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Messages - tfs

#316
God bless our farmers!!!

Here's my onions from last year... I grew about 300 of them.  Though for me it's just a hobby... as it is for you digitally.   :)
#317
Quote from: [FailSafe] on February 23, 2010, 07:03:07 PM
Also, thanks tfs for your reply. :) I like the "Air Traffic Controller title". Are there any other titles that you give each other at work?

Not in mixed company.   ;D
#318
Understood completely that building a new airplane starts with a pair of wings and a fuselage.  :)  I'm very excited to be here to watch you guys take off.  I just wanted to make sure to plant a few idea seeds early for the things that I like about our existing help desk, because if they're taken into account early then it's easier to shoehorn them in later.  :)

Once you do make it to Beta I'd be glad to be a part of that.  At any give time I've got half a dozen test forums running in various subdomains.  Something that excites me about where you're at with SimpleDesk... you are in a position to use your own product (SimpleDesk) in the role of keeping track of the support and production of your product.  I hope you use that business model.  Use SimpleDesk as the primary tool for testers and users to report and track issues with SimpleDesk.  I've found that when a developer is also a user, things get done.

Edit: Fixed a typo
#319
We each have an email %username%@companyname, as well as an email address for support@companyname, which is currently forwarded to me since I'm the first line of defense, or the "Air Traffic Controller" as we like to call it.

We're a small company, and because of how specialized our niche is, our volume is pretty low.  About 1-4 tickets on a regular day.  We also use the tickets for other stuff, such as if we're working on a particular project for a customer.

When things are slow I sometimes cold call clients who haven't used the ticket system recently to remind them that the tickets are there for more than trouble.  If they just have a question they want answered they can fill out a ticket.  They're paying us a yearly maintenance fee for ongoing support, and when we send them that bill at the end of the year I want the person who opens the bill to remember how nice it was for them to have access to our trouble ticket system all year, where they get their questions answered right away.

We're currently paying Exdesk about 2k/year to provide and host our helpdesk, but I'm tired of their system.  I've been looking high and low for one that I could run myself on an average "shared" host.  (We don't have our own servers)  And since I'm familiar with SMF and Joomla, I thought PHP would be the way to go.  I've looked at purchasing some packages, and I figured I'd go as high as 2k purchase price, because after a little over a year it would pay for itself.  That's assuming a 2k purchase price and $20/Month for a decent shared hosting package at 1and1 or something like that.

I suppose I'm hoping for a bit more than is likely to be when I look at a free package to compete with packages that cost $$$, but I'm intimately familiar with SMF, so I figured I'd keep SimpleDesk in mind.

Another thing to consider, if the devs are paying any attention to this, would be the ability to import client information and historical data.

Whichever way it works out, I'm looking forward to playing with SimpleDesk, be it for business or just my tiny little forum.  So hurry!!!  :)
#320
I don't know if any of this will help you guys here at SimpleDesk, but since I'm hoping to be able to use this product in the future, here's a written out description of how our current help desk web page works.  Maybe it'll give some useful ideas.

===CUT===

Customer comes to our web page and clicks on Helpdesk

Login screen gives them nothing unless they're logged in.  Their login is for their particular user account, but their user account is actually tied in with their corporate account.  So there's multiple users who can see each others tickets, because they are all under the banner of a parent account.  That's because we may deal with several people at one company, and they need to be able to see each others tickets.

Once logged in they have the option of looking at their existing tickets, searching their existing tickets, or creating a new ticket.  By default they only see their open tickets, but they can choose to search through their closed tickets as well.

When they create a new ticket they can choose several options...

Trouble Type (Dropdown)
Trouble Priority (Dropdown)
Short Description (Text)
Full Description (Long Text)
Keywords (Text for searching)

And then there's some user-defined fields, which we have set to...

Database Platform (Dropdown)
Software Version (Dropdown)
Operating System (Dropdown)

Once they create the ticket there are emails that are generated to our support staff.  Who gets the emails depends on the "Trouble Priority" level that the client chooses.  A low priority shoots one off to me, but a medium one shoots one off to my boss, and a high or critical priority would shoot one off to 3 or 4 of us.

Our priority levels as of now are...

1-Suggestion
2-As time permits
3-Low
4-Medium
5-High
6-Can't Work

Who gets those emails is set in the system users settings.  My account is set to get an email for 2 and above.  My boss is set for 4 and above, and a couple of our other guys are set for 5 or 6, which means that if a client fills out a ticket at level 6, everyone gets an email unless they're not set to get them at all.

If a ticket is entered and then ignored, the priority is automatically updated one stage at a time over the course of a couple of hours, so that eventually everyone is getting an email until someone responds.

Once I get to a ticket, I can change any of the fields that the customer had filled out.  For instance, I may immediately downgrade the priority, or change the status to "In Progress" so that when our other people get there they can see right away that it's not as critical as initially indicated.  I normally do that right away in case any of our other guys are coming in on a high priority email, to let them know that someone is addressing the ticket.

Now that I'm there at the ticket I have some additional fields that aren't available to the customer.  They are...

Status (Dropdown)
Assigned Admin (Dropdown)
Billing Code (Dropdown)
Hours Worked (Text)

The status choices are...

None
In Progress
On Hold
Waiting on Customer
Closed
(There should also be a "Ready To Close")

The billing code choices are...

Contract
Contract-Limited
Donation
Hourly
No Charge
Warranty

So now I usually change the Assigned Admin to myself, unless the problem is about something that we have a specialist on staff to cover, in which case I assign it to that specialist.  Whoever is the assigned admin automatically gets an email whenever there's changes saved on the ticket.  Whoever is the End User assigned to the ticket also gets one.  (Remember there's more than one person per client/company, and only one of them are assigned)

I don't normally modify the billing code.  I leave that up to the person who does the billing.

So now I can either contact the client directly, or we can maintain a conversation on the ticket itself.  As I add comments to the ticket they are automatically emailed to the client, and when the client makes a comment on the ticket they are automatically emailed to me because I'm in the (Assigned Admin) field.

Also, when making a comment there's an option to NOT email it to anyone.  I may just want to make a silent update.

Also, when making a comment there's an option to email the comment to other users of the system, be they one of the people on our staff, or one of the other people at the client company.

When making a comment we normally enter the hours at the end of the comment, in 10ths of an hour. (1.2)  But it would be nice to have a field to enter that seperately so it could be more easily tracked and added up.  If there's a field to enter hours then there should be at least one companion field to flag those hours for different things, such as billable, non-billable, etc.

And that's about it.  When a ticket is finished I can change the status to closed if I want, or lately the way we've been doing it is that I change the (Assigned Admin) to our business office lady who does the billing and she closes the ticket.

I hope this was of some help... -TFS
#321
Small Official Mod Support / Error Log Counter
February 15, 2010, 12:13:31 AM
Error Log Counter

It's a thing of beauty!!!  Thanks!