• Launchpad Entry: https://launchpad.net/distros/ubuntu/+spec/ubuntu-commercial-support

• Created: 04-23-2006 by Joel Bryan T. Juliano

• Contributors: Joel Bryan T. Juliano

• Packages affected: Gtk+ 2.0, Evolution, Gnome-Panel

Summary

The UbuntuCommercialSupport aims to provide an interface for getting commercial support from Canonical Ltd, right into "System > Help > Commercial Support"

Rationale

Companies and businesses can't rely on getting support from random individuals. What they need is a dedicated 24/7 technical support from a company that offers that kind of services, and knows exactly what they need. The fate of their solutions and operations depends on good support.

Non-technical users are likely to have a problem of knowing exactly what they need. Alot of users don't know anything about technical details, and sometimes they are having a hard time putting up the right questions together. Technical people in chat rooms are most likely to be impatient about non-technical users who asks unappropriate questions. A non-technical user may be terrified of getting answers from chat rooms because of the fear of unappropriate technical questions. What they need is a 24/7 dedicated service support where they can be confident to ask questions.

A concrete support for a specific company that uses complex solutions, requires full technical details, and absolute answer. Random individuals from chat rooms are unlikely to be inexperience about a certain question for a complex systems. What they need is a 24/7 dedicated support service that knows exactly the answers from what they are asking for.

Scope

This will use evolution mail to send message to support@canonical.com. In the message, the user will be prompted to enter his/her billing information.

Design

Invocation and overall design

The software will be linked right into "System > Help > Commercial Support", it will asks a user with what support options he/she would like to subscribe and how many years would it be.

Billing Information

Credit card information will be sent through e-mail, before sending anything to support@canonical.com.

Inquiries

This will be possible in the software via a "Contact Canonical Ltd." Button.

Screenshots

Introduction Screen

Ordering Support Options Screen

Providing Information

Sending the information

Code

The software is written in GTK+2.0, C.

Source Package

ubuntu-commercial-support-0.2.tar.gz Small and stable release!,

Binary Package

ubuntu-commercial-support_0.2-1_i386.deb

Comments

Joey Stanford - I like the basic idea of this spec. Sending credit card information via plain text however is very bad as it opens up a great possibility of internet fraud. Visa and Mastercard have begun to probit sending or storing plain text credit card information.

Steven Harms - I would recommend a web based payment approach where you can provide a more professional, and more importantly, secure channel for communication. An advantage to this would be the numerous web-based toolchains already in place so you can elminate redunancy of work and save time on unit tests etc. If I was purchasing an item for my company and they requested my information plaintext email the first thing that comes to mind is scam.

CategorySpec