The help desk bot is an application written in Java that can connect to XMPP/Jabber (Google Talk uses the XMPP protocol) servers.  Once connected, it provides a help desk system.

General Overview

People can send messages (trouble tickets) to the bot, and it will store them for support personnel to answer.

Support personnel can send a password to the bot, then be assigned trouble tickets.  The bot can notify support personnel who aren't assigned a ticket that new tickets are available.

Technical Details

The XMPP protocol uses an XML stream to communicate between the client and server.  The bot uses StAX to parse what the server is sending.

Also, the XMPP (1.0) protocol supports TLS.  If the server notifies the bot that it supports TLS, the bot will attempt to negotiate a secure TLS connection over the existing connected socket.

More Information and Download

A free download and more information can be found on a web site created just for the bot:

http://helpdeskbot.qcodesamp.com/