Outlook Kanban View For Support Tickets In Updated Folder HelpDesk

Next version of the kalmstrom.com issue tracking tool for Outlook, will have three new views. Today I can show you one of these views: the Folder HelpDesk kanban view, where open incident tickets are visualized with color coded cards.

Messages become tickets
With Folder HelpDesk a support team can cooperate in an organized manner in Outlook. E-mails or messages from a web form are converted into tickets manually or automatically and gathered in a list with several different views in Outlook.

New tickets can also be created when information is received in other ways, for example by telephone or sms. All open tickets are shown in Outlook, and they can be displayed in various views.

Move kanban card between phases
On a traditional kanban board, cards with task information are moved between phases as the work proceeds. The kanban board gives a quick overview over the tasks, and bottlenecks are easily discovered.

On the Folder HelpDesk kanban board, each open ticket is represented by a card that shows the most important ticket information. The ticket opens when you left click on the card. When you right click on the card, a reading pane with more of the body text will be displayed at the bottom of the screen.

Kanban Task Manager
kalmstrom.com already has four versions of another solution that uses a kanban view: Kanban Task Manager. Two of these versions are for Outlook, so it is a logical step that we use our experience to enhance Folder HelpDesk with a similar view.

Drag between status phases
In the Folder HelpDesk kanban view we use the status values from the Folder HelpDesk settings as phases, which means that each organization will have the phases they need in the preferred order. The ticket status information is updated automatically when a kanban card is moved to a new phase.

Color codes
The tickets on the Folder HelpDesk kanban board are color coded by either Incident Type or Responsible. In the demo below we are using the Folder HelpDesk example data colors, but you can use any colors you like.

Filter, search and zoom
The Folder HelpDesk kanban view has many of the features you find in Kanban Task Manager. The tickets can be filtered by Incident Type, Responsible, Caller and Priority, and there is an Instant Search feature that searches all text in the tickets. With the zoom bar you can resize the kanban board and show more or less tickets in the view.

Use custom field as lanes
The Folder HelpDesk ticket HTML form can be customized, and organizations who have created custom ticket fields can use one of them to group the tickets in horizontal lanes. The cards can of course be dragged and dropped within and between the lanes too, in the same way as in the status phases.

We hope that the new kanban view will make work with Folder HelpDesk tickets even more efficient and enjoyable. As I mentioned above we plan two more new views, and I will come back and show them when the development process has come a bit further.

By Peter Kalmström
CEO and Systems Designer
kalmstrom.com Business Solutions