Instructions in an email

Not every feature Target Helpdesk Software develop is well publicised or sold. One such feature is “Email instructions” which are commands you can send by email to control the state of a request in the system.

So, as well as your clients being able to email your support mail account and Target Helpdesk conveniently converting that email to a request in the system routed through to a tech according to the workflow you have setup, techs can also send commands by email to update those requests.

Obviously, a tech can reply to an alert in order to update the notes of an incident. What we have used internally at Target Helpdesk Software for convenience when using a mobile device, is to send a command such as “Assignee:Shirley” to reassign a request to Shirley or “Status:Closed” to close an incident. A useful one is to log time on a request which can be done simply by saying “Time:1 hour” to log an hour of time for myself against a request.

Whenever Target Helpdesk recognises an email instruction, it parses the command whilst recording the email against the request. Some commands such as the time logging can optionally have narrative on the second line to record in your timesheet what the activity was.

Using email instructions is great for conveniently updating requests from your desktop or mobile device when not at your desk and also great for achieving those response targets when mobile.

Take a look at the help here for more on Target Helpdesk Email Instructions.

Ticket Management

·         Notes editor – for administrators to edit ticket notes

·         Improved Notes view design for easier viewing of tickets with many notes

·         Context menu on ticket notes list offering privacy setting control (to administrators), note sort options (which is a remembered preference) and copy-to-clipboard)

·         Submit request and follow-up in a single action, for even faster ticket entry where a follow-up might be given on the spot

·         Team Queue visibility – when looking at your “open” tickets for example, you will also be able to see the “open” tickets in queues where you are a member

·         Ticket Group Management – for grouping problems and processing group actions; update multiple tickets in a single action

·         During ticket review, administrators can now change the originating requestor of a ticket, with full auditability

·         Ticket attributes now include Impact and Urgency ratings giving you extended ability to achieve ITIL compliance as well as enhanced classification of tickets

·         Scheduled tickets lets you setup a ticket to be created on a periodic basis, great for tracking those daily, weekly and monthly tasks

Email Management

·         Multiple inbound/outbound mailboxes – for inbound email processing and email sending

·         “Send email” facility now features a great multi-function attachment button. Attach files as normal or the drop-down options on the button allow you to attach whatever is on the clipboard to the email as an attachment. Also, you can select to add the ticket attachments to the email. These single action options make for improved productivity and ease-of-use.

·         Canned email templates can now be pre-populated with the ticket attachments so if you want to enforce the process of including all attachment history, just set the indicator in canned email setup.

·         When reviewing a summary list, you can now use the righ-click context menu to send an email without even opening the ticket.

·         HTML email composing no longer relies on Internet Explorer and is now completely .NET framework managed providing increased performance

·         HTML emails now include a spell check facility that supports a number of languages including UK English, US English, Dutch, German, French and Spanish

Service Level Management

·         SLA by keywords – you can now specify keywords including email addresses that should activate a service level – useful as an additional call routing method

 ·         Stop-The-Clock – useful for tracking the time when a ticket is out of the helpdesk’s hands – so does not affect their SLA achievements

·         TicketWatch control – set clients to receive email notification when a ticket is created or receive all notifications that the assignee receives

·         During ticket review, administrators can now change the assigned SLA, with full auditability.

Active Directory Integration

·         Active Directory account unlocking facility from within a ticket

·         Active Directory account password reset facility from within a ticket

·         Login to Target Helpdesk using Active Directory authentication – no need for a separate account

·         End-users can now login to the Web Portal using their Active Directory account credentials, even if they have never logged in to the Web Portal previously

Workflow Management

·         Workflow tickets – allows you to define a series of tickets to be sequentially carried out to achieve a particular job

Management Report Analysis

·         Management Matrix trend analysis useful to identify busy periods on the helpdesk across the month, quarter and year

·         LiveReports Board lets you desgin your own dashboard using pre-configured report queries. Add both charts and data grids to your board which can be printed, exported and emailed

Web Portal

·         Privacy control – Notes privacy is now available so you can pick and choose which notes your end users can see when using the Web Portal Self-Service facility

·         Web Portal “Self-Register” facility for end-users to sign-up for access account themselves

·         Web Portal “Forgot Password” facility so end users can obtain their login details

·         Client Web Portal activity logging history available on the contact card when logging or reviewing a client ticket. See the “Web History” tab on the contact card to to see what kb articles the client has viewed and downloaded

Asset Management

·         Asset history is now available directly within the ticket both when logging or updating a ticket. Just click on the History tab which already also contains ticket history for the client requestor and the organisation as a whole

Knowledge Management

·          Email kb articles with ease; just locate the kb article using the powerful live search or KB search and click on “Email KB” to have the kb article and attachments composed in an email ready to send

New Products

We are coinciding the release of Version 3 of Target Helpdesk with the introduction of 3 great new complimentart products that will further enhance any customer support facing operation

·         Surveys – gain important insight into your customer service levels, request further information with checklists on common issues and gain feedback on how you are doing

·         LiveReports Designer – get the information you want reported as charts or grids with an easy-to-use designer interface giving direct access to all information in the Target Helpdesk database

·         Report Server – Run a Crystal-based BusinessReport or a LiveReport and with one-click schedule that report to be generated and sent to anyone by email in the format you want, whenever you want. Consider this, have a report of work-in-progress sent to each customer automatically every Monday morning

Version 3 is due for general release on 1st August 2008. This is an exciting release so be sure to mark this date on your calendar and be ready.