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Finishing my research on the click-to-dial plugin

Written by Dagmar Hoogendorp on 19th February 2020

• click-to-dial plugin
• internship
• Vialer

In my last blog post, I talked about the research for my internship project about the click-to-dial plugin for our telephony platform VoIPGRID. This plugin injects buttons into web pages that allow you to call phone numbers immediately. You are also able to change the destination on which you are available (e.g. the Vialer app or Webphone), view the availability of colleagues and number of calls in queues. The subject of the graduation research was to rewrite this plugin. In this blog post I will discuss the results of my research and the plan going forward, both for myself and for the plugin.

Interviewing users and comparing data sets

The research question my work revolved around was “Which functionalities speak to the users most?” To answer this question, I conducted interviews with users of the plugin and collected metrics via the newly built plugin. Most of the users I interviewed work at our sister company called Voys. I also collected data about their usage, and compared the two data sets.

Results of the research

The research showed that most users use the click and call functionality the most. After this comes the availability function. In the interviews, the users I talked to also mentioned the other functionalities (colleagues and queues), but the data collection part of the experiment revealed that they do not really use these.

Because the research was conducted on users who do not differ greatly from each other, it is difficult to conclude results that can apply to all plugin users. Therefore my research advised to have a larger and more diverse group of users install the plugin. The plugin can already keep track of metrics, making more data available in the future which can be used to make choices about the functionalities.

A new extension to build on

Right now there is a newly built extension (or plugin) ready to be tested and improved upon. The new extension will be easier to deploy and to work on. This is also the extension that was used in the research.

The most important thing to do now is quality assurance (QA). Our quality assurance tester will be testing the extension. If all is good the beta can be launched and tested by a large group of users. After some time we can decide if there are functionalities that users don’t use or need and can be dismissed.

So now what’s in store for me?

There were a total of 16 weeks for this graduation project, but it was possible to extend the internship if you wanted to. This was part of the new type of graduation projects the Hanze University offered. Because of a few setbacks (Christmas break had a little bit more impact than I initially thought), I was considering postponing the deadline. The first available deadline for the thesis was on January 13th. But, with all the help from my colleagues, I was confident enough to just go for it.

At the end of January I defended my thesis with a presentation for two teachers, my mentor Joël from Spindle and someone from the working field. I passed!

And more good news: as of February 10th, I started working at Spindle! I am really excited about this opportunity and happy I get to spend more time with all the awesome colleagues that work for Spindle. Now the adult life finally starts after a long time of studying!