Forum Discussion

cs1991's avatar
cs1991
Expert
11 years ago

Live Q&A Setup

We currently host a Live Q&A on a monthly basis with various "experts". We have positioned them as a one-hour long session where people just ask questions and receive responses. We typically have a board setup that the people will post questions in and then the expert will respond in that topic. The problem for us is that the experts don't see the questions populate without a refresh and being in the topic listing - same goes for the guests. IF we host this in a single topic, then the same issue arises, except it is more noticeable to the guests who are just watching all of the questions to find answers of their own.

 

I searched through the Community to find examples of this being done, and I came across this topic that was asked last year. I would guess that making a custom component would still be the best option to make something like this work. How difficult would it be to save the information that was said during the QA? Is it being treated like a post in a single topic that is updating as it goes? Have you seen a working example of something like this on another Lithium community?

 

http://community.lithium.com/t5/Technology/Can-you-host-live-video-chat-and-Q-amp-A-in-a-Lithium-community/m-p/104297/highlight/true#M22

 

Thanks for the tips in advance!

  • nathan's avatar
    nathan
    Executive
    11 years ago

    If the problem is just that the experts can't see new questions without replying, the best solution would be to write some code that will automatically display new questions.

     

    The crude way to do this is to use some simple code that refreshes the current page every few seconds. However, this presents a number of issues, including - you don't want to refresh when the expert is in the middle of a response, you probably don't want the auto refresh to happen for all users, ...

     

    A better, but more complex solution, is to write a simple JavaScript application that uses the API to continually poll the community for new questions (in the background), display them, and allow the expert to respond. This JavaScript application can be hosted within Lithium (on a custom page), on a separate website, or even just on the expert's PC.

     

    I have created something very similar to this in the past, and it doesn't necessarily take too long to write (depending on the features you need). Feel free to drop me a PM if you want any more info.