I just searched Google and there are over 42 million results for a search on "Web2.0". In contrast, a search for "Win2.0" returns less than 600 results, interestingly none of which are in the context of "Web2.0"! So, perhaps we will coin the term here.

I have spent a number of years delivering web-based applications. This helps develop a perspective of the potential to crossover web and windows concepts and vice versa. Having closely followed "Web2.0" develop in the web space, a clear view has been developed of which concepts can be applied to the Target Helpdesk application. One example will be calendar summaries just as you see in blogs where the days of the month set in bold where an entry exists. Another will be tag clouds. These will be useful to get a "feeling" for common themes running through tickets etc. Another will be moving the knowledgebase towards that of a wiki. However, first and foremost will be search.

Why search? The search facilities on Target Helpdesk do what they should. That is, they return results based on keywords etc. But then, that is just like other helpdesk software and we aim to differentiate and be superior to other helpdesk software! So what we wanted to do is home in on search and deliver more.

Nowadays, expectations of search is that of speed and relevancy, originating from Google. We have broken this down into two parts, a mechanism to return results at high speed and an algorithm for relevancy. We will introduce in the results "Ticket Rank" that will indicate relevancy. This is analogous to that of Google "Page Rank".

However, "Ticket Rank" will have an added dimension. This will be the relevancy to the person performing the search. We introduce this because there is no anonymity using the Target Helpdesk!

The new search will be released with the first version of our .NET2 build (v2.7), that is scheduled for September 2007 and naturally we will be refining the mechanism and algorithm in the meantime. Of course, we will also introduce the search to the web portal.

This will be a really exciting enhancement to Target Helpdesk. With successful results relevancy in super-fast time, the search box will likely become your most used feature for accessing tickets!

M.