EXPLORE FEATURES |
Team Helpdesk
system is engineered and
designed from the ground-up using current
Microsoft technologies
and keeping into consideration, the usability aspect of
Outlook that many of us are already familiar
with. Attention to detail is a central
philosophy, and is tightly engraved on every bit
of Team Helpdesk processes and user-interfaces.
The following
topics discuss some of the important aspects of
Team Helpdesk system, and how these aid helpdesk
technicians and managers in performing their
tasks productively and efficiently to support
ever-growing issues/queries from end-users:
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Helpdesk ticketing right inside your Outlook |
Your team members all use Outlook extensively -
all day, every day for email communications,
appointments, contacts, tasks etc. When they
have relied that heavily on Outlook, why not let
them support tickets or calls in Outlook,
without ever leaving Outlook? When you have your
address books, mailboxes and public folders
stored on a central Exchange server, why would
one want to use another unfamiliar, expensive
application with external database, just
to log in tickets?
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Team
Helpdesk extends your Outlook as an ideal
platform to collect, track and
resolve
trouble tickets while sharing this
information with your entire team, all with
ease. By adding help desk
functionalities and automation in Outlook,
Team Helpdesk enables technicians and support
agents to work with support request in
the same way they do with emails.
Moreover, Team
Helpdesk leverages your existing
Microsoft resources such as MS Exchange server,
Internet Information Server (IIS), Active Directory etc, and hence, no
specialized skills or software or training are required.
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Log in cases from varied sources |
Support Cases can be
generated from diverse source such as incoming
emails, appointments, tasks,
phone calls, web
forms etc. and are available instantly to all
your team members. |
Support cases generation can be
automated by allowing Team Helpdesk system to
monitor any number of mail-enabled public
folders or shared mailboxes. This is particular
useful when you have a dedicated support mailbox
account (for example
support@yourcompany.com).
Additionally, caller information can
be automatically scanned and saved to the caller
list for CRM purpose.
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Generate
support
cases from
Incoming
emails on the fly |
When a service request email is received, it
needs to be converted into a trouble ticket or
service work order. In typical service desk
environment where the email is the main medium
of correspondence, there is a feel of a
'disconnect' between the technicians and the
ticket tracking system. The reason is that a
technician has to manually create and log in new
support case from email and this can be a major
drawback if there is considerable emails
traffic. It can increase response time affecting
the overall performance of the help desk.
Team Helpdesk can be
configured to intercept incoming emails from any
number of shared mailboxes and mail-enabled
public folders and automatically generate
support cases out of the emails. Processed
emails then can be moved to another folder or
can be moved altogether to the Team Helpdesk
email history folder. Contact information is
automatically populated and the summary and
description fields are filled in. If a default
problem category or type, technician and service
level (SLA) are associated with this monitored
folder or mailbox, Team Helpdesk would
automatically assigned the values for these
fields to the newly generated case.
Take this
4 minutes video tour

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Support Request form in Outlook |
The support request form in
Outlook is especially
designed to log in new case and view existing
ones in the Outlook folder. Information catering
to the case, caller, technician, problems etc.
are laid out in a very intuitive way.
There are
various sections in the form such as time spent,
email history, notes, assets,
custom fields and
related cases that technicians can easily
navigate and work upon. Contact fields are accompanied
by relevant buttons for making quick
correspondence to the contact such as email,
phone calls or simply sending SMS.
Fields such as problem category, type, status
and department are available in drop down format
(configurable by the helpdesk manager) so as to
limit the choice the technician can select for
such fields.
Managers can assign multiple technicians to a
particular case if the scope of the problem
extends beyond the capability of a technician.
When setting due date of the case, the assigner
can choose to lookup for an appropriate schedule
in the technician's calendar (can be personal or
a public calendar). Automatic notification
messages (either via email or SMS) are sent out
immediately to the concerned technicians once
the case is assigned or a due date is specified
or changed. Optionally, a due date appointment
or task can also be added to the personal
mailbox of the technicians.
From directly in the case form, a technician can
quickly browse, preview and select a knowledge
base article or predefined reply and insert a
relevant solution directly to the case problem
description or make a quick reply to the caller.
When logging in a new phone case, an existing
caller, either from the caller list or from
global address list (GAL) can be selected and it
will automatically populate all other available caller
fields such as address, phone number, company
etc. |

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Conversation
Threading - Get the Complete Picture |
Most support cases cannot be closed within a
single e-mail and response. Feedback from the
caller and suggestions from the respective
technicians often occur over multiple
request-response emails. Moreover, different
members from the support teams may provide
resolutions during the course of the request.
So, in practical scenario, a support case might
have various e-mail versions of the resolution
steps, making it cumbersome to get a complete
picture of responses and resolution.
With the conversation threading feature, Team
Helpdesk captures the complete course of the
conversation chronologically, from all email
communications received or sent (including those
automated notifications sent to caller and
technicians in due course). The end result is a
consolidated view where all the responses to a
support request are collated together. Redundant
and repeated conversations are
filtered out to present only the relevant
communications.

This eases
the task of the helpdesk and minimizes repeating
what has already been done, while keeping
support team members to stay on the track.
Another advantage is
it allows the technician to quickly glimpse
through the thread and get a complete overview
on the responses in chronological order and
resolution applied to the particular support
request, something which is hard to extract from
viewing multiple email responses.
Take this 6 minutes video tour

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Assign technicians to cases
on the fly |
Why worry and take the extra
manual steps to assign new generated cases with
an appropriate technician? Deciding and choosing
a technician to attend to a support request can
be a bit of work for helpdesk managers. This not
only increases response time, but also delayed
resolution to the problem. Would not it be nice
if the helpdesk system can automatically route
support request to the appropriate technician
who has the relevant skill to resolved it?
Team Helpdesk system uses intelligent logic to determine
which technical support operator is assigned to
a new service request case. For example, help
desk manager can assign a default technician to
each caller in the Team Helpdesk callers list,
thereby allowing for automatic assignment of
that particular technician when such new service
request comes from the specific caller.
Default technician associated and linked to a
company

Default technician associated
and linked to a problem type

Another way of dynamic assignment
is by associating a particular mail-enabled
public folder or mailbox with a technician, such
that, support cases generated out of incoming
support request emails from that particular
folder or mailbox, would automatically have the
associated technician assigned. As a
consequence, Team Helpdesk will send out
notification emails and SMS, to the assigned
technician automatically.
Default technician associated and
linked to a mailbox

Manager
can also associate a default technician to each
problem type in the Team Helpdesk problems list,
so that when end-user submits a new support
request via web form, Team Helpdesk will
automatically assign the associated technician
of the selected problem type. Hence, with
certain association of problems and callers
prior in the Team Helpdesk lists, help desk
managers can always get the right agent on the
job.
This automation allows
managers to get rid of manual assignment, and
helps to improve the efficiency, and
response
time of your helpdesk team.
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Find information at your
finger tips |
So you have a repository of support request
cases logged into an exchange folder. As the
number of logged cases multiplies, finding the
right information at the time of need is crucial
for helpdesk team.
Search the support
cases in the ongoing and resolved folders for
cases that meet a user
specified criteria or keywords.
Any occurrence of these keywords are searched in
all fields, including the description field.
A variety of search
parameters are predefined to help you find your
cases easily and quickly. You can also limit the
search to your assigned cases only by choosing 'My Cases'
scope. You can directly reply to existing
case, or send a KB, or re-open, close (mark
complete) or print or export cases to files.

Time Period: Choose a time
period from the followings under which the
search will be confined:
Supported filters - Any,
Today,
Yesterday,
Tomorrow,
This week,
Last Week,
Next Week,
This Month,
Last Month,
Next Month,
This Year,
Last Year,
Date Range...,
On
Report Type: Choose a report type from
the predefined ones below:
Supported Filters:
Any
Cases Created
Cases Resolved
Cases Ongoing
Cases Worked
Cases Due
Cases Response Date
Cases unassigned
Cases lapsed - Due Time
Cases lapsed - Response Time
Cases with SLA Breach - Due Date
Cases with SLA Breach - Response Date
Cases with no Due Date
Cases with no Response Date
Cases with no Service Level
Cases with no Caller
Search By: Further refine the search
by filtering through keywords or using one
of the following helpdesk fields -
Technicians, Status, Problem, Service level,
Caller, Department, Company, Priority,
Origin, Assets or Author.
Group By: You can choose to group the
cases either with: Technicians, Status,
Problem Category, Problem Type, Service
level, Caller, Department, Company,
Priority, Origin, Assets or Author.
Each case in the search result is color
coded to reflect the current state of the
case such as if it ongoing, completed, over
due or has breached SLA. Now, you can easily
recognize which cases require the utmost
attention, and plan actions and allocate
resources accordingly.
Lastly, you are free to choose
which particular helpdesk fields/columns
show up in the search result and report.
Just click the 'Fields' button, and choose
the wanted columns to include.
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Use a
HTTP gateway or Skype for sending SMS |
Short Message Service or
popularly known by its acronym as SMS, is used
by billions of people and is the most pervasive
use of data on mobile phones. SMS is convenient
and cost effective for a number of reasons. When
compared with the cost of airtime for voice
calls or wireless web access, SMS is a real
bargain and messages are immediately delivered
directly to your phone.
Hence, due to the
various advantages, it is no wonder that
Team Helpdesk supports SMS messaging just as it
supports emails! SMS alerts can be automatically
dispatched to callers or technicians based on
certain help desk events such as when case is
resolved or when a case is assigned to a
technician.
There are three ways in
Team Helpdesk to support SMS messaging
1) Using a SMS HTTP
gateway provider
- Many SMS providers
offer simple HTTP SMS posting, allowing one to
send SMS text messages directly through their
gateways. Sending SMS via internet frees the
support team from having a cellular carrier and
individual mobile phones. Configuring support
for a HTTP gateway in Team Helpdesk is very easy.
Just select a provider (from a list) and input
the connection URL and user credentials and you
are ready!

2) Using Skype (version 2.5 and above) -
If technicians have Skype installed and has credit,
Team Helpdesk
can set to send SMS directly through Skype. This functionality
is done programmatically, which means, Skype is
seamlessly integrated with Team Helpdesk. The
technicians won't even notice the Skype is being
used during the whole process of SMS messaging.

3) Using an
Email to SMS Gateway service
- If you have an
email to SMS gateway service, you can set Team
Helpdesk to route SMS alerts to the mobile
device of callers/technicians.
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Send automatic notifications
and alerts |
Automatic email notification
and SMS alerts are essential for keeping callers
and technicians abreast with the progress and
status of the case.
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Team Helpdesk offers a whole
lot of notification options for different
helpdesk events
such as when a case is created, changed or
resolved, or when a technician is assigned to
the case, or when the due date has lapsed etc.
Automatic emails and SMS alerts are send out directly when a
relevant event occurs and the whole exercise is
transparent to the technicians.
Technicians are not even required to be working
on the Cases folder. In fact, as long as
Microsoft Outlook is running, Team Helpdesk
system is active i.e., it is processing requests
and automating various helpdesk tasks such as
sending out notification emails and SMS alerts.
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Technician Web Access (TWA) |
The Internet is about empowerment, ease-of-use,
reach and affordability. It is about making
communications and operations easier and more
open. It is why Team Helpdesk for Outlook
provides a web access interface for technicians
to work on support cases. The benefits for such
as web based front are many.
For remote
technicians who cannot access and work on
support cases in the public folder or shared
mailbox, Team Helpdesk provides them with an
easy web interface accessible through a web
browser on the internet. |

The Team Helpdesk
web access is an AJAX enabled ASP.NET 2.0
application and provides a rich set of tools and
interactivity with the live data in the exchange
folder. Technicians with valid web access rights
will be prompted to enter user credential when
logging in to the website.

Each technician can choose to access only their
cases, or load other cases based on a
search criteria such as case ID, caller or other technician.
Existing email replies from the caller
can be read, replied or forwarded, all from the
comfort of the web browser.
Most of the functionalities available to
technicians via Outlook are also available on
the web access. Create new case,
work on
existing case and close, re-open or
delete case
directly from within the web access form.

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Knowledge base |
A knowledge base
repository acts as an effective
knowledge sharing medium,
boosting support productivity by leveraging collective knowledge and providing invaluable KB
Articles to support technicians in a snap! It also
helps in improving the average "First Call
Resolution" timing significantly, as technicians
find resolution to problems quickly. |
Team Helpdesk
system
includes an inbuilt Knowledge Base folder that allows your helpdesk team to
document best practices and solutions to common
problems. Any support case is eligible to become
flagged as an KB item and thus, a technician
recognizing a repetitive support issue can
easily flag a resolved case as a knowledge article.

It is very easy to use the
knowledge base in Outlook. A Question and Answer
format is used to intuitively display KB
items. Each item may have any number
of file attachments associated, rich-text
elements, and hyperlinks to other web pages. All
items are tagged with a related problem
category and problem type, so it is easy to find
a particular resolution at time of needs.
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When
deploying the Customer Web Service (CWS)
website, the same internal
knowledge base articles are published to the
website so that end-users and customers
experiencing technical challenges can
self-service the answer to their problem
by accessing the web-based knowledge base. Once
on the Knowledge Base web interface, end-users
may click through the tiered problem categories
and types to find articles they are
looking for. Self-Service articles may also be
searched via keywords.

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Customer Service
website |
Customer
service has taken center stage recently
in response to highly competitive market
conditions and an improved understanding
of the true value of a customer.
Successful organizations are using the
Internet to gain competitive advantage
by offering customers the ability to
perform post-transaction activities
online, and by doing so are improving
customer satisfaction, strengthening
their value propositions, and gaining
deeper insights into customers needs. |

The Customer Web
Service (CWS) is a collection of ASP.NET
server-side application files that cater
to the helpdesk end users on the web. It
consists of a structured support request
submission web-form, a support case
status querying form and a self-service
knowledge base.

The CWS site
also includes an exclusive Caller Web
Access (CWA) feature with which existing
callers can login to track the progress
and status of their support cases. They
can also submit new requests,
withdraw,
escalate ongoing support cases, or
re-open closed cases.
Allowing callers to have access to their
helpdesk cases through the comfort of a
web browser, not only provide
self-served information exchange in
matter of seconds, but also relieves the
helpdesk staffs from diverting their
valuable time in replying to
non-critical calls and emails back and
forth with the callers. These instead
help the helpdesk to concentrate on its
critical goals and missions. |
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Asset Tracking & Management |
Associating problems and
incidences with actual hardware and software
inventory is crucial to maintaining proper
preventative incident management and finding the
core problem to repetitive issue or problem that
is plaguing a large group of end-users. |
Team Helpdesk provides a means for the technician
(in Outlook and web) or the customer (via web
form) to create a hard-link between a
troubled asset and a case.
The asset management module within the Team
Helpdesk
system provides a centralized repository
for all of your organization's hardware and
software inventory. An asset may be cataloged
and categorized by Asset Types. All the asset
fields except for the asset name can re-titled
to adapt and take any of your organization's
intrinsic properties of inventories such as
association with Make, I.P. Address or Model
information; providing invaluable information
directly from trouble case to the technicians
resolving the support request.
Technicians can easily view every problem and
incident ever reported on a specific asset. In
Outlook, the support case form has a special tab for
assets that not only shows the asset details,
but also relevant cases that are associated with
the same asset problem.

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Summary Reports and
Statistics - Reporting, Charting, and
Data Analysis |
With the integrated Online Line Analytical
Processing (OLAP) tool, helpdesk managers can
analyze the support request data in
multidimensional view (in grids, charts and
graphs) and extract mission critical information
and intelligence that will enable better
decision- in your helpdesk and organization.
With summary reports, managers
can generate summarized reports on support cases
based on different time interval - today,
yesterday, this week, this month, last month,
this year, last year or own date range. Summary
reports provide an overview about when cases are
logged, due, worked and closed over a period of
time.

The inbuilt
statistical tool in Team Helpdesk system allows displaying
support cases data from your exchange folders to
multidimensional data structures in grids, charts and graphs and
support most common operations such as pivoting,
drill down/slice and dice, filtering etc. This
gives managers a unique opportunity to analyze
their helpdesk data - slice and dice performance
data to seek opportunity, drill down into
trouble spots to reinforce and strengthen
policies.
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It also provides various inbuilt reports specific to
Team Helpdesk cases.
Helpdesk managers can also easily
create and save their user-defined reports for
future references. Any
report, chart, grid or graph can be saved to PDF, images, web pages or
printed.
Therefore, in addition to providing a
mechanism to resolve customer issues, Team
Helpdesk gives senior IT managers with
statistical information and understanding that
aid in the decision-making process concerning
the whole of help desk, and the organization as
a whole. With such arrays of information, the
organization can reengineer their help desk
processes, reinforce resources and forecast
problem areas and exploit all these factors for
competitive advantage. |
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Outlook Views |
The Outlook views are the primary interface with
which most technicians will scan through for
relevant cases when they work on the
Team Helpdesk folders. Views are powerful way to
organize support cases through
grouping, sorting and filtering. Hence, it
is no wonder that Team Helpdesk extends the power
and flexibility of Outlook views to help desk to
provide better intelligence and understanding
on information when it is required the most!
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Based on different needs and scopes, technicians
can switch to any pre-defined cases view. For
example when, the problem category-problem type
view is very useful when we want group cases on
line of problems in hierarchical tree, so that
it is easy to have a summarized information as
which problem type has the maximum and minimum
cases. Similarly, a manager can have a
generalized information on the case life span (e.g,
the day it was created to the day it was
resolved) in a timeline view by choosing one of
the calendar view. By default, Team Helpdesk
provides more than 30 views, catering to
all help desk requirement scenarios and scopes.
Support cases grouped by problem category and
further sub-grouped by problem type

Support cases grouped by
technicians

The Team Helpdesk views can be modified to suit
the team's taste and fields requirements. If you
are an Outlook expert, you can even create new
views and publish them for all your team in the
folder. All Team Helpdesk views are organized in
a way that they bring out some sense out of the
cases - patterns, associations, occurrences or
dependencies. But sometime, a technician would
want to refine the view by means of keyword
search on any fields. With the simple and
advanced search options available with
Team Helpdesk right in Outlook, you are never
handicap from the finding the right information
in right time. |
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New!
Take a video tour |
Quickly learn how to install,
configure and work with Team
Helpdesk and how to get the most out
of your support team! |
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