David Tenser has published an extensive series of blog posts where he has been discussing a comprehensive vision for the scope and role of the Support.mozilla.org (SUMO) project. He has recently published the eighth and final post in the series, this one focused on the innovative and incredibly useful “Live Chat” feature. “If a problem isn’t yet covered in the Knowledge Base, or if the instructions in the article are too hard to understand, Live Chat is a powerful way for users to get in touch with Firefox experts and get hands-on assistance in solving their problems. Live Chat can also be a very fun way for contributors to provide support. Contributors helping out with Live Chat don’t just help users, they talk to each other in the backchannel as well, providing assitance to other helpers whenever needed. This means that although you’re usually the only one interacting with the user you’re helping, you’re never alone.”

David’s blog post goes on to discuss some potential future improvements for the service, including a fully integrated chat client, a simple scheduling solution, support for languages other than English, and automatically saving chat logs and associated user happiness ratings, among other things. If you’re interested in the Live Chat feature of the SUMO project and would like to see how the team is thinking about improving it in the future, read the full post over at the Firefox Support Blog.

The support.mozilla.com (a.k.a. SUMO) project has been underway for over a year now, and has become an amazing community-powered support channel impacting millions of Firefox users around the world. The SUMO team has been working on envisioning the future of SUMO, conceptualizing the service’s evolution as it grows both in scope and participation. As part of this evolution, Tara Shahain and David Tenser hope to develop a strong visual identity for the project that encompasses SUMO and its ongoing mission. Part of this involves creating a new logo for the project, but they need your help. “More specifically, we need your help in brainstorming ideas around the design concept and how best to represent SUMO visually. In the past SUMO has dedicated its resources to Firefox and is there for primarily known as ‘Firefox Support’. But as David notes in his blog, SUMO aspires to be much more…” To learn more about the project and find out how to participate in the logo design process, see Tara’s weblog post.