http://www.helpspot.com/V3/

The blue will be a great place to start if you’re customizing while the gray is elegant right out of the box (and of course is customizable as well). Classic is also available and will be the default on upgrading installations so that any existing customizations aren’t affected.

The good news is these new styles are done completely via CSS so changing between them will be easy in the new theme admin screen.

(Note, these themes show a form on the portal homepage. This hasn’t been added, it’s simple where these comps placed form elements for design review.)

Basic Blue

Gray Design

Gray Up Close

Show a filter at the top of the navigation

It’s common in HelpSpot to use global filters to create new custom Inboxes. Many times in those scenarios the custom Inboxes become the primary mechanism for accessing new requests. In the current version these Inboxes are kept in the global filter folder below the search box. V3 provides a new option to force a filter to the top of the left Workspace navigation giving these filters the prominence they deserve.

Filter Permissions

One of our most requested features is to have more flexibility in filter permissions. While having just global and personal is simple it makes creating filters for groups of people which are less than everyone impossible.

V3 remedies that with our new permission structure. Create a filter for everyone (global), just yourself, for others in a permission group (permission groups are new to V3 as well, more on them another time), or for a selected group of people. So now if you have a sub group of the support department that needs to work together a filter can be created for that without that filter clogging up everyone’s filter navigation.

Filter Views

This image is more a tease I must admit, but in V3 there’s the concept of filter views. The default is the grid which is what you’re all familiar with. However, there’s a new type in V3. I know this new view is one we’ll be using extensively ourselves and I believe will save significant time and help provide greater insight for help desk managers. We can’t take the covers off this just yet, but it will be featured prominently in our beta information when that’s available.

UPDATED

Relative Person Condition

We had this question come in on the forum so I thought I’d add it to this post as well. There’s a new option in the assigned to, opened by, updated by conditions to make the condition relative to the currently logged in user. This way filters can be created for other users which are properly relative to the logged in user as opposed to one specific person as is currently the case.

For version 3 we’ve rethought the note area, laying it out more logically and adding features which allow for faster replying. Along the top bar you’ll now see we have the knowledge elements of responses and KB’s. Most importantly you’ll see the entirely new real time response search.

Request Note UI

Instead of navigating to responses, simply type some part of the responses title and it will instantly appear and be selectable. Of course traditional navigation is still available as well.

The knowledge book UI from the request page is also all new, now opening a nearly full screen view of your book page for easy viewing without leaving the page.

Knowledge Book Popup

Navigating between chapters and books is easily done from the same popup and private books are now available as well! The knowledge book popup also fully supports secondary portals so you can link your book pages into the proper portal.

The area below the note box is now more visually distinct. As pointed out in the last post, it’s now extremely clear if you’re adding a public, private or external note. That the system stores drafts and how to access them has been given more visibility as well.

Note options have been tightened up and now have full support for subscriptions which we think is going to be really cool, but more on that in a future post!

Triggers

With a trigger you can check for newly created requests as well as updates to existing requests. The condition can check both the current value and in the case of an updating request the value it’s being changed from. A few possible use cases:

• Generate an email when a request closes to say the issue is closed or send a survey
• Cause an escalation when a request assigned to user A moves to status Z
• When a request is moved from category A to Category B set a custom field value
• When a request meets a set of conditions make an HTTP call (this is a new action!)

The options are pretty much limitless, we can’t wait to see what interesting ways this is put to use.

Top Left Corner of V3

As I mentioned previously the admin is fully themable. Normally this means a sacrifice though. Either to modify it you have to create new sets of images, slice them, export them for web, get the size just right and so on. The other option is to provide plain themes with flat backgrounds and little visual interest.

In version 3 we’ve been able to provide a new path using CSS gradients. In this image you can see the gradients in both the top nav and the buttons and it’s done with CSS and even works on IE! So you can create custom themes by just copying a file and changing a few hex codes. Of course you have access to all the power of CSS and javascript so it will be possible to put custom images up there was well if desired.

We also have optimized the images you see in the photo. The images are nearly all sprites (one image that contains all the others) so that the browser only needs to load a few images and can cache them for very fast page rendering.

You can also see how we pulled out the create a request (and also filter requests) buttons to be more prominent and easier to access. This cleans up the left nav and adds more focus to the data in the left nav.

The oft requested feature of being able to use a logo in the top corner has been implemented as well (yeah!).

This photo also shows one state of a little easter egg of sorts built into the UI, but I won’t spoil that fun for you.

Version 3 includes a completely redesigned user interface (boy does it take a long time to edit every HTML tag in a system as robust as HelpSpot!). Not only is the new interface more attractive, it’s several times faster to load, uses far fewer images and provides you the ability to completely theme the UI via both CSS and custom javascript.

We’re not quite ready to take the covers off the new UI yet, but here’s a peak at the new login screen in a few themes.

Version 3 Login - Blue

Version 3 Login - Green

More sneak peeks are coming, as well as the sign up form for the HelpSpot V3 beta so stay tuned!

After battling a few delays and many long hours of work, we’re pleased to announce that our redesigned company and product sites are now live.

So, in a nutshell, here’s what you can expect from the new sites:

• More refined, cleaner, look and feel. Having been a few years since our last version was created, it was time for a change!
• Content for new customers. As mentioned under previous posts, we have an updated Tour, Getting started guide, and one page factsheet; all optimized for the prospective and new customer.
• Easier to find content. Along with the new look we move important content around. For example, customer case studies/testimonials are more prominent than before. Our customers have great things to say about HelpSpot and are using it in some interesting ways, something we thought worth highlighting.
• Quote generator. Prospective customers can now create their own quotes, just as we would provide to them. This should prove to be a HUGE time saver for us and just plain more efficient for customers. Now, instantly they can have a quote to take to management for purchase authorization.
• New Domain. For those paying close attention, you’ll notice our old site was hosted on userscape.com. We’ve since broken out our content into 2 sites: helpspot.com (product site) and userscape.com (company site). Our founder, Ian Landsman, explains his thoughts around why we’ve done this in a recent blog post.

OK, enough blabbing on…go check it out already and tell at least 3 friends to do the same!   www.helpspot.com

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.