Mobile App Tools

Purpose

Various classes of RightNow CX users need to be mobile when interacting with the solution. For example:

• Consumers need convenient mobile applications to conduct knowledge base searches, ask questions, chat with customer support, and submit photos of product problems.
• Service managers need to view aggregate data across service agents to track and improve performance against key indicators.
• Service agents need to view their assigned incidents and update them using a mobile solution.
• Sales managers need to view opportunity pipeline data to determine salesperson performance and progress toward sales targets.
• Sales representatives need a convenient mobile solution for viewing the state and progress of sales opportunities.

Security

Mobile application developers have sole responsibility for constructing mobile applications, so the integrity of RightNow CX login credentials is preserved. Developers must follow the proper login and security procedures for the integration frameworks being used. The recommended approach is to ensure that the server-side code associated with the mobile application is stored and executed in a environment that is controlled by our clients. It’s also important that a level of authentication is placed between the mobile device, the mobile application, and the server-side mobile code. RightNow provides security options in support of end consumer actions (e.g., search for knowledge, create/review incident, ask for assistance, establish a chat session, and engage in a guided script). It is highly recommended that all mobile app deployments are reviewed against corporate security standards and governance before deploying.

Frameworks

Frameworks are available so mobile applications can interact with the RightNow CX solution.

• Customer Portal includes a web application framework and web page sets for managing and creating web experiences on any web browser. It provides a modern model-view-controller architecture with open standards along with prebuilt themes, templates, pages, and widgets that can be customized to meet mobile application requirements.
• Connect Web Services for SOAP provides application developers with a set of services that can be used to securely access and modify data contained in their RightNow CX instance.
• Mobile Messaging
  • Short Message Service (SMS) is a highly reliable and frequently used method of communication for all mobile phone users. It is well positioned for directed, short content or pieces of data.
  • Does SMS matter as a channel for customer experience? Absolutely! Over 2.2 billion SMS messages were sent in June 2011 alone. It is the most popular channel for notifications after email, and feature phones, quick messaging devices, and smartphones all support SMS. The primary detractor is message size.

Technologies for Mobile Application Development

Customer Portal + HTML5

Benefits

• Current and expanding support for mobile devices with HTML5/CSS/JavaScript
• Approach when building mobile applications on Customer Portal
• Out-of-the-box support (reference implementation) for the most popular mobile devices
• Leverages existing web development skills (HTML5/CSS/JavaScript)
• Mobile widgets with Customer Portal page sets provide out-of-the-box functionality and make development easier
• No additional platform or web hosting is required because Customer Portal hosts mobile widgets
• Ability to create additional mobile widgets in support of HTML5 and embedded implementation scenarios
• HTML5 (and mobile operating systems) has increasing support for native mobile capabilities, including location and growing support of media (e.g., capture photo on Android)
• Open source and third-party JavaScript libraries and CSS stylesheets help create better mobile user interface

Considerations

• Limited access to mobile device capabilities
• Doesn’t maximize device-specific human factors

Native

Applications built using the native toolkits/SDK for specific mobile operating systems have the following benefits and considerations:

Benefits

• Maximizes mobile capabilities
• Best adherence to device-specific human factors guidelines (best user experience)

Considerations

• Learning curve can be steep for developers who don’t have experience (given that each operation system has different development tools, libraries, etc.)
• Applications are mostly built on OS-specific code, so apps aren’t cross-platform. If there is a cross-platform requirement, there would be a need for duplicate development efforts, codebases, and separate projects for each device OS.
• Requires the most effort to develop

Hybrid (Native/HTML5)

Hybrid apps combine the HTML5 development paradigm with native deployment of the application. Toolkits are available that support this approach, including PhoneGap and Appcelerator Titanium. The best approach is to obtain an installable application on multiple devices while leveraging web development skills and resources. Under this approach, the HTML5 implementation compiles into an installable mobile application.

Benefits

• Maximizes mobile capabilities (e.g., native)
• Development is cross-platform (e.g., HTML5)
• Development paradigm is HTML5, leveraging existing web development resources
• Re-uses web resources, designs, code, and more between mobile web and mobile app

Considerations

• Less of a learning curve than native application development to understand the JavaScript libraries that provide access to mobile-device-specific capabilities
• Not all native capabilities are available until implemented by toolkit providers like PhoneGap

Hybrid Embedded (Native/Customer Portal Widgets)

This approach includes embedding RightNow Customer Portal widgets into existing native-application-developed resources. The best option is if you already have investment in native mobile applications but want to enable RightNow service within the application.

Benefits

• Easily extends RightNow CX customer service to existing developed mobile application resources
• Leverages existing development skills in native and web into a "mashup" RightNow CX-enabled application

Considerations

• Service widgets don’t maximize use of native capabilities like hybrid does

Mobile Development Accelerators

• Hybrid (Native/HTML5) Mobile Applications Using AppCelerator Titanium: These two JavaScript files include illustrations for implementing a feature with JavaScript, HTML5, CSS, and the Appcelerator Titanium framework. The code in reportdef.js creates a native application screen to set filters and initiate running a report from RightNow CX. The code in reportview.js creates a native application screen to display report results. See the Appcelerator Titanium README.docx document for details.
• SMS Mobile Application: The SMS Mobile application is a customization applied to a RightNow CX site that allows a consumer with an SMS-enabled mobile device to have a text message conversation with a customer service agent using the RightNow CX Agent Desktop. After the consumer opts-in, the agent has the ability to view the consumer’s location and provide assistance, taking that location into account. This application was developed in conjunction with Neustar, a RightNow partner providing SMS messaging capabilities. See the SMS Mobile App README.docx document for details.
• CP Enhanced Mobile Applications: These two code files, logic.js and view.php provide an example of creating a custom CP widget for gathering location information for use in a mobile device application.
• Virtualization: This document describes using virtualization clients on mobile devices to display and interact with the RightNow CX agent desktop.

• Hybrid (Native/HTML5) Mobile Applications Using PhoneGap: This file includes code samples for searching for Contacts in the mobile app using PhoneGap, Javascript and JQuery Mobile.