Looking ahead to 2012



It’s that time of the year again, when we look at the calendar and count down the last few days of the year, eagerly looking forward to ushering in a new one. There’s an enticing feeling that comes about, when you know a new year is upon you and that it’s the right time to wipe the slate clean and start afresh.

2011 for us, was a big year.

We launched the fifth major release of Helpdesk Pilot this year, marking V5 as the most significant update to the product ever. It wasn’t just an update, but a new avatar of our help desk management software, as we rebuilt the product on a new architecture with significant new features and capabilities over it.

We’ve been receiving great feedback from all our users and it’s helped us in channeling our development roadmap for the next year. During 2011, we were able to consistently roll out new features and enhancements on a monthly basis, which has progressively improved the capabilities that Helpdesk Pilot has to offer.

Support teams can manage their performance goals as a part of their service offering, create and maintain work orders, cater to tickets efficiently whilst out on the field, and more.

Our Enterprise Edition has been a winner in numerous large scale help desk deployments across the USA & Europe, both for its feature packed status as well as its affordability. As more and more businesses look to trim costs but continue to maintain, and excel, in core areas such as support services, Helpdesk Pilot remains a powerful product to help them achieve that.

We can’t wait to bring more powerful capabilities your way, to empower your support services even more. It’s been a great year so far and we’re sure 2012’s going to be even better.

Thanks for supporting us and being a part of this growth. From all of us at Tenmiles, here’s wishing you a Merry Christmas and a rocking new year!



Perform ticket-level actions when replying to end users via email



Till now, 2 way email integration has allowed for staff responses to be added on a ticket, by merely replying to the notifications that staff members receive via email. This is beneficial for staff members or help desk agents in the field, when it may be difficult for them to actually make use of the web interface, to stay updated of new tickets and respond where needed.

With email being directed to their mobile devices, staff responses via email ensure that:

– the ticket within Helpdesk Pilot is appended with the update

and

– the response is sent to the end user, as an email

Helpdesk Pilot is now even more mobile-device friendly, as staff can now perform ticket level actions when replying to end users, via email. These actions include changing a ticket’s status, priority or the assignee (staff member to whom the ticket is assigned).

Be it via a Blackberry, iPhone, Android or any other mobile device capable of receiving and sending emails, staff members need to make use of a simple set of tags to perform these actions:

@@set [action]@@

where [action] could consist of a combination of status, priority or assignee changes.

Let’s have a look at how a ticket’s status can be changed, through this example.

John Doe sends in a request and Pulkit Sankhla (from the Helpdesk Pilot Team) is notified of this ticket via his iPhone, since he’s currently on the move.

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If Pulkit had accessed this ticket via his staff interface, this is how the ticket would have been displayed, in it’s current NEW status:

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Now, Pulkit’s keen on responding to John as early as possible, so he taps Reply on his iPhone and begins the response with the action tag:

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The tag has to be inserted in the first line of the response, following which the rest of the message can be typed out. Pulkit then sends the response, which gets routed through Helpdesk Pilot and then onto the customer. Helpdesk Pilot will strip the first line of the response, thereby removing the action tag and ensuring that the customer receives only the actual message.

If we now look at the ticket display, within the staff interface, we can see that the reply has been appended (after removing the action tag from the message body) and the status changed to OPEN.

In such a way, the tag used can be extended to include status, priority and assignee, as required. For more details on how these tags can be used, please visit the Notifications page within your admin’s Manage section, or simply get in touch with us.

The ability to perform ticket level actions via email offers more capabilities to field agents and makes for more efficient ticket management, when on the move. Leave a comment and let us know what you think of it!



Get a quick overview of the benefits that Helpdesk Pilot has to offer



On the lookout for a help desk management software and pressed for time?

We’ve put together a short presentation that highlights the key features that Helpdesk Pilot provides, along with an indication on how they could potentially fit in line with your workflows.

A minute or two is all you need to browse through this overview, for a detailed insight on Helpdesk Pilot.

If you have any specific queries with regards to requirements that you’d like to implement, feel free to get in touch with us. We’d love to chat and learn more of your needs.

 



How to : Manage your Contacts



A recent feature addition now provides you with the ability to view all help desk contacts and manage their individual profiles.

Any client, customer, end user or ticket requestor is essentially a contact and each contact is identified on the help desk by their unique email ID. To access the Contacts Manager within Helpdesk Pilot, log in to your admin/staff interface and click on the “Contacts” tab.

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Contacts are initially displayed in a list format, detailing the Name, Email Address and the number of tickets that a specific contact has submitted till date. Clicking on the contact’s name will bring up a complete profile along with their ticket history:

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You’ll probably notice a sense of familiarity when viewing a client’s profile, since it displays key information in a similar format as the Dashboard. Through the contact’s profile, you can view :

– all tickets that a contact has submitted till date

– additional information linked to a contact via any client custom fields that you’ve set up. This could include details such as the contact’s Company Name, Phone Number, etc. 

– the most recent tickets that have been submitted, along with a snapshot of important ticket details such as Assignee, Priority & the presence (or absence) of The Red Dot.

In the event a contact’s details need to be updated, merely click on the “Edit” link along side the Basic & Additional Information sections.

The Contacts Manager, therefore, serves as a simple means to both maintain contact profiles and easily filter through to tickets submitted by a specific content. 

 

 

 



Tip of the week – Selecting a color for your custom status



Using custom statuses, you can replicate your business processes as closely as possible and more efficiently identify tickets in your help desk. Being able to visually identify a ticket’s status through a brief glance is aided with the custom colour options for each status that you create.

The add/edit status form allows you to define a preferred color for the status, aside from other status related settings. Till recently, the hexadecimal HTML color code had to be entered to have the relevant color assigned to that status.

We’ve now made it even easier to select a color for any custom status that you create. Simply enter the name of the color you wish to use for the status and you’ll see it appear right alongside the color field. (If you still prefer to use HTML codes, you can!)

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In this example, the “Open” status has been set to be displayed in “Blue”. Any tickets in the queue that are placed in the “Open” status can then be visually identified, by merely looking at the status color.

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With regular help desk usage, it’s quite natural to identify a ticket by glancing at the status color rather than the status name itself. Such visual associations then make it easier to navigate through one’s ticket queue and easily stay abreast of the current state of any ticket.

Are you using custom statuses? Let us know. 



Brand your help desk



Did you know that Helpdesk Pilot is made up of two separate web interfaces?

1. The Staff interface, which your help desk staff would use to view and respond to tickets

2. The End User interface, which your end users/customers would use to submit new tickets and view responses to tickets they’ve raised in the past

Given the ability to customize the request submission forms for each of your categories, the end user interface serves as a comprehensive ticket management portal and represents your help desk’s online image.

With that in mind, we’re sure you’d want your end users to have the comfort of knowing that they’re on familiar ground when they access your help desk. A standard feature on Helpdesk Pilot allows you to upload your corporate logo and brand the help desk in your name.

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If you’re currently evaluating Helpdesk Pilot by way of our free trial, you can brand the staff & end user interfaces right away! Navigate to the General Settings page (within the Manage tab) to get started!

Yet another step in ensuring your help desk reflects your corporate image!



Helpdesk Pilot at CeBIT, Day 5 – Pictures



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



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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What’s kept us busy



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Ladies & Gentlemen,

It gives us immense pleasure to introduce you to Helpdesk Pilot, V5. 

V5 represents the most feature rich and capable Helpdesk Pilot release till date, building on the aims and objectives of our development efforts ever since Helpdesk Pilot was first conceived in 2005.

Over the last year, we’ve collected feedback from our valued clients across the world and studied their help desk requirements to understand the core capabilities that a help desk management application should ideally be able to deliver on. All this feedback was pooled in to our development resources and we’re excited about the significant capabilities that Helpdesk Pilot now has to offer.

V5 offers a tremendous number of new features and enhancements. Some of the key highlights include:

  • an all-new reporting architecture, allowing for custom reports to be built on-the-fly using any combination of data sources across the help desk
  • a revamped user interface, offering a more flexible working environment to help desk staff
  • more customizable options, to bring your help desk in line with your business processes

For a detailed look at what V5 has to offer, please visit the features page.

Helpdesk Pilot V5 is ready to be shipped against all new purchases made, beginning today. 

For existing users of Helpdesk Pilot (with valid support/upgrade contracts), we are planning a data migration cycle to allow you to move to V5 and will be releasing a separate post on this shortly. In addition, we will be communicating with you individually to update you on this process. (Migration cycles will take place during the month of April)

We invite you to browse through our revamped site, sign up for a free trial and savour the all-new Helpdesk Pilot. 

V5 is just the beginning. There are even greater things in store for Helpdesk Pilot and we look forward to bringing them your way.

Cheers!

 



V4.4.5 Update. Now available.



Great news!

We’ve just rolled out the latest update to Helpdesk Pilot, Version 4.4.5.

Aside from overall enhancements and better workflows, V 4.4.5 incorporates a number of new features, that are bound to add even more efficiency to your help desk operations, such as:

2 way email parsing
Till recently, help desk staff would need to access their relevant Admin/Staff Panels to view and respond to tickets.

With the latest release, your help desk staff can now respond to tickets directly by replying to the staff notifications they receive. Considering the increasing popularity of having emails pushed to a mobile device, such as Blackberry or iPhone, your help desk staff will now be able to reply to tickets while on the move.

You have to admit, that’s a pretty cool feature to have, right?

Multiple member participation
Often, a customer may CC multiple recipients in an email that he/she sends in to your help desk. A ticket would be created, identifying the Mail Sender as the Customer and all communication between your help desk and that particular customer would be appended to the ticket in Helpdesk Pilot.

However, responses sent in from any of the CC’d recipients would create new tickets.

Version 4.4.5 takes care of that by allowing multiple participants on a single ticket. As long as the ticket ID is present in the email’s subject field, Helpdesk Pilot will append responses from any of the recipients (in the CC/To field of the customer’s initial email) to the ticket.

If you’re making a purchase now, you’ll be shipped the latest release.

Existing customers can download the upgrade by accessing their accounts on the Priority Support Portal. (Please check your inbox for an email from The Helpdesk Pilot Team with details on how to upgrade your current installation)