The company I am working for would like to be able to send alerts to users desktops. I have been looking at the Wildfire server with the Spark client to provide this but have immediatley hit a couple of roadblocks.
First. I have turned anonymous login on on the Wildfire server but see no way on the spark client to enter a value of anonymous.
Two. Am looking for advice on how to have the client automatically set to anonymous at install. I would like to be able to install the client via Marimba and would like it the login automatically set.
Three. I am having issues finding how to suppress the Spark client GUI from showing up. I would like it to run minimized or have the client not see the GUI at all.
Basically I would like to just be able to have the client on everyones desktop . . . about 2000 clients and have a few select security people be able to send an alert if there is, for example, a security breach in a building and all that would pop up for each client would be an alert window with whatever broadcast text the security group decided to send. Users would not need to reply or chat with each other.
Can anyone through me a life line and head me in the right direction. It looks like I may need to get our Web department to help me a little with some of the coding but if I could get some initial help it would be most appreciated. Thanks.
Well, I am looking for a solution that will span different platforms . . . Windows, Mac and Linux. This seemed good . . . also the price is right. In addition . . . if we can get the basic functionality that we want then we might be able to customize it to do some more advanced things down the road. I am also checking into some other ideas though . . . having a hard time finding anything that wont cost an arm and a leg.
The term “anonymous login” can be a little misleading. Basically, you don’‘t sign in as a user called “anonymous”, rather you send a blank authentication packet; there’‘s a bit more detail on it url=http://www.jivesoftware.org/community/thread.jspa?messageID=93692here[/url]. Spark, nor any other client I’'ve come across supports anonymous logins. However, the url=http://www.jivesoftware.org/smack/Smack API[/url] (that Spark uses) does support anonymous logins so it would be possible to write a client that meets your specific needs.
I originally thought it might be possible to write a url=http://www.jivesoftware.org/spark/sparkplug_kit.jspSparkplug[/url] that could be used to enable anonymous logins for Spark but I’‘m not seeing a way to do that, but that’‘s not to say it’'s not there. Maybe Derek would have some insight into whether or not this is possible.
I think for what you are looking for, Spark would not be the best solution. However, I think what you really need is more of a windowless app that really does just sign into the server anonymously and just uses the toaster popup with new notifications. Maybe someone in the community would like to do this? Also, how would you specify which server to connect to with 2000 deployments?
Ok, I am really just getting my feet wet here but I absolutely appreciate all of the timely and helpful responses.
I think it is time to go back to the group with the info I got here . . . . perhaps it is time for the project to shift direction or maybe they want to build a custom client. Thank you all for your input!
just to get notifications one may open a multicast port using java and display everything (using some security) which is received as a popup message by all active clients. Having 2000 clients connected to a server seems to be an overkill.
Wildfire could probably make sure that all the broadcasts are cached and will be delivered as soon as the client becomes available if this is an requirement, a JMS solution with topics would be the better choice.