Blog Posts

The Winter Release 2012 further extends and improves the Platform APIs that allow developers to build custom chat and monitoring applications. This update includes the following additional functionality:

• JavaScript Chat API Enhancements:
  • Account-to-Account Transfer:  Added support for Account-to-Account Transfer. This feature enables an agent to seamlessly transfer interactions between separate LivePerson accounts. For more information refer to Account-to-Account Transfer.
  • Server Domain Specification:  A developer no longer has to specify the server domain. It is sufficient to provide the LivePerson account number and the server domain will be obtained automatically.
  • Custom Variables:  Set custom variables as part of the chat request so that these variables can be used in Operator alerts. For more information, refer to the requestchat method.
    
    
• Plug-In Approval Status:  An improved approval process where, LivePerson will send email notifications to developers when plug-ins are waiting for approval and when the plug-in is approved.
  
  
• Available Agents:  Added a new resource to the Agent API (REST) called Available Agents. This resource returns all agents which are not disabled in the system for the account provided in the request. The agents returned include both online and offline agents, but not agents that were disabled (for any reason). For more information refer to Agent Availability.
  
  
• Remove Provisioning Limitations from Plug-Ins:  Rule-based plug-in application can now install any condition and action regardless of the account type (i.e., Small Business or Midsize Business). Rule-based applications can now be made available to all LivePerson customers.
  
  
• Add a Real Time Session ID to all APIs and Macros:  Add a macro that exposes the session identifier so that both the agent’s side (through Operator alerts) and client’s side can refer to the same session.
  
  
• Agent Survey in Agent API (REST): Allow developers to support an Agent survey when using the Agent API (REST). The Agent survey provides information about the success and importance of the chat session. For more information, refer to the Agent Survey.
  
  
• Moving Visits between Servers: The LivePerson service may move a visit between different servers during the visit’s life time. This is done in order to share the load between various servers. For more information, refer to Visit API (REST) Reference.

In this post I'd like to share an example I built that shows how to make use of a new feature of the Liveperson tag called Set Page (or lpSetPage).

What Set Page does is allow you as a developer to mimic a new page event while staying on the same page.

A good use case for this feature is a dynamic page that uses AJAX to display different steps of a form without refreshing the page. Conceptually, every step can be considered a different and new page but technically the is no change to the URL and there is no full postback happening.

For this kind of scenario, Set Page can be very useful because it will basically instruct the server that a new page load has happened.

Here's an example of how to  call the Set Page function using the following syntax:

var params = {
          "title": "shopping area overlay",                              
          "newDbs": [{
               "name": "chat-NewSales",
               "pid": "chat-NewSales",
               "afterStartPage": "true",
               "ovr": "lpMTagConfig.db1"}],
                    "udes": "PV!CartValue=120"};

lpMTag.lpSetPage(params);

lpSetPage can be called without any parameters as well.

The (optional) variables lpSetPage accepts are as follows:

newDbs : An array of button objects.

title : The title of the new page.

referrer: The referrer to this page (probably not going to be used very often)

pageUrl: The page URL (probably not going to be used very often)
udes: a concatenated string of variables

for the "udes" variable you pass a string that for each variable has 3 parts:

1. The scope, PV = Page Variable, SV = Session Variable, VV = Visitor Variable followed by "!".
2. The name of the variable followed by "=".
3. The value.

One of the great advantages of the feature is that now its very easy to add dynamic buttons to pages dynamically effectively after the first time the page loads.

I've created a small code sample (attached) that demonstrates this idea:

Step 1: The home page with the button to load the overlay

Step 2: The overlay showing and lpSetPage been called

What this example does is load a page with a simple (not LP) button that when clicked will load an overlay html file using AJAX and display that on top of the normal page.

The overlay contains a div for a LP dynamic button. Only when the overlay is loaded, the page will call lpSetPage instructing the server that a new page has been loaded. At this point the button impression will be evaluated and the appropriate button will be sent down to the client.

What this example shows is how simple it is now to load a button at certain points of the page lifetime without resorting to sophisticated (and often brittle) coding or any additional plugins, etc.

In my opinion this is a great addition to the fuctionality supplied by LP to the customer's website, making it even easier to build great user interactions.

VeriShow and LivePerson have been working together to create great customer experiences and turn up the volume on high-quality online service and sales. At the LivePerson Aspire event, we’ll be talking about how our two companies will build on the synergies between us to take multimedia online sales and support to the next level.

We’re happy to introduce two new features to VeriShow for LivePerson.

The first is video communication capability, which knocks down the barriers between a sales or service agent and a VIP customer. With the ability to escalate a session to one-way broadcasting or if desired, a two-way video or audio conversation, our joint customers can now share, annotate and communicate via an audio / video session. Here’s why that matters:

The second feature we’re introducing this week will deliver co-browsing capabilities, so that our users can guide their prospects and customers through product catalogues, user guides and other complex material vital to the sales and service processes.

We’re adding these features, which are also based on Liveperson’s public API, to the already valuable real-time content sharing VeriShow for LivePerson users have at their fingertips. Want to learn more about these new features? Stop by and see us at Aspire 2011.

Best,

Yuval Moed, CEO, VeriShow

For a while now, we've been thinking of the best manner to allow our Developer Community to interact, share and experience the vast amount of content we currently hold on different social avenues.

As many communities, we wanted to provide a wholesome experience without overloading our pages.

We've decided to adapt Wibiya's Web Tool Bar (located at the bottom of each page) which provides a wide range of social and media rich options.

Clicking on any of the items on the right hand side, will open a cool widget allowing you to browse, share, Like, Follow, Subscribe and comment on any of our different channels.

On the left, you can find the most common sharing alternatives available today as well as a quick and easy way to look for content within the community.

We encourage you all to keep in touch with with our different social avenues - Twitter, Facebook & YouTube and of course use them to interact with us.

Best,

Ariel

Last week, LivePerson hosted an event about Real Time Analytics and Big data.

Our main speaker at the event was Lars Goerge - a solution architect @ Cloudera and a true guru.

Pizzas, Beers, 160 big data junkies and the Israeli summer made this event the hottest place to learn and to meet big data entrepreneurs, developers, CTOs, strategy analysts and more.

For those who have missed, or want to refresh on Lars's presnetation - we've uploaded the full presentation

Presentation slides: Realtime Analytics with Hadoop and HBase

Following Lars, Haggai Shachar - Director, Data Services presented on Real Time Analytics and Big Data - the blog post below summarizes his speech at the event.

Big data is here and it’s big. Real Time just makes it faster.

Many companies and technology providers are outlooking at the new possibilities that this tremendously growing industry is enabling. The new world requires agility, fast response to changes and ability to take educated yet automated decisions.

The world wants Real Time!

Over the past 6 years, I’ve been deep diving into the analytics and big data world, including - web analytics, advertising, business intelligence and machine learning algorithms. During this period I’ve been witnessing to different perspectives about real time. I’ve learned that when people talk about big data and real time, they usually refer to high freshness of data or ad hoc queries (or both).

High freshness

High freshness of data refers to the efforts of lowering the latency between the time the event occur till it’s available for reporting.

On the one hand, Facebook is publishing its architecture for the (super cool) real time insights product they launched few month ago. On the other hand Yahoo’s tech leader is complaining about the difficulties to develop what they call the “next-click” – effecting the experience of the visitor on the page right after the current click.

Seems like that even the big guys are struggling with the technology. Nati’s post nicely explains the difficulties and proposes an alternative approach.

My concern is different - at the end of the road, Facebook implementation is based on counters in HBase, aggregated metrics per (like) URL. This fairly simple approach is easy to implement but holds many compromise on the product itself – it’s fixed, it’s not drill-downable and it takes time to process.

What if you could have a real-time analytics solution running on top of raw data ?

Aggregations are for wussies!

Ad hoc queries

The world of data warehousing has gone through last year the most drastic changes over the past 30 years. While traditional databases (Oracle, Microsoft, MySQL) were all about scaling up a single server, the new technologies (Greenplum, Netezza,Asterdata, Vertica and others) are all about what I call - Linearness.

Are you linear ?

I believe that big data companies should drive themselves to be linear – linear in cost of the hardware, linear in performance of the queries and linear in accuracy of the response. Yes, accuracy. who cares if last month visits were 5483238 or 5483361 – sampling is in many cases the key for success.

Using this concept – Facebook could have developed it’s insights feature and allow cool drill downs and flexibility.

To achieve linearness a data warehouse must apply these 3 rules:

1. Shared Nothing - each node is independent and self-sufficient.

2. Massive Parallel processing (MPP) - many CPUs working in parallel to execute a single program.

3. Columnar orientation - stores content by column rather than by row.

These rules brings awsome opportunities in the big data world. Choose where you want to be - accurate or high performance, how much are you planning to spend on it ? it's all under you control.

Conclusion

Real time analytics is hot – advertising, personalization, stock trading, shift management and many other scenarios. Don’t wait for an invitation – hop in asap or step back.

Think Linearness!

At LivePerson’s recent e-Commerce Developers’ Day, I described VeriShow’s offering as "chat on steroids". While our platform is more nuanced than that, my off-the-cuff characterization is accurate. VeriShow is a live support and collaboration software-as-a-service platform that gives users a host of tools to improve e-sales and e-service assistance to website visitors.

This past year has been exceptionally meaningful for us as a company. We adopted a set of core values that will not only help us set ourselves apart as an outstanding company but also set us apart as being outstanding people: "Be an Owner, Help Others" guide our everyday decisions in creating meaningful connections.

In addition to these new core values, our offices around the globe have undergone radical changes to introduce shared environments, encouraging creativity and creating more meaningful connections among colleagues. We're excited to share these changes with you and have provided some fun facts and photos around our New York, San Francisco, and Tel Aviv offices.

New York Office

475 10th Ave, 5th floor

Facebook Album

Fun Facts:

1. The vision for the office was created by the employees themselves, who worked with the architects to carry it out.

2. The town hall is an open space full of tables and seats in the middle of the office floor- like the artery- and it inspires impromptu connecting and collaborating.

3. No one has an office. Everyone sits in an open desk, no cubicle, to promote transparency, approachability,  collaboration and organizational "flatness."

San Francisco Office

340 Brannan Street
Suite 301
San Francisco, CA 94107

Facebook Album

Fun Facts:

1. Big windows and open desks light up the office with the radiant sun.

2. In addition to the conventional 'meeting room' we also feature a 'living room' for having quick and productive discussions in a comfortable, homely environment.

3. "Scarlet" is a regular patron to the SF office. Although she's not on the payroll she's a lot of fun to have wandering around shaking her tail as she greets our visitors. We put a picture of her below.

Tel Aviv Office

13 Zarchin
Building C
PO Box 2067, Industrial Areas
Ra'anana, 43100, Israel

Facebook Album

Fun Facts:

1. Each meeting room is designed as a small circle with a overarching theme. From a "Summer Beach" through to the "Persian Beat," our meeting rooms are designed to encourage close and open conversations in a creative environment.

2. Each area, or "Neighborhood" as we like to call them, is named after a famous city. To make it easy to navigate, leading corridors are named after the country which hosts the various neighborhoods.

3. We work in a  "Shared Environment." Rotating walls, folding desks and detachable stations make it easy to break down barriers and merge teams together for various projects.