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The vision for SUMO – Part 8: Live Chat

deb — Mon, 06 Oct 2008 13:45:21 +0000

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.

Help design the new SUMO logo

deb — Mon, 29 Sep 2008 15:08:48 +0000

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.

Firefox support – envisioning the future

deb — Fri, 12 Sep 2008 14:33:09 +0000

David Tenser, Mozilla’s SUMO project lead, has been writing a multi-part weblog post outlining a working vision for the future of the Firefox support project. “Since the SUMO team was formally created, we have grown from a fairly buggy web site managed by a tight group of people, to a truly community-powered support channel with over 70 active contributors per week. This is an amazing achievement that really shows the strength of the Mozilla community.” Even so, SUMO’s mission is not complete. David continues, “From my perspective, we’ve just started. I’ve thought a lot about what we should do to take SUMO to the next level, something I playfully called ‘SUMO 2.0′ when discussing this with the team at the Summit.” David has written four posts outlining the vision for SUMO so far, that you can find at his weblog: Part 1: Listen as hard as we can, Part 2: Understanding the bigger picture, Part 3: Increasing community participation, Part 4: Having our finger on the pulse.

If you’re interested in volunteering to help with the SUMO project, you should keep an eye on David’s weblog and read the How to contribute page in the SUMO Knowledge Base. Helping out with user support is a great and easy way to get involved with the Mozilla project.

Firefox screencast contest winners announced

deb — Wed, 16 Jul 2008 14:23:32 +0000

The Firefox screencast contest is over, and there are now 50 new videos to accompany the articles in the SUMO Knowledge Base. The contest team is very happy with the result and are excited to finally announce the winners. For his work with How to customize the toolbar, the contest judges chose Cameron Roy as the grand prize winner. Other winners (one for the best screencast for each article) will be contacted shortly about their prizes. Thank you to everyone who participated in the contest — you’ve helped improve the knowledge base immeasurably and your work will have a lasting impact on Firefox’s 180+ million users. Check out the SUMO weblog post for more information.