Customer Chat

Imagine a situation where you need to implement a chat software for our customer service to interact with our customers.

How would the quick win solution look like and how would the state-of-the-art solution look like?

Implement a simple solution for a chat that enables customers to send messages to customer service.

Talking points / topics to be considered:

• Which objects / classes would you create?
• How do they interact?
• How does the frontend interact with your classes?
• Which enhancements come to your mind when talking about chat software solutions?

---

Simple Customer Chat Application (Backend)

Simple implementation for a messaging backend. Clients can use a frontend application (i.e. JavaScript Website) to call messaging URIs of the backend

Features

• Clients connect to the backend through the backend message broker
• The connection is broadcast to all support agents
• An agent can initiate a private chat session with a specific user

Objects and Classes

This example uses Java Websockets for message handling. Spring (Boot) Configuration is used where possible to keep the application code light weight and manual configuration to a minimum.

• ChatMessage Domain object handling messaging content
• WebSocketConfiguration Enables a message broker for topics (global communication) and queues (user-to-user configuration).
• CustomerSupportEventListener Handles events for new client connections and broadcasts a message to a topic, agents should subscribe to
• CustomerSupportController Handles user to user communication via messages

How do classes interact?

Backend classes interact with each other through Spring Boot functionality.

How does the frontend interact with the backend?

Since communication is handled through WebSockets over HTTP, the frontend handling client communication needs to address certain endpoints of the backend API.

• All clients connect to the backend via Sockets (i.e. SockJs)
• Customer service agent clients must subscribe to topic /chat/topic/support to be notified of new customers connections
• All clients can send messages though API endpoint /chat/message and must include a valid ChatMessage JSON:

{
  "userFrom": "Sender",
  "userTo": "Receiver",
  "message": "Message content"
}

Which enhancements come to your mind when talking about chat software solutions?

The application example has several limitations which should be implemented:

• Security is not included
• Communication is not restricted (everyone can send to everyone)
• Payload is not validated
• Error handling is not included
• Tests are not included
• Comments and documentation are not included