WhosOn Product History
WhosOn Milestones
|
Year |
Month |
Version |
Milestone |
|
2002 |
May |
2.0 |
First commercial release. At this stage WhosOn was a stand-alone tool for
monitoring web site visitors in real time by scanning the web server log files. |
|
2002 |
Nov |
2.2 |
SMS sending of page errors.
Visitor geo-ip & organization tracking. |
|
2003 |
May |
2.3 |
Visitor chat added.
ISP edition added.
Ability to track visitors via page tagging. This enabled WhosOn to monitor any
web site without needing to access the web server logs. |
|
2004 |
March |
3.0 |
SQL Server database backend.
Prospect detection.
Web site changed to www.whoson.com from
www.whos-on.net
Chat updated to use .NET and AJAX technologies. |
|
2006 |
Jan |
4.0 |
Hosted edition added. |
|
2006 |
May |
4.1 |
Custom text chat invites. |
|
2006 |
Sept |
4.2 |
Click-to-call back option added.
Automated scheduled reports. |
|
2007 |
Aug |
4.4 |
Live chat translation. |
|
2007 |
Oct |
4.5 |
Updated Client to use new Office 2007 ribbon bar style user interface. |
|
2007 |
Dec |
4.6 |
Named users with full access control rules.
Chat monitoring/training. |
|
2009 |
April |
5.0 |
Major rewrite with performance & scalability improvements.
Pre/post chat surveys.
Chat window themes.
Custom chat invites rules.
Microsoft Dynamics
CRM integration. |
|
2009 |
July |
5.1 |
Dynamic chat invites.
Co-browse.
Transfer files during chat sessions. |
|
2009 |
Dec |
5.2 |
Remote control option.
Salesforce integration.
Silverlight Client. |
|
2010 |
July |
5.2 |
iPhone Client added. |
|
2011 |
Feb |
2011 Q1 |
Skills based chat routing with auto accept rules.
Visitor condition builder.
Operators can request assistance during chats. |
|
2011 |
April |
2011 Q2 |
Ticketing system added.
Updated Client to use Office 2010 style interface.
FastCGI tracking option added. |
|
2011 |
Sept |
2011 Q3 |
Microsoft Dynamics 2011 integration.
Chat text rules. |
The article below was originally published in November 2004
"In 2001 I owned and ran a successful software business that developed employee time management software.
Most of our new business was gained via our web site. At that time we wanted our web server to make a simple 'beep'
whenever a new visitor arrived at the site - somehow we thought this would give us a better 'feel' about how
well our site was doing. We also wanted to be able to glance at the web server (which was crammed into a corner of the office)
to see 'who was on'.
We looked long and hard for a utility to do this and found nothing, so we
decided to produce something ourselves.
This application we produced simply read the web server log files every few
seconds and displayed a list of active visitors. We were only interested in
'real' people, so we made the application separate spiders and other 'bots' into
another list. The application proved invaluable. We could watch what visitors where doing in real time, and see instantly if people used
the links in the way we thought they would. We could make changes to the site and instantly see the results.
Sometimes visitors would click on a missing page - so we made the application make a different sound when any page
errors were detected. We then hit on the idea of getting the utility to send an email whenever an error occurred so
we could quickly fix it even if no one was watching the server.
Since we did the occasional on-line ad, and had our site listed on all the major search engines, we wanted the
application to make a different sound depending on where the visitor came from. So we added visitor 'Alerts'
to separate visitors out according to how they found us.
The web server now seemed to come alive.. and it actually created a buzz in the office to
be able to see live visitors and hear it beeping and churping away.
About the same time my company was acquired by a much larger organization, so I decided to form a new business with the
aim of developing this new 'WhosOn' tool. As a result Parker Software was formed at the end of 2002. We then spent the
next 18 months developing the product into a commercial application. It then hit us that whilst watching visitors, wouldn't
it be great if we could actually interact with them. So we added the 'live chat' feature a few months after the first release.
Whilst we still used a traditional web analytics application for historical traffic analysis, many users asked why they couldn't view
historical reports within WhosOn. So we added a database back and created a front end Charts & Reports tool to view
analytics reports. However, we didn't want WhosOn to become
'just another web analytics application' so we kept the main focus of the product aimed squarely at 'real time'.
Since then both the company and WhosOn have grown. We have added many features
based on user feedback and we've added an easy to use 'hosted' version. "
Stephen Parker
CEO
Parker Software
November 2004