Issue Tracking And User Support In Outlook

Version 12 of the kalmstrom.com issue tracking application for Outlook will soon be released, and today I can show you the new slide show. If you are into user support or incident management  I suggest you have a look at it, to get an introduction to Folder HelpDesk!

Convert incoming Outlook e-mails into support tickets
With Folder HelpDesk incoming e-mails are converted into support tickets right inside Outlook, and a workgroup can co-operate on taking care of incidents, solving issues and giving user support without ever having to leave Outlook. The product is highly customizable, and you may use either a shared mailbox or a public folder to share the support tickets.

Slide show presentation
I have written about Folder HelpDesk before, both generally about version 12 and in descriptions of the automatic e-mails sent out by the application and of the e-mail history options. Maybe you have read these blog posts and want to know more? The slide show below gives you an introduction to Folder HelpDesk.

Helpdesk usage and settings
The show begins with some user support cases, where incidents are reported by telephone or e-mail and converted into tickets. After that presentation there are some slides for the administrator, where we show how to make the most common settings. Much more info can be found in the Folder HelpDesk user manual, which will soon be released also. The slide show is just an overview over how our issue tracking application works.

Statistics and reporting tool
Folder HelpDesk has an integrated statistics tool, OLAP Reporting Tool for Excel. This is an advanced report generator which gives managements a useful tool for creating all kinds of reports and study how tickets have been handled.

Knowledge base
There is also a knowledge base connected to Folder HelpDesk. Before a support case is closed you can save the ticket as a knowledge base article by just pressing a button in the Folder HelpDesk ticket. As the knowledge base articles can be full text searched and also sorted in categories, it is easy to find the solution to an earlier issue if it should occur again. The name of the knowledge base is KBase, and just like OLAP Reporting Tool it is also sold as a separate product.



Many organizations worldwide already know how the kalmstrom.com helpdesks can facilitate their user support and issue tracking. Folder HelpDesk has been on the market for 12 years - earlier under the names Outlook HelpDesk and Public Folder HelpDesk - and we will continue adding new features that will make the issue tracking even more smooth and easy.

Multiple Options For The Folder HelpDesk E-mail Thread

With Folder HelpDesk for Outlook you can convert incoming e-mails into tickets to make them easy to manage and co-operate on. Formatting and attachments are included in the tickets, and they can be organized in many different ways. Here is how Folder HelpDesk looks in Outlook:

All about one case in one ticket
If you work with support, handle incidents or manage incoming e-mails in some other way, you know that e-mails often go back and forth a couple of times between the helpdesk staff and the person who reports an issue before the problem is solved. During this process, and also for following up, it is convenient to have all these e-mails gathered in one ticket, and with Folder HelpDesk this may be done in different ways.

Automatic conversion
You may choose to let Folder HelpDesk monitor an Outlook folder and automatically convert all e-mails that come in to that folder into tickets. Outlook rules can be used for making sure the correct e-mails are converted. For the automatic conversion we offer two different kinds of e-mail threading. You may choose one of the methods or use both at the same time, which ever suits your organization best.

E-mail history in ticket body
When you select to save e-mails in the ticket only one ticket is created – when the case is first reported. After that all e-mails concerning the same case are added to the first ticket body in chronological order. Redundant forward chunks of the e-mails are removed through an intelligent algorithm, and only the required and latest replies are added to the body portion along with the HTML formatting and with a header portion that includes when the e-mail was received, from whom and so on.

E-mail history in subfolders
When the option to save e-mail history in subfolders is selected, subfolders with the ticket ID number will be created automatically under the Folder HelpDesk folder in Outlook. All the e-mails connected to the same ticket ID will be saved in the same subfolder. In the first ticket there will be two new tabs, Sent E-mails and Received E-mails, from where the e-mails may be opened, copied or deleted.
 
Manual addition to any ticket
You may also convert the e-mails you want to create tickets from manually, by simply pressing a Folder HelpDesk button in the Outlook ribbon. In this case you may take the e-mail from any folder. A choice is given: create a new ticket or add the e-mail to an existing ticket. When you select the "Add" option you can search for earlier tickets in several ways, and you may also press the button “Only caller tickets”. Then all earlier tickets from the same caller will be shown, and you may easily select the one you want to add the new e-mail to. In this case the new e-mail is added to the body of the existing ticket.   

New version
Folder HelpDesk is the new name for the kalmstrom.com long time flagship product Public Folder HelpDesk. From version 12 we will remove “Public” from the name, as the application may be installed in any Outlook folder. Most of the features described here also exist in the current version, but in version 12 we will add new possibilities. This, along with many other improvements, makes the release of Folder HelpDesk something worth waiting for. In a couple of months we hope to give you a chance to try it!

Enhanced Auto-Emails In New Folder HelpDesk For Outlook

The kalmstrom.com issue tracking add-on for Outlook has the capacity to send out a number of automatic e-mails. The upcoming version 12 will have nicer default templates, and it will also be easier to customize them.

Run the helpdesk in any Outlook folder
We plan to release the new version of the kalmstrom.com Outlook helpdesk in about two months. Just like before it will work completely inside Outlook, and to emphasize that it might be installed in any Outlook folder we have decided to rename it. From version 12 the current Public Folder HelpDesk will be called Folder HelpDesk.

Enhanced default templates
Folder HelpDesk will not have the same default templates for automatic e-mails as earlier versions. If you have used or tried PF HelpDesk you know that the templates could have a nicer look. Our thought earlier was just to give a simple structure for the users to customize, but from version 12 all the default templates have a more elegant design from the beginning. I hope you like the template below, for the automatic e-mail to the caller when a ticket is closed.

HTML Editor for customizations
To make customizations of the templates easier, Folder HelpDesk has an HTML Editor under the Templates tab in the Settings, where all the different templates are gathered. You don’t even have to know HTML code to make changes in them. The Editor is of the type WYSIWYG – what you see is what you get – so you can change the text as you like in the editor, and the HTML code will be changed accordingly.

New checkbox for sending
Folder HelpDesk has a checkbox where you can enable/disable each automatic e-mail. When you wish to use the default text for the caller e-mail when a ticket is closed, just check the box at that template and an e-mail with the correct info will be sent to the correct caller each time a Folder HelpDesk ticket is closed. If you want to change the template, just do that first and then check the box for sending.


Many new features
The new templates and the HTML editor are only two of the many new enhancements in Folder HelpDesk. As this is one of the most popular kalmstrom.com applications many are waiting for the new version. When your organization is a Member of the kalmstrom.com Community you may upgrade for free. The only thing we request from you is some patience until the release!

The kalmstrom.com VIP Status – What Does It Mean?

The kalmstrom.com SharePoint and Outlook Solutions are licensed with a subscription system, and there are three subscription levels. All three levels include free use of the kalmstrom.com software, support and upgrades, but the Premium Subscription level also includes some other benefits. One of them is called VIP status.

Support priority
The most important part of the VIP status is perhaps the first priority of support cases. We of course try to help all kalmstrom.com Subscribers as soon as possible, but if a Premium Subscriber gets a problem with their kalmstrom.com Solution, the team postpones all other tasks to assist the Premium Subscriber as soon as possible. The support mailbox and the online chat are supervised nearly 24/7 even if the office is not officially open, so we can act very quickly if needed.

“In the event we had problems with TimeCard the people and helpdesk of Kalmstrom did a great job in solving the issue on a very short notice”, says Jeroen Graafland at Hay Group, a long time Premium Subscriber. And he adds: “When we discover a bug this is solved on a very short notice and deployed very easily via the update function of TimeCard.”

Influence on development
Another important factor for the Premium Subscribers is the chance to influence future development. Our CEO Peter makes the final decision, as he is the one who can best judge the paths kalmstrom.com should follow towards the future, but he does his very best to include the requests from Premium Subscribers in his plans.

No registration
Premium Subscribers have a special copy of their kalmstrom.com Solution, with the Premium organization logotype on the major forms. We return their confidence by making the Premium copy register free, so VIP Subscribers do not have to hassle with registration keys.

Worth the extra cost?
The Minimum and Medium subscriptions give good value for money, so we don’t recommend the Premium Subscription for all. If you have a small team managing incoming e-mails with Folder HelpDesk or HelpDesk OSP there is no need for a Premium Subscription.

But say that you are a big organization and have one hundred people reporting their time with TimeCard or booking resources with Calendar Browser – then we do recommend for you to consider the Premium alternative. It is there, among big companies and state and municipal authorities, we find the kalmstrom.com Premium Subscribers.

More info
Welcome to contact us if you have questions about VIP status and Premium Subscription. We will do our best to help you judge if it is the right alternative for your organization!

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

(This blog post was updated 4 March 2015)

Invent The Future While Listening To Customers

Yesterday I saw an article with the provoking title: “Mark Cuban on Why You Should Never Listen to Your Customers”. My first reaction was astonishment, because in kalmstrom.com Business Solutions we pride ourselves with ALWAYS listening carefully to our customers.

Listen to complaints but don’t ask about the future
When I read the article I understood what the American business magnate meant, and I realized that the kalmstrom.com CEO Peter had told me the same thing at various occasions, but not in such drastic words: “Yes, we should listen to our customers ‒ or Community Members ‒ and help them solve their problems, but we should not turn to the customers when it comes to decisions about the path for future development. That is my job.”

Peter climbs the trees
In the book The 7 Habits of Highly Effective People I saw a metaphore I liked: if a group of workers are building a road through a jungle, the staff must have good equipment and know how to do their job in an efficient way ‒ but someone also has to climb to the tree tops and make sure that the road is built in the right direction. Otherwise it will not be useful to anyone, no matter how smoothly the work on the ground is running. Peter is that person.

Future technologies
As Peter is a software developer the challenge of staying ahead and show the direction means to choose which techniques to use among all the interesting and feature-rich technologies that is constantly released out there, and to build applications that take best possible advantage of them. Maybe the users of the kalmstrom.com software do not even understand what can be done until they have seen it? But Peter can understand it, and that is why he has chosen to make the products compatible with new platforms like Office 365 and Windows Azure, even though most Community Members still don’t even think about transferring to them. When they want to do it, the kalmstrom.com applications they use should be compatible.

New design
Another example on Peter’s capacity of “inventing the future” (as Mark Cuban puts it) is the extensive development work that is currently going on at kalmstrom.com. Our developers Kanak Joshi and Sunil Patel are working full time with the creation of a new KBase application, which we hope to release soon.  The rest of the kalmstrom.com team has also been engaged in their work, because what we learn from this development with new techniques will be used in the future development of our more advanced products.

Welcome with suggestions
This said I want to make it clear that I don’t mean that Community Members are not welcome with suggestions on new features for the products they use. You are! No one knows better than you what needs to be improved for efficient daily use. But Peter and his developers are the ones who can judge how to achieve the goal in the best way and with best conditions for future upgrades.

PF HelpDesk sponsorship
A very good example on how users and developers can cooperate to improve a product is the joined efforts of Community Member Swiss Post and kalmstrom.com. The PF HelpDesk administrator at Swiss Post sent us a list of features they wanted to include in a future version of this kalmstrom.com issue tracking tool. They were willing to sponsor the development, but instead of adding those features to the current version of PF HelpDesk Peter decided to incorporate them in the next version. This version will be totally rebuilt and partly web based, and even if Swiss Post must wait longer for their features they will get them in a product that will keep for many years ahead. This way Peter could listen to customers and still keep focus on the right direction!