HelpSpotted » Feature Sneak-Peek

Site redesign sneak-peek: the Tour

Jamie — Tue, 04 Aug 2009 15:17:43 +0000

While the redesigned helpspot.com is still under-construction, our new and improved tour is starting to take shape.

Just to give you a flavor of what’s to come….

What’s new with the tour? Everything! Starting with the look/feel. Carrying over the fresh color palette and new style for icons and images from the rest of the site, the message of the tour will be delivered with a polished sophistication.

Content too has seen an overhaul. I grouped features, specific tools, and over-arching philosophies into conceptual areas to provide more of a narrative for those new to HelpSpot; designed to be a logical organization of the key points for those in the market for help desk software.

Manage: How will HelpSpot allow me to more effectively manage my customer service?
Work: Which tools will support my goals of efficiency and delivering great service for every inquiry?
Self-Service: A must to satisfy the growing pool of web-savvy customers.
Measure: Reporting to measure the good, bad, ugly and everything in-between.
Customize: Maximizing HelpSpot’s flexible framework to create a support management tool that reflects my business needs.
Developer APIs: No business app. can call itself complete without full integration with vital external systems; HelpSpot is no exception.

Overridding Default Email Templates

Rebecca — Wed, 29 Apr 2009 15:50:10 +0000

In my last post I discussed HelpSpot’s default Email Templates, when they are used and how to modify them. With the release of version 2.6.0, it is now possible to override these default templates providing further customization and flexibility to your organization. This is particularly useful for companies that have multiple domains or mailboxes that are managed in a single HelpSpot installation.

Practical Application

You may be wondering, why would you want to over-ride your default templates. Let’s say you had one mailbox for servers@yourcompany.com and one for help@yourcompany.com. Keeping your clients informed of server changes is important to your customer service, so you might want to have an auto reply for servers@yourcompany.com, which contained links to the network up time, & traffic reports. On the other hand, help@yourcompany.com needs to include the support hours and links to your Knowledge Books & password resets, to promote customer self-service.

Let’s take a look at how resolve the above scenario.

Mailboxes and their templates are found under Admin ->Mailboxes.

The first step is to configure or modify the mailbox for the email address servers@yourcompany.com.
Once the account is established and tested, we’ll can configure our mailbox specific templates.
Scrolling down to the Email Templates section. You’ll notice that here again we have four configurable
templates associated with this email account. We’re going to configure the Auto Reply to meet the requirements above.
Click on the arrow to the left of the Auto Reply option.
Add the content & placeholders to both the HTML and the Text version of the automatic response.
Optional: Make additional content changes to any or all of the other templates in this area.
Click on the save edits button, to save changes.

Version 2.6 Sneak Peek

ianlandsman — Wed, 10 Dec 2008 19:13:53 +0000

We’ve started testing HelpSpot version 2.6 so I thought this would be a good time to showcase some of the changes in the upcoming release. There’s been a lot of subtle under the hood changes, and of course bug fixes, but I picked out some of the more prominent updates in the interface and functionality to showcase here.

Workspace Quick Popup Menu

Workspace Quick Popup Menu

The popup menu is part of the request ID link (and “take it” button) and appears after just under a second of hovering over the link. It allows access to the initial request, latest public note, the full history (all notes/logs) and just the request details like customer information and custom field values. This is always available, so even if you don’t have the Initial request column as part of your filter you can still get to the full note and history.

An added benefit is that this functionality is available everywhere request ID’s are shown. For example, when you’re testing a filter or testing an automation rule the menu is available.

Sub Grouping Filter Conditions

Sub Grouping Filter Conditions

An often requested feature is the ability to have sub grouping of filter conditions. This allows you to use and/or logic to pull out the exact requests you want to see. In the screenshot above we’re looking for requests which are open and in the Account or Technical Issue categories.

Set Column Widths

Set Column Widths

By default HelpSpot uses a combination of best guess estimates and the browsers own logic to determine the column widths of each column in a filter. Often though, an installations particular type of data requires a larger/smaller width to be allocated. Now, the defaults can be overridden to a custom value on a per-filter basis.

Live Request Access Status

Live Request Access Check

On installations with many filters or those using separate filters as group inbox’s, it’s common for two staffers to enter a request at the same time. This sometimes leads to one person’s changes overwriting another’s or a customer receiving two updates from two different staffers. This feature prevents such by alerting the second, and subsequent, staffers entering a request that’s currently being worked on by another.

Requests Currently Open

Requests Currently Open

Customers occasionally submit multiple requests, either for the same or different issue. Commonly, different staff members take each of these and aren’t always aware other requests for the customer are being worked on. This new feature removes the uncertainty by, with a quick count at the top, shows how many requests the customer currently has open (if more than 1).

Customer Will be Emailed Notice

Customer Will be Emailed Notice

At times it can be unclear if an update to a request will result in an email to the customer. This new notice clarifies exactly what will happen when the update request button is pushed.

Request History Views

Request History Views

Currently, HelpSpot displays all the request notes and log items in the request history. In 2.6 you now have an option to see all the notes, just the public ones, or just the files in a request. Your request history viewing preference is remembered across all requests.

History Item Menu

History Item Menu

The options which can be performed on a request history note have been expanded in 2.6. Specifically, it’s now possible to create a new request from the history note of another request and to directly link to one individual history note.

Merging Multiple Requests from Workspace

Jamie — Tue, 04 Nov 2008 15:14:29 +0000

Currently, you must be on the request page to initiate a request merge, while this will continue to be available, with the next release we’re adding the ability to merge multiple requests from the request grid (Workspace page).

Why add merging from the Workspace? Feedback from customers showed a clear need to more quickly group like-requests. Adding merging to the Workspace does this by saving staff a few clicks.

See it in Action. It’s easy and only takes a few clicks. After selecting the desired requests, using the Quick Action drop-down at the bottom of any request grid in the Workspace (Inbox, My Queue, and any filter) select to merge and the receiving request.

Merging from Request Grid

Upon submission the page will reload with the merge complete.