Meetings

The Contact Architecture:
A case study of perl as an integration language

La Monte H.P. Yarroll and Doug Blair

Tuesday September 23rd at 7:00pm
College of Dupage Room SRC-1024

Abstract

We work for ITS in a large technology company based in the Chicago area. We are involved in an effort to re-engineer our internal help desk to improve service. Our primary focus has been integrating some of the technologies our internal clients use to contact us with our issue tracking system, Action Request System, from Remedy Corporation.

We seek to generalize call center notions such as intelligent routing and agent-available routing from telephony to email, web, walkin, and other communication methods. We seek to provide our help desk agents with an uniform interface to our communication media.

We needed a development platform which would let us easily manipulate all of these technologies. We chose perl 5.

This is the story of our effort. How has the implementation deviated from our original vision? How is perl 5 performing as a development environment? Would we recommend our approach to other organizations? What creative messages can we inflict up the displays of unsuspecting telesets and text pagers? :-)

Here is a brief outline:

Classic call center applications and how we differ
An overview of the Contact Architecture
Why did we choose perl?
A design overview of the Contact Architecture
What did perl buy us?
- Available packages
- Module system
- OO features
What are some of perl's warts?

Speaker Bios

Doug Blair has been providing technical support since 1980. Doug has been a Clout Project admin since about 1990. He is the zone contact for chicago.il.us and a member of the Remedy Technical Advisory Counsel. Doug does Remedy support and development for Motorola Cellular Infrastructure Group's ITS. Doug makes the unverified claim that he can reach punch cards with nothing more than a strong light. ...and he isn't a DJ any more!

La Monte H.P. Yarroll took his first programming contract in 1980. He is a charter member of UniForum Chicago. He is one of the two founding Clout Project admins and the administrative contact for chicago.il.us. La Monte spent several years as a programming language developer at the University of Tasmania. He wisely claims to have lost all skill at reading paper tape. He won't publicly acknowledge the company he currently works for until such time as they might acknowledge the validity of his electronic identity.

Getting to the meeting

The next meeting of UniForum Chicago will be from 7:00 pm to 9:00 PM on Tuesday, September 23, 1997 at the College of DuPage. The address of the meeting facility is:

        College of DuPage
        Building SRC, Rm 1024
        22nd and Lambert
        Glen Ellyn, IL 60137-6599

Take 355 to Butterfield Rd (Rt 56). Butterfield West to Lambert Rd. Lambert Rd North to first right after College Road. Park in lots 7 or 8 and walk to SRC building. Room 1024 is on the first floor of the SRC building, near the entrance.

All UniForum Chicago general meetings are open to the public free of charge.

Contact Michael Potter at (630) 960-0133 x615 for additional information.

For more information about UniForum Chicago contact mep@xnet.com.