend the reporting / statistical features within further releases beyond v3.0.

The following list details the major new features within the Live Help Messenger Desktop v3.0 Beta.  These features are not quite the full feature list that we had planned for the 3.0 release and several major features have been moved to following releases.

	New Improved Interface
	Tabbed Chat Windows
	Spell Checking
	Telephone Callback
	SIP 2.0 Compliant VoIP Hardware Support
	Skype Integration
	RSS Support
	Improved Popup Alerts
	Operator Inline Image Support
	Improved Popup Alerts
	Search Features (Accounts & Site Visitors)
	Google™ Analytics Campaign Detection
	Improved Windows Vista™ Support

Requirements: Windows XP or Windows Vista. Microsoft .NET Framework 3.0 (included within Windows Vista) will be required on Windows XP machines. The beta release will only be made available to existing customers.  Earlier releases of Windows such as Windows 98 and 2000 will not be supported.

We have also been working on our first localisation project with Live Help. We are currently localising our Live Help product web site into Japanese – followed by Japanese Live Help language pack files and release. Feel free to browse the web site at http://livehelp.stardevelop.jp Please note: Japanese translation is still in progress so please excuse any minor errors.

The next major release of the Live Help Messenger Desktop application (version 3.0) is approaching beta release.  The interface of the desktop application has been re-designed to incorporate new features such as a VoIP / Skype call back service, RSS 2.0 feeds for subscribing to third party support / ticketing feeds.

Initially the VoIP call back feature will only support SIP 2.0-compatible devices, testing has also been completed using Asterisk (FreePBX) SIP extensions.  Additionally, we will be supporting Skype for those customers that have not yet implemented VoIP / SIP 2.0-compatible hardware within their business.  The user interface for the VoIP call back feature is shown below and easily allows for click-to-dial:

Feel free to comment and provide us with feedback regarding these features.  We value and appreciate feedback from our customers when developing new releases.  Thank you for reading!

The next release of the Live Help Messenger desktop application (version 3.0) is currently still under development – sorry we don’t have any release dates available yet. In addition to new features (we will be discussing these within future blog posts), we have been improving the overall user experience. This upcoming release will feature a new interface and specifically targets Windows Vista and Windows XP machines. Below are some development screenshots of the new interface.

The new popup alert allows you to view visitor details and accept chat requests without opening the Live Help window.

We have also improved the user experience between the main Live Help window and the Currently Browsing Visitor window, as shown above the site visitor details are displayed within a single window. This improves the overall experience by reducing the need to switch windows. You will also notice the support for the new Windows Vista Aero ‘glass’ effects.