"We also dig personal caves, which are usually about 1,000 square feet. It's a niche market ?people want caves for all sorts of things, like dining rooms, movie-screening areas, to hold parties down there." - article (via The Trend Junkie)
I always wanted a cave, but I want a real one. It would be cool to have a piece of land with a cave on it. A man made, perfectly round one doesn't seem as much fun but I guess it would do.
"Firefox has unpatched "extremely critical" security holes and exploit code is already circulating on the Net, security researchers have warned.
The two unpatched flaws in the Mozilla browser could allow an attacker to take control of your system.
A patch is expected shortly, but in the meantime users can protect themselves by switching off JavaScript." (via PC World)
-Hmm. That seems like a practical solution, I'm sure the most at risk users are digging around their preferences right now :-)
There have been many requests for more details about HelpSpot so I'm happy to be starting a new series of posts offering a sneak peek into HelpSpot. From now until the initial beta launch I'll be posting inside looks at various features of HelpSpot. Some, like this post will be comprehensive looks at entire parts of the system while others will be small insights into unique tools and features.
Before I get started with the tour I just want to point out that the screenshots below are alpha quality. Some icons are missing or may change; some features may be adjusted before launch and so on. That said, 95% of what's here should be in the final product. I'd also like to encourage you to comment on what you see. Great ideas are always welcome!
Overview
The request page is an extremely important part of HelpSpot. It's the page where most users will spend the majority of their time. It's where requests are created, managed, and reviewed. As such an immense amount of functionality had to be incorporated into this page.
Beyond just making the required functionality available we really wanted to get the user interface right. So many other help desk management solutions crowd the page with dozens of form fields on this page even when most of these fields are never used on any one request. To combat this, we've combined some features, made some features popups, and used alot of in-page logic to fill in forms with only what the help desk staff member needs to see.
Let's take a look at an example of a request being managed. Here's the full screen view, we'll go through each piece below. (click image for large version):
Customer Information
Having access to customer information is absolutely essential to running a great help desk. We looked at a lot of models for working with this information before starting HelpSpot. What we found is that most help desk software either stores very little or attempts to store everything about a customer.
We didn't like either of these models; We wanted a clean interface that didn't require staff members to enter information that already exists in other systems. What we came up with is pictured below:
HelpSpot stores all the basic information about a customer you would need to answer a request as well as to provide request histories. However, sometimes you need more information than what we store to provide great customer service. To address this we came up with "Live Lookup".
The Live Lookup feature allows real time access to your customer information no matter where it's stored. Performing a Live Lookup for a customer can return any information about that customer you have in your IT systems. For example, you might want to return information about a customers support contract status. If you're using HelpSpot to support internal users you could return physical locations, systems passwords, or a list of system access permissions. Best of all, since Live Lookup accesses your IT systems in real time the information is always up to date. There's no need to for laborious data synchronizations between HelpSpot and your other IT systems (for technical details how this works see below). Of course using Live Lookup is optional and HelpSpot works just fine using only the provided fields.
Request Details
This area is where HelpSpot makes its biggest departures from "traditional" help desk software. It may not look it, but there are some big "new ideas" here so let's go through them one by one.
Categories/Reporting Tags - In most help desk software categorization quickly becomes a no win situation. Almost all systems have huge category trees that limit assignment to only one category; requiring you to choose the "right" one from 70 possibilities. The result is that instead of using categories to convey information they simply get used as queues of requests.
So HelpSpot takes a different approach. Categories aren't nested in HelpSpot, they're single level, and are used to categorize requests into general areas. Once you've done that you now have the ability to add an unlimited number of "reporting tags" to any request. A unique set of reporting tags is associated with each category. Reporting tags are powerful because they allow for easy filtering and reporting like-requests by conveying information in a structured manner.
Let's look at the example above. Here I've categorized the request as technical support and selected the reporting tags: Installation trouble, PHP 4.3+, and Linux. The results of this are tremendous. First, it only takes a second or two for the initial staff member (or others) to select the tags. Second, the tags allow categorization at a more fine grain level than traditional categories. So here I've not just indicated that it's installation trouble, but also that the customer is running PHP 4.3 on Linux. Now other staff members on the request can instantly see that information without reading through all the history to find it. I'll also be able to run reports on how many tickets we've handled for customers in this configuration and so on.
Here's another cool example of the power the reporting tag can bring. Let's say you're using HelpSpot for back office IT support. As an administrator you want to track if the new super duper Xerox document management unit is having any trouble. Under your copier category you add a new tag for Xerox c343. Now any requests that come in about that unit get tagged. No more guess work about how many came in for it or having staff keep a separate Excel document to track these one off requests. With reporting tags you know exactly how many came in for it, who handled it, and how it was resolved.
Tracking specific items like this is just one area where I believe reporting tags will change the way your help desk works.
Assignment - This is another area where HelpSpot takes a different tact. All requests must be assigned to the help desk "inbox" OR a specific user (the users available for assignment are based on the category). There is no way to assign a request to a generic queue. Don't panic! This is a good thing. Requests assigned to generic queues inevitable fall victim to the "I thought you were working on it" syndrome. Forcing a single person to be responsible for answering the request or reassigning it simplifies the process and imparts a sense of ownership.
To help prevent one person from being overloaded, you can see the number of requests currently assigned to the user right next to their name. This helps keep things balanced, but at the same time gives the flexibility to still assign a request to someone if they are the only ones who can handle it.
Colors - This isn't specific to just this area of HelpSpot, but this is a good place to point it out. Help desk software is intrinsically a "high read" environment. There's simply alot of information that needs to be consumed by staff members, so we've put alot of time into thinking through ways to lower the amount of reading even if it's just a little bit. An effective approach is to use colors and images to give a quick understanding of the situation. In the screen shot directly above you can instantly see the request is urgent because the header has been turned bright red instead of it's normal blue. The minute this page loads it's easy to see the issue is urgent without any reading at all.
Request History
The request history is really the core of HelpSpot request tracking. The request history tracks everything that's happened to a request over the entire life span of the issue.
Order - The request history is shown in reverse chronological order, with the newest entry sorted to the top. This allows staff to quickly see the latest updates without having to scroll all the way to the bottom of the screen.
Photos - This is a unique feature which is again aimed at limiting the time necessary to identify who's working on this request. In an increasingly virtual workforce, it also gives a more "real" feeling to the online interactions.
Time - In most applications that track things over time they simply stamp the date and time next to the history event and leave it at that. When it comes to customer services however, we don't think that really conveys the information appropriately. So what we've done is display the date as the amount of time from the initial request. This has a couple of big benefits. First, it's easier to understand when each history event took place in relation to the initial request. Rather than just seeing 2 times it's much more beneficial to see that the request was updated 12 hours after the initial request came in.
The second big benefit is motivational. When you just see 2 times it doesn't really have the impact of seeing the distance of time. After you add a note to a request and you see that the time says 4 days and 6 hours after the request that really gives you an understanding of how long the customer has been waiting for a resolution. It makes the impact more real and we hope inspires staying those extra few minutes to respond to a customer or taking an extra few seconds to lookup the answer now instead of after lunch.
If you do need the exact time a note was added all you have to do is mouse over the time and it's shown to you.
Colors - Again HelpSpot uses color to quickly identify things. Above you can see that when a note is public it's green. This indicates that the note was emailed to the customer and it's also available via the online request tracking page in the portal.
Email Integration - HelpSpot integrates seamlessly with one or more email accounts. For example, keep you requests organized by having several support email accounts: support@example.com, passwords@example.com, printers@example.com. Emails from different accounts can be automatically assigned to a request category and even assigned to a specific user.
When sending emails to customers or other HelpSpot users the system will use these accounts and be able to keep a seamless flow of request events. If you look closely above you'll see that some of the notes in the request history came in via email. They integrate directly into the history of events in the proper time order. If the email is from a recognized HelpSpot user their picture is also displayed.
Best of all, since HelpSpot manages all the mail in the mailbox there's no more lost or forgotten email requests. Requests that come to your help desk via email are now tracked just like any other request so they never fall through the cracks.
Add a Note
Adding a note is super easy. Just type! Of course there are a bunch of optional things you can do, but we've tried to keep those out of the way until you need them. Here's a quick run down of how notes work:
Timer - The timer is great if your organization likes to track time on phone calls or needs to bill for time spent on requests. Simply start the timer when you begin a request and stop it when you're done. It will even keep the time if you forget to stop it and just submit the note.
Customer Update - Clicking on the customer update button makes the note public. You'll be able to send the note or update to the customer via email as well as track any replies as part of the request history.
Uploads - Easily upload an unlimited number of files into the request history. If you upload images those will be automatically embedded into the request history.
CC Staff - Many times to answer a request it's necessary to interact with other members of the support team. This usually takes place outside of the help desk software through email. With HelpSpot you can CC any staff member(s) on your note and their responses are automatically included in the request history. This keeps all the knowledge and interactions about the request in the system.
Append Prepared Responses - Prepared responses are simply bits of text that have been put into the system ahead of time to respond to fairly routine issues. When selecting to use this feature the response is appended to whatever text has already been written in the note. This feature will often be used with Customer Updates to provide email responses to customers.
Setting a Reminder
Reminders are a great way to be proactive about requests. Often when several people are involved in a request, or the request is time-sensitive it can be very beneficial to schedule reminders for yourself or others. These reminders are then emailed and/or text messaged to the recipients at the appropriate times. You can also view reminders in your workspace (sneak peek coming soon).
Next Update
This update covered just the highlights of the request page. Look for the next update in a few weeks. Feedback/comments are always welcomed. Please send remarks to ian AT userscape.com or comment below.
To stay in the loop on HelpSpot please sign up for our mailing list.
Technical Note
Sorry I've been behind the times a bit lately. Things are really moving now so I expect I'll be a bit off my usual posting rate for the next month or two. That said, I'll have a very cool post this afternoon. The first HelpSpot sneak peek.
This is one of the more complete articles I've seen.
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Kevin is about to begin the alpha testing process on his news reader product, Zesty News. Check out the announcement and the site.
Good luck with it Kevin and sign me up as an Alpha tester!
PS. Excellent logo!!!
"What I experienced was obtuse and complex software that was packed with gratuitous features at the expense of usability and user experience. It was software written by geeks, for geeks." - Nice little article. I couldn't agree more. Open source applications in general are very poorly done in terms of UI almost across the board. That's why FogCreek can sell bug tracking software for $100/user when Bugzilla is free and why 37 Signals can sell Basecamp when there are hundreds of open source project management tools.
If I ever start an open source project (and I hope to down the road) the first thing I'm going to do is recruit some designer/UI types. These are the type of people who are rarely if ever get involved in the open source community and it shows. Geeks and designers are kind of like oil and water so perhaps that's why the designers stay away from the Geek dominated world of open source, but that's got to change if open source wants to become as successful in applications as it has been in infrastructure.
So the other day we set my wifes father up with a new computer and got him going on the web with a Gmail account. He's had a computer in the past and knows the basics of browsing to different sites, etc. I showed him around the net a bit and explained how to get into Gmail and so on.
The next day I figured we'd get a phone call or two on how to do something or other. The call came in around 8pm and he only had one question. "How do I open my mail?". So I troubleshoot with him a bit about the URL he's at, if he's logged in and so on. He had done all that, but every time he click on his mail it just turned yellow.
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Of course the problem was that he was clicking on the checkbox and not the subject words. Now if you look at that screenshot above you'll notice that the checkbox is the only traditional UI widget in there. There is no indication at all that clicking the table row opens the message. No button or link.
For us technology inclined folks it's a no-brainer, but for the "average" user it makes no sense. It doesn't work like anything else on the web. So while AJAX/DHTML wizardry is very cool stuff on one level I think it's important to remember to make your applications work as expected. Some indication needs to be given about what you're supposed to do.
Now Google is obviously aware of this design decision and maybe they're trying to "change the game", but in my opinion creating a UI widget that gives no indication it is a UI widget is bad design. I've seen several other AJAX apps lately that are also using "invisible" widgets and it's a trend which I hope falls by the wayside in the near future.
"I'm at the local Caribou Coffee early in the morning, wrapping up a brief chat between a client in Pennsylvania and a friend in Manchester UK, but that's not unusual. In fact, most of my work day is spent on design and web projects for clients and colleagues in Europe and the US, and it's been that way for nearly 7 years." - Excellent post by Mike Rohde on how he came to work for MakaluMedia and his life working from the home office. Of course Mike did our logo work and is a great guy to work with.
" There is a bit of bounce in my step today, notwithstanding the fact that all the diodes down the left side of my leg seem finally to be functioning smoothly. I ate a full breakfast in my hyperbaric chamber while listening to really loud music (Qui'hut Xillermott's Sonata No.26) and then popped out to tour the bridge." - heh, it's not that bad actually....
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