Mobile Instant Messaging In the Workplace: Research and Design

The last decade has seen a significant popularity of instant messaging and its main usage is for recreational purposes. However, instant messaging can also be utilized in the workplace and by utilizing such tools more efficiency of workplace communication can be achieved. For this purpose, in this paper we conduct research on mobile instant messaging in the workplace. Mobile Internet services based communication is chosen because mobile communication is playing an important role in today's communication system. First, the system architecture of a mobile instant messaging is presented. Some main functionality, such as message exchange and file transmission, are elaborated. Then, based on this architecture, an android-based messaging client and a Linux-based server are developed. Finally, the instant messaging software is tested in a real mobile communication network and test results show that the software works well. As mobile Internet services become increasingly important, the instant messaging tool developed in this paper will be utilized in the workplace as a communication means and will improve work efficiency greatly in the future.