5 Replies Latest reply on Jun 21, 2007 2:22 AM by modoc

    Implement VNC/RDP/NetMeeting-like desktop sharing for helpde

      A Seam application user can have multiple concurrent conversations running within a single session. One can also use the same conversation in multiple workspaces for the same HTTP session. Seam knows how to tell those apart, so I guess at the server side one could get a list of all workspaces of all users. Now, what about making that list available to helpdesk personnel, and make selecting a single workspace show the very same screen on a totally different computer...?

      Of course, unlike with true desktop sharing, the two sessions would not share the mouse nor keyboard, and one would not know if the other user has entered some new values in form fields. In fact, or would not even know when the other user submits the page. Also, the actual views will differ due to using different browsers, different screen sizes, etc. But to assist helpdesk personnel in telling what the user is looking at, a read-only snapshot of the last loaded screen would be great! While on the phone with the user, the helpdesk employee can then refresh the snapshot to keep in sync with the workspace the real user is looking at.

      No, I don't expect this to be easy -- at all... First of all one needs to somehow set the Identity to get a specific window act as if the other user is running it (this might include Hibernate filters) while, if possible, still running in the context of the helpdesk employee in the other windows. Most likely some Seam security mechanisms must be relaxed to allow for peeking into the conversation without invalidating it. Then, if doable for simple pages, pages that use Ajax may make things quite complicated. And when all is done then one might decide that on second thought helpdesk personnel should not be be allowed to see some specific views...

      Nevertheless: any thoughts...?

      Thanks,
      Arjan.