LinuxReaders

For any organization it is necessary to have fastest & economical way to communicate.
Consider you have few hundred branches spread all over the country, will this be viable solution to  communicate over telephone lines?
During this period of recession companies are trying cut cost at max. Email is smarter way for communication but you’ll never get flexibility of messenger.

You may use gtalk / yahoo / msn messenger but this will never let all communications be recorded at central level. Organizations needs to keep records of all communications.

In today’s digital world you get pre-sales / post-sales support over Internet.
Open fire messenger server can be used for all this, you can keep records, have number of ids, enable client support over web.
I am using this at my Office for internal & branch communication.

Openfire
Openfire is a cross-platform real-time collaboration server based on the XMPP (Jabber) protocol.
Download latest version.

Installing Openfire on CentOS with MySql support
If you do not have mysql-server installed

yum install mysql-server -y
service myqsld start

Create database for openfire

mysql -u root -p
CREATE DATABASE openfire;
GRANT select,insert,update,delete,create,drop ON openfire.*
TO chat@localhost IDENTIFIED BY 'chat';

Download & Install openfire

wget http://www.igniterealtime.org/downloads/download-landing.jsp?file=openfire/openfire-3.6.3-1.i386.rpm
rpm -ivh openfire-3.6.3-1.i386.rpm
service openfire start

This was all required to be done at server end, you may use client machine for complete rest of the setup.

http://chat.linuxreaders.com:9090/

Choose language
in server settings mention fqdn (e.g I have used chat.linuxreaders.com)
choose database connection type standard, use following image to refer database configuration.

You can keep profile settings Default
Mention admin email id & password, finish setup

To create users / other chat related settings / additional plugins. (Admin console)

http://chat.linuxreaders.com:9090

Spark
Cross-platform real-time collaboration client optimized for business and organizations.
Download latest version

Open Spark & enter server, user & password details.
This is all you need to start your own messenger.

Connecting Spark client from Internet

By default installing openfire server will listen on tcp port 5222 for client.

There is no configuration required at the client end, all you need is username, password & servername.

At server end, you need to register relevant dns A record Or use public ip address in server name. Allow tcp port 5222 access from internet.

e.g

dns for chat.linuxreaders.com

I registered ip address x.x.x.x in linuxreaders.com domain (A record).

firewall changes.

All you need is tcp 5222 accessible from Internet.

Allow tcp 5222 on x.x.x.x & NAT it to your local server ip (192.168.1.1)

It is not mandatory to use Spark as client, you can use any client application which supports XMPP. e.g pidgin, empathy.