Helpdesk Pilot

Coming soon : New features and improvements

by Vikram Bhaskar — 10 Mar 11

Our latest release of Helpdesk Pilot, Version 5.0 is a thoroughly revamped upgrade of the outgoing 4.4.5 release but will retain a number of core features that have existed in previous releases.

These core features are currently being updated and enhanced to offer more benefits to Helpdesk Pilot users, and will be integrated as standard features. Here’s a brief on the features that will be coming soon to Helpdesk Pilot V5:

1. Self-service End User Panel with built-in Knowledge Base

Currently, an embeddable request submission form is provided with V5, allowing you to embed a form on your website so that end users may submit web based requests. 

The self-service end user panel will go a few steps further in offering your end users their own ticket management interface. Through this web based interface, end users can:

  • log in to their individual end user accounts
  • submit new requests to the help desk
  • view requests that they have submitted in the past
  • view responses from your help desk staff

With the integration of a Knowledge Base, you can create articles and categorize them into specific online reference areas, that are accessible via the end user panel. End users can then look through your Knowledge Base articles and find answers to frequently asked questions (FAQs), doing away with the need to raise a request on the help desk. 

2. Advanced search options

The built in search engine will be significantly enhanced and allow you to quickly find the information you’re looking for, by offering advanced options to search by, inclluding:

  • Ticket ID
  • End User or Customer
  • Contact Information
  • Ticket subject
  • Ticket content
  • Tickets assigned to a specific staff member
  • Tag
  • Custom Field content

3. SLA Management

Meeting SLA targets is a key requirement for most businesses nowadays, and with this updated feature, you will be able to define individual SLA targets (for each of your categories or for an end user group). With escalation notifications that can be automated (using the already available smart rules feature), you can then ensure that your help desk staff is actively informed when a ticket threatens to breach an SLA target. Reporting on SLA targets will also be integrated with the reporting module, allowing you to measure SLA metrics across the help desk over desired date ranges.

4. Multi-lingual user interface

The outgoing release (V4.4.5) supported 15 international languages, allowing help desk staff and end users to select their preferred language within their staff and end user interfaces, respectively.

Language packs are currently being developed to offer the same level of language support on V5. Therefore, Helpdesk Pilot will continue to remain a help desk product that can be deployed for international use, with language specific user interfaces. 

Many of our current Helpdesk Pilot users are assisting us with the language translation packs and we welcome support from other users, to add more international language support. All these languages will be available for selection in Helpdesk Pilot, so the more languages we integrate, the more flexibility we can provide to you and your end users. If you would like to contribute to providing a language translation, please let us know.

These enhancements are being integrated into Helpdesk Pilot as standard feature offerings and will be offered as free updates to existing V5 users, by the end of April. 

We’ll keep you updated via the blog, as these enhancements take shape.

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Tip of the week – The Message snippet

by Swarna Rethas — 10 Mar 11

Oh well, guess I missed a week in between and a tip in between. Will make up for it in the coming days, I say!

So, when an email comes into your help desk installation, the ticket appears along with the Ticket ID, Subject, the default status in your installation and the time stamp on the right (mouse over the Last updated area to get the exact timestamp!). A snippet of the body of the message is also shown below the subject. 

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The one new improvement in this feature from all older versions is that, the latest client reply is now shown in this message snippet instead of the original message always being shown there. So, imagine getting a short response from your client, and viewing the full message right on the Tickets View page. We believe this helps in reducing the time your staff spend viewing ticket updates and can sometimes even use the Quick reply feature to update the client right there. Like this, 

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Helpdesk Pilot at CeBIT, Day 5 – Pictures

by Vikram Bhaskar — 09 Mar 11

After months of preparation, working towards the release of V5 and our planned launch at CeBIT, the last few hours of our CeBIT 2011 experience were upon us.

CeBIT’s annual schedule is designed in such a way that day 5 always falls on a Saturday, to ensure that the general public gets a chance to visit and savour the immense tech-based products and services being exhibited. We were pleased to have a number of university students requesting for more information on Helpdesk Pilot, in a means to stay updated on growing trends in the software market. 

Towards the latter half of the day, there was clearly a more relaxed atmosphere across the hall as we and other exhibitors began to unwind and network with each other. We had Google Enterprise located right behind our stand, the folks from Shopware opposite us and the lovely ladies from Hermes right across the aisle from us.

In our 5 days at CeBIT 2011, we made some new friends, met a number of old friends and hopefully made a positive enough impact to drive further interest in Helpdesk Pilot. A truly worthwhile experience and we’re already looking ahead to CeBIT 2012!

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Helpdesk Pilot at CeBIT, Day 4 – Pictures

by Vikram Bhaskar — 09 Mar 11

Another fruitful day spent interacting with visitors, many of whom were representatives of businesses involved in providing IT services across the European region. Discussions after our demos took on a more technical theme and it was good to receive positive feedback on Helpdesk Pilot’s revamped architecture, including the technology on which the application is built.

We’ll be explaining more about the new architecture in a separate post, so do keep an eye out for that.

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Helpdesk Pilot at CeBIT, Day 3 – Pictures

by Vikram Bhaskar — 09 Mar 11

Our friends at Brand New have really done a great job in producing our first ever stop motion video, which portrays the concept of help desk management in a visually appealing manner.

Many businesses today just aren’t aware of the manner in which their incoming requests can be handled and so the need for a help desk management software may not be immediately apparent to them. We noticed that a number of visitors approached us right after they had viewed the “Helpdesk Pilot experience video”, requesting for a demo on how exactly requests can be managed more efficiently. 

We were elated when we met representatives of a German movie production company, who spent time outside our stand viewing the video with a smile on their faces. They may not be in the market for a help desk right now, but as a result of the video, they certainly know how a help desk can contribute to their business needs!

If you haven’t seen the video yet, check it out here!

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Helpdesk Pilot @ CeBIT, Day 2 – Pictures

by Vikram Bhaskar — 09 Mar 11

Hannover’s winter temperature dropped by a degree or two on Day 2 (March 2nd), which made for a rather chilly experience during our early morning walk from the Messe Noord tram station to Hall 6. 

Our day started off with visits from existing Helpdesk Pilot customers in Germany and it was a pleasure to be able to personally meet and interact. As the day progressed, we got busier with product demos and it was late in the afternoon when we realized we had skipped lunch. Following a short trip around the hall to evaluate available options we found an ice cream stall with a truly delightful dark chocolate offering. A blissfully rewarding meal indeed.

The stream of visitors certainly picked up on day 2 and it was evident that every exhibitor was kept busy. CeBIT attracts a global audience and we had visitors coming in from as far as North America, the Middle East as well as countries in Northern & Central Africa.

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Helpdesk Pilot @ CeBIT – Day 1, Pictures

by Shalin Jain — 02 Mar 11

Our first day at CeBIT 2011 got off to a great start.

Visitors to CeBIT began trickling in after 10:00am and from that point on, there was a significant amount of activity within Hall 6. Our new stop motion video, with voice overs in both English & German has been playing non-stop on 2 plasma screens at either side of our stand.

We’re quite happy at the manner in which groups of visitors have been drawn in by the theme of the video, which does well to highlight the core functionalities of Helpdesk Pilot.
One-on-one demos were provided to visitors, many of whom were being introduced to the concept of help desk management for the first time. Regardless of the type of business, every company has an inherent need to manage incoming requests more efficiently and the presence of a help desk solution caters to a number of important needs.

Day 1 at CeBIT 2011 was rewarding and we’re eagerly looking forward to Day 2! Have a look at some of the photos taken on Day 1.

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Tip of the week – The Red Dot

by Swarna Rethas — 23 Feb 11

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Remember The Red Dot episode from Seinfled, the greatest show ever? (Tenmiles has a serious bunch of Seinfeld fans too). Read on to see what our very own red dot in Helpdesk Pilot means.

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The red circle that may appear at the end of the ticket box, indicates that the last reply on the ticket has been sent by the customer. This can be particularly useful while going through the tickets on the Ticket view page to immediately identify those tickets which requires the staff’s attention. Once the ticket has been replied to by the staff, the red circle will go away and be replaced by a more soothing grey one. 

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Your staff can now go ahead and work towards attending to those tickets with the red dot, just by taking a glance at the tickets view page. 

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What’s New Series – Part 1: Dashboard – A great place to start

by Swarna Rethas — 21 Feb 11

It’s a great feeling to be able to share some of the new features that Helpdesk Pilot V5 offers. This series will cover some of the new features and functionalities of the product, along with side notes on what’s been planned for the future enhancement of each of these features. We start with the Dashboard page. 

When your help desk staff log in to the software every time, the Dashboard provides them some information about recent activities on the system with an emphasis on the tasks assigned to him or her. 

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The Tickets Overview section shows the overall state of the tickets in your helpdesk. Your help desk staff could work towards bringing down the count of each of these numbers. 

The Pending tickets shows a count of the tickets in your help desk, that are in pending state, in categories that the staff is a part of. Note, you could have any number of statuses in pending state.

The Assigned tickets shows a count of all the tickets in your help desk, that are assigned to the logged in staff user, and are in pending state.

The last number shows the number of tickets in pending state across the system and not just in the categories that the staff belongs to. Note, by default Critical is the highest priority order. You can add your own priorities and the one with the highest order will be shown in this section. 

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The Ticket Inflow, represented in the form of a line graph shows the number of incoming tickets over the last 7 days. The X-axis denotes the days and the Y-axis denotes the number of tickets. This shows the number of tickets that were created in your help desk on each day. You can zoom in further to view the break up of incoming tickets per day. 

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The two pie graphs, Tickets by Status and Tickets by Priority show a distribution of all the pending tickets in your system, split up by the various statuses and priorities in your help desk. Clicking on the pies in the status graph, will take the user to the tickets view filtered by the status clicked on. The same feature, for the Tickets by Priority graph, will be coming soon!

The Just In section shows the five most recent tickets that have been created in your help desk along with the name of the customer who created it. Clicking the refresh link at the bottom of the Just In section, updates the set of tickets right there. 

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The Recent Replies and Recent Private Notes shows the recent updates on tickets in the categories that the logged in staff has access to.

What’s more, you can reorder all of these sections on the page, as you please. Simply click and drag any of these sections around the page to view all this information in the order most relevant to you.

What’s coming up: A more comprehensive news feed of all other activity that has been performed on the help desk. Such as any new update on tickets (due date, moving a ticket to another category, tickets deleted etc), new reports created, new smart rules created and much more.

Do let us know what you think and leave us a comment! 
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Helpdesk Pilot at CeBit 2011. Come and visit us!

by Vikram Bhaskar — 15 Feb 11

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We’re exhibiting at CeBIT 2011!

CeBIT is the world’s leading ICT tradeshow and takes place this year in the beautiful city of Hannover, Germany from March 1-5. 

We’ll be there, exhibiting Helpdesk Pilot, meeting with our customers from across the region and offering product demonstrations of the latest V5 release, our most extensive Helpdesk Pilot release till date.

V5 incorporates a number of amazing new features and we’ll be available at CeBIT 2011 to personally interact with end users and highlight all the new capabilities that Helpdesk Pilot has to offer.

We’d love to extend an invitation to you, to visit CeBIT 2011 and drop by our stand, H08 in Hall 6.

If you’re in the area and keen on visiting CeBIT 2011, please let us know and we’d be happy to provide you with a free 1-day pass. 

We look forward to seeing you there!

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