Tele-Support HelpDesk
www.resource-dynamics.com
Version 4.1 Features
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Task Management
(4.0)
(see
video clip)
This adds the ability to add one or more tasks that can be linked to an inquiry or to create
tasks that are only linked by user and not inquiry. Ability for user to examine tasks in
various ways, both as a user, per inquiry, per status or priority, or by due date.
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iForms
(4.0)
(see video clip)
We'll provide an easy way to extract information from web forms that can easily "form fill"
information into your inquiry from the posted forms arriving via email. We will provide
several web form templates that you can use as examples in building your own personal
web forms for "user inquiry submission".
If you're using HelpDesk as a stand alone, you can also automatically create a new
contact from the iForm inbound information.
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Inquiry Work Flow
(4.0)
(see
video clip)
Work Flow allows you to predefine actions that you want to take upon the
occurrence of certain activities. In the case of HelpDesk, these
events are "Inquiry Creation", "Inquiry Completion", "Inquiry Reopen",
and "Inquiry Open and Close in One Call". Here are the actions that you will be able to define in the initial
implementation of 'work flow'.
Inquiry Creation: When an inquiry is started for a company or contact, you will
have the ability to automatically send an email
to the associated account sales representative informing the rep of the new
issue and some details about the issue.
Inquiry Completion: When an inquiry is completed, you will be able to take several
actions. The first one is to again notify the sales rep
for the account that the issues is being closed. You can likewise send the same email
to a HelpDesk user. Also upon completion, you may
select or automate an email(s) that will go out to the customer with a comment regarding
the closing of the inquiry and perhaps an survey about the service
provided.
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Flexible Tab Design
(4.0)
First, we are allowing you to resequence the tabs in any order that you like.
All tabs are available for sequencing.
Secondly, the center view tabs, which are limited to three tabs currently (often mapped
to and showing contact manager fields),
can now be expanded to more than three if desired. Also, each tab will no longer be
limited to 14 fields. A built in forms design
tool will allow you to place and add more than the 14 fields currently available on each tab.
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HelpDesk Screen Shooter
(4.0)
(see
video clip)
Do you use "GoToMeeting", "GoToAssist", "Citrix", or other on-line tech
support remote viewing programs? Is so, we're
designing an interface that will
allow you, among other things, to do screen captures and
link the images to an inquiry. You'll also be able to
annotate and add text descriptions to each graphic screen image if desired, capture
them in groups, and to link these images to the current open inquiry.
This is a full screen capture utility that will capture and link any
screen image to a HelpDesk inquiry, whether local or remote.
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My HelpDesk
My HelpDesk is a "new way to start your HelpDesk day".
My HelpDesk gives you a 'starting point' and a personal view of your HelpDesk world. Easily view
individual inquiry statistics, analyze open inquiries by department or by company or
priorities by department or company.
View last inquiries opened, known issues added, knowledgebase items added, reminders,
manage a personal launch pad,
and go directly into desired inquiries.
At a single glance or a click away, you can know such things as how many inquiries
are open for you, your department,
or for everyone. See the last inquiries you worked on, last known issues resolved, or last Hot Tip
knowledgebase items added.
Look at a breakdown of inquiries by user or by priority, for your department or company as a whole.
Keep personal reminders or personal links at your fingertips. All this and more....
See more details of "My HelpDesk"
here.
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Inquiry Tracking
Every call is tracked from initial inquiry to problem resolution. Inquiry history makes it
easy to reopen an already closed inquiry. HelpDesk can detect if the inquiry's subject
already exists and eliminate duplication
and additional effort by your support staff. Quick find feature speeds contact look-up.
Open inquiries stay on screen until finished. System tracks number of inquiries opened and
closed each day.
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Real Time Call Forwarding
Inquiries can be forwarded to any operator
or department. If forwarded to a department, the inquiry is opened on
the workstation for next available operator, ready for them to pick
up the phone and handle the situation or problem. Referral system tracks
who is logged on. Callbacks to be scheduled for
any date, time, and staff member. Calls can be assigned on a next available basis. Referrals can
automatically notify the receiving staff member via email for easy notification of
staff not logged into HelpDesk
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Intake Forms
You will now have the ability to design what is called ‘Intake Forms’. These are
user-designed forms whose purpose is to ask and store questions and answers as part of the inquiry
record, predetermined critical and important information that pertains to a
particular type of problem or issue. You may develop and use as many types
of forms as may be needed in your organization and assign (link) multiple forms
to a single inquiry. Fields on a form may be declared mandatory (desired) or optional.
Example: Your company sells and supports software applications. Incoming
issues may fall into the categories of installation, configuration, reporting, or
operating system. So when a call comes in that involves ‘configuration issues’,
you would quickly select the configuration form and link it to the inquiry. This
form would have questions specific to this type of problem, such as operating system
in use, problem occurs at one or all workstations, problem is recurring, operating
system version, software version, etc.
This feature means you have unlimited information that you can acquire and linked
to an inquiry in a format that best suits your organization’s needs. This is power!
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Hot Tips Knowledgebase
Hot Tips knowledgebase base may use either Rich Text or HTML documents, located on a
local hard drive, a company's intranet, or on the Web. Using HTML
also means that you can implement branch scripting via hyper links
within HTML documents. You will have the ability to view and attach
any Windows files via the internet email module. Have your
clients using and/or sharing the same HTML hot tips as you use internally.
A proprietary search algorithm finds help files from the natural language
description of the problem. Help files can be read by the operator, or
emailed to the caller with only a few keystrokes. Email both text and graphic
files. Don't answer the same questions over and over. Solutions are just a click away!
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HelpDesk Post Office
We've brought the complete email system, both inbound and outbound, under
the control of HelpDesk with built-in email processing, and dedicated solely
for HelpDesk's use. This means that outgoing mail can be sent from a
global 'support department' but still maintain individual staff names.
Inbound email may be easily routed to the 'responsible' staff person
handling a particular inquiry. Easily attach an email to an existing inquiry
or create a new one with the information contained.
It allows single inbound email address to be shared by entire support
staff and for the routing of inbound email.
Inbound email will automatically link to inquiries, including attachments
(which will be filed according to a user defined scheme), along with full
message information.
Watch for version 3.1 enhancements that will include the ability to
create and add Email Templates and Signatures. Spell check will be
added to outbound email.
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HTML Email Templates and Signatures.
Design, develop, and store email templates for specific types of emails.
You'll be able to design a message to fit each situation. You'll also be able to merge data
from the open inquiry, including contact data, into the email.
Also, choose from a list of developed signature lines, choosing either global signatures
or one associated with a particular HelpDesk operator.
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Spell Checking.
We're adding a full featured spell checker that can be used in sending
your HTML formatted emails. Eventually, it will be available
for use in Hot Tips, Known Issues, and Notepads.
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Sticky Notes
This gives you the ability to attach a "sticky note" to an inquiry, easily flagging the inquiry with a
special message for others to see.
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Bulletin Board System
/span>
HelpDesk now has the ability to create one or more bulletin boards to aid communication
internally for HelpDesk staff and users. As many BBS boards as desired can be
created. Each board can have unlimited "sticky notes"
attached to it.
Each board can have designated users who "subscribe" to the board. So, you could possibly have
something like a "General" board, a "Support" board, and/or a "Developer" board. Each board will
have designated subscribers and each will have various abilities based on their security rights.
Boards and messages can have a special "alert" status whereby each subscribed user will be notified
of the special alert status. When messages are posted, each user will see a special flag
indicating that something new has been
posted to a particular board and that they as an individual user has not read it.
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"Stand Alone" HelpDesk.
The stand alone version of HelpDesk has been vastly improved with the addition of the following items:
- Import capabilities have been added to Stand Alone HelpDesk. Sources can be
tab delimited, comma delimited, or ADO. Using ADO gives much latitude in attaching to many
file systems, including anything to which an ODBC or ADO connection can be established.
- Configurable 'tabs' and 'screens'. You can separate user defined fields into manageable screen tabs.
Each tab has a screen which is highly configurable via a forms design feature.
- List box capability has been added to all custom fields added
to the stand alone contacts table.
- Multiple entry points (rights access) has been given that will allow such things as the ability
to enter, edit, and maintain the contacts table without being a regular HelpDesk
user. This would be helpful for a company that wants non HelpDesk clerical users to
maintain the contacts table but not go into the HelpDesk program directly.
- The ability to print individual contact records or print contact lists has
been added to stand alone HelpDesk.
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"Time Line Analysis.
This feature gives you the ability to have a "special event" time log entry added automatically in order
to record and display when certain types of events take place. These events are 'inquiry referrals'
(ownership changes, either by manual referral or during an inquiry escalation), 'priority changes' (
from either priority escalation or manual priority changes), 'inquiry finish' (closing an inquiry),
and 'reopens' (whenever an inquiry is reopened).
With the above information recorded, you'll be able to analyze and see in a list not only
when an inquiry was worked on, how long, and by whom, but also when an inquiry priority changed,
when an inquiry ownership changed, and even see when and by whom inquiries were closed and even
later reopened.
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Inquiry Status Publisher See
Video.
One of the most sought after features. Now you will be able to "publish" status and
other information about inquiries to a
web site where customers may access their individual entries and check status and
other related information. You will decide which
customer records qualify for publishing, which inquiries and how long after they
are closed, the method that customers will access, the
look and feel of the template that is presented to the inquiring customer, and
what fields are to be published, including some special fields
that can be set aside just for 'publishing', including an additional Notepads.
And best of all, you can run this on any web site, shared hosting or not.
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Contract & Pre-Paid Support Tracking
This feature allows you
to store in your contact manager information about service contracts.
You determine the type (per hour or per incident), expiration date or 'must
use by' dates, and user defined break points where you are warned and/or
blocked from opening an inquiry. Example, warn me when contract time
becomes 30 minutes or less or time until reaching expiration date is 15
days or less. You determine the break points and the action that
is to happen. Time and/or incidents will be updated back to the contact
manager. In the contact manager, you will be able to set filters
and call or make lists of impending contract expirations.
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Inquiry "Alert" System
There are certain conditions that a HelpDesk user would like to know. HelpDesk now puts
icons in an alert column for the following conditions.
A "red dot" is inserted to indicate that the owner of an inquiry has not yet opened and read
it's contents. Until that operator opens the inquiry, the icon will remain. That let's
a helpdesk operator quickly see which inquires are unread by them since being assigned to them
and let's management see system wide if inquiries are being left idle or unread.
A "chain link" is inserted to indicate that there is either a new email that has been attached to
the inquiry or a new linked file has been attached.
A "form" is inserted to indicate that there is a new Intake Form has been created for
this inquiry.
Once the operator enters the inquiry, these alert icons are automatically cleared.
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User Defined Fields in Inquiry Record
You have the ability
to add new user defined fields that are part of the inquiry record
itself. Some of these fields are indexed so that they can
be used as lookup fields. These fields will also be available in
custom designed reports.
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Internet Email
This feature provides for
sending outbound internet email using any windows MAPI compliant email
client, such as Explorer, Outlook, Eudora, Exchange, etc. You will
be able to send messages, hot tips, or attachments of any kind via Email.
This email will be logged in the new Link Database (see below) and the
message body will be preserved. You'll be able to quickly browse
all emails per inquiry or client in the Link Database.
Drag and drop of inbound email and attachments directly from Outlook
and other mapi email programs to the "links" database in HelpDesk is supported.
You may optionally wish to use the new HelpDesk Post Office "new" in version 3.1.
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Links Database
This allows you to link
almost anything to an inquiry record and to the contact record as well.
This includes any thing you can drag and drop from your windows desktop
or applications, including shortcuts, documents, spread sheets, graphics,
web URL addresses, ANYTHING. Also included is a special type record,
the email linked record, which will preserve the message body content for
easy reviewing both inbound and outbound email for this inquiry/contact. If you are using
HelpDesk Post Office, inbound and outbound email linked to inquiries will also be found in the
Links database and shown individually attached to individual inquiries.
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RMA Database
A special database to hold
information regarding RMAs. You'll easily record (using a user defined
RMA numbering system) RMAs and report information from this file.
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Known Issues "Bug" Database
Don't spin your wheels researching
or looking up known problems. Check the 'bug' database. Contains
fields such as when reported, nature of the problem, who is responsible
for it, expected completion date, and customers waiting on the 'fix'.
New in 3.0 is the ability to utilize Known Issues for other uses, including
recording "wish list items" from internal staff or customers, "suggestions" from
customers and staff, "documentation" or "other" types of information you wish
to manage its development.
We use it in house to manage bugs, new features, the versions in which they will
be included, priority, and quality assurance and testing managed by priority and
status. Check back or email for a case study being developed on this versatile
feature set.
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Launch Menu
This is an advanced feature that will allow you to build a menu of custom programs that
can be called from an open inquiry. The menus allow you to pass parameters from both
HelpDesk (such as inquiry number) and from the contact manager (such as the unique
identifier that ties HelpDesk to the contact manager).
The purpose of this is to allow, while an inquiry is open, the ability to
call a custom program (your responsibility) to go and retrieve information
and present it to the HelpDesk operator. An example would be to go and pull
up a list of everything sold to this particular customer and display it on
the screen. The HelpDesk user could then choose the appropriate item and pull that
information into HelpDesk. This is most helpful when you want to go to another system
or back to the contact manager) to pull up inventory or assets linked to a particular contact.
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Configurable Inquiry Screen
The Open Inquiry screen
is now highly configurable, allowing you three custom views of all data,
tabs for products, RMAs, Links, Time Logs, and History Records.
We have Original Problem Notes which contains
a text description of the problem as first described, and Resolution Notes,
where notes relating to the problem solving are kept. Also, you can use
Intake Forms (as described above) to further enhance you view of pertinent information.
We've added functionality to the timer,
allowing you to stop it if you walk away from your desk (under supervisor
control) with a flashing timer indicating its 'stopped' mode.
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Configurable
History Queue Filtering
The History Queue has a 'quick' filtering system to allow
you to quickly find the closed inquiry you are seeking. It filters by date range and
a number of other search values allowing quick filtering with each key stroke. Makes for
faster response in finding the information you want.
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Priority Escalation System
/span>
A few new additions to the
escalation system, including a 'drop dead' date to flag specific inquiries
as to their special status and special escalation date. The system
will allow you to define priorities and select when they are to be escalated,
how they will appear (color change) and if they should be rerouted to a
different person or department. Automatically generate email
notification at user defined priority levels. Example, when reaching
'Critical' notify assigned user and Department Manager with full details. Is
managed by a separate escalation 'server' that can be dedicated to this task, removing
valuable processing tasks away from individual helpdesk users.
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Report Writer Management Reports
Many analysis reports are provided in Crystal Reports format,
making it easy for you to use our formats to generate your own
reports. Optional time log tracking allows summary reporting that
tells you exactly who takes how long to complete specific problems.
Prevention report allows you to improve documentation and systems to guide
product development and knowledge-base text. Report on inquiries
open/closed/all per timer period by category, product, client,
priority, or operator. Complete time tracking reports as well as detailed
billing report/analysis. Prevention notes by product and
company.
The supplied reports will come with 'source' so
that you can copy and modify our reports to make your own. The
internal file structure for HelpDesk is Microsoft Access so that you can
use any report writer that reads Microsoft Access files. Most all
information you will need will be found within our own data files
eliminating the need to link external sources.
To modify Crystal Reports, you will need to purchase Crystal Reports Report Designer. This
is not included with Tele-Support HelpDesk. Only 'run time' files are included with HelpDesk.
New reports scheduled include Dispatching, Graphing, Open Call Analysis,
Resolution Analysis, and more.
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Contact Manager Interface
With GoldMine, ACT!, TeamScope, BCM, or the Stand Alone contact manager
you'll be able to display and/or edit limitless fields from the contact
manager. With GoldMine, you can display an open inquiry in GoldMine's
Pending tab and then have it moved to the History tab upon completion.
ACT! allow for activity history stamping as well. These
features allow for non HelpDesk staff to have a 'heads up' awareness of
HelpDesk issues without having to go into the HelpDesk module itself.
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Scripting engine
We've added a scripting engine with version 3.0 plus. Initially
you'll be able to use this feature to define expressions for default "priority" and
default "billable". Use java script or visual basic script to form expressions to return
information used to decide these default values.
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Advanced Time and Material Billing
This is an included feature of
Tele-Support HelpDesk 4.1. This feature allows you to enter one or more associated costs to
an inquiry ticket. Build a 'rate table' that offers a flexible rate schedule to meet most
any need. Use a combination of rate types.
You can bill by user, type of service, type of client, individual negotiated rates by customer,
fixed material based costs, or time based costs. It will create statements that can
be used for billing.
If you use QuickBooks, we have an optional "add-on"
HelpDesk
to Quick Books Link which allows the time/material billing information to flow
into Quick Books.
See
sample video of this powerful feature.
Time and Material Billing is standard and included in HelpDesk 4.1.
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Other Features and Improvements
* Improved system,
administration, and user setup.
* Contact managers do NOT have to be open on the desktop to be used by HelpDesk users.
* Updates, upgrades, additional user counts, can all be done over the web.
* On-line help. One click web updates.
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