"ChatterBox" persistent chat session for SharePoint
Have you ever wanted to have a persistent chat session right on your SharePoint team or collaboration site? It can be much easier and quicker for typing a message than SharePoint’s built-in Discussion Board. The ChatterBox web part provides an example of how such a persistent chat session can be implemented by utilizing a SharePoint list, so there’s no need to create a custom database. If you need more than one chat session on your site, you can simply create another instance of the ChatterBox web part and associate it with another SharePoint list. Here’s a screenshot of it in action.
You can download the ChatterBox 1.0 web part and source code, which have been released as part of the Community Kit for SharePoint, right here. An enhanced, ASP.NET AJAX-based version of the ChatterBox web part is already in the works and will be released shortly after Service Pack 1 for WSS 3.0 and MOSS 2007 becomes available, so I’d recommend that you don’t spend too much time trying to extend the current version. Just play with it and see what innovative ideas you and its users can come up with in terms of new features. Color coding and online detection are already planned for the next version, so you’ll need to be more creative than that! :-)
If you cannot wait until SP1 to start taking advantage of ASP.NET AJAX for SharePoint, I’d encourage you to take a look at the SharePoint AJAX Toolkit on CodePlex, but note that this is a community driven shared source project and is not owned or sponsored by Microsoft.
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