Which 4.0 major feature do you want WGM to focus on next?

[jstanden]

What requested feature would you most like to have our immediate attention?

[xps]

Give 3 choices please :)

[CWasko]

Submitting a ticket on a requesters behalf, i.e., we get a phone call and we need to create a ticket in the system.

[bcavish]

Creating a ticket without sending an e-mail I am presuming?

[jstanden]

Yeah, I agree that 'create ticket from GUI' should have been on there. Compose isn't meant to be used like people are being forced to use it.

It's such a simple thing that WILL happen, go ahead and vote for your #2. :)

[CWasko]

Creating a ticket without sending an e-mail I am presuming?

In short, yes.

[fabiotpr]

1. Rules based on header to work with spamassassin
2. Group failure notice (bounce) emails with ticket

f.

[jstanden]

"Create ticket" is now implemented properly (separate from 'compose') in Build 560.

From the poll so far, it looks like we'll be focusing on time tracking and Support Center improvements this week. I'd also like to squeeze in some time for pre-parser mail rules.

[chewtoy]

I would have said "creating a ticket without email", but it sounds like that's already been added -- thanks! :D

My number 2 is I think being able to publish workspaces to users. Not sure the best way to make this work -- perhaps just a list of workspaces that can be selected when creating a user? I would imagine security to be the only sticking point -- wouldn't want a user from the network group using a workspace from the HR group.

My number 3 is also for workspaces -- it'd be nice to be able to pick a default workspace per user. Probably could be done as just a checkbox at the top of the view of a selected workspace, "Make this workspace my default".

[chewtoy]

My number 2 is I think being able to publish workspaces to users. Not sure the best way to make this work -- perhaps just a list of workspaces that can be selected when creating a user? I would imagine security to be the only sticking point -- wouldn't want a user from the network group using a workspace from the HR group.


I forgot to note that my number 2 already seems to have a Jira entry (which I've voted for):

http://www.wgmdev.com/jira/browse/CHD-552

[CWasko]

"Create ticket" is now implemented properly (separate from 'compose') in Build 560.

From the poll so far, it looks like we'll be focusing on time tracking and Support Center improvements this week. I'd also like to squeeze in some time for pre-parser mail rules.

Yea, the 'log message' rocks. Sooooo much nicer than what I was doing before.

Top priority for me is now Time Tracking/Entry - which is what I voted on.

[trax]

Improved reports. If you need some direction for industry standard reports for support centers we'll be happy to help. Time tracking comes a close second!

Cheers,

Julian

[Hildy]

Hey, Julian, I'd love to get more specifcs on the types of reports you'd like (without making any promises, of course ;-) ). Send me a PM with an email address or IM account and we can chat.

[chris bell]

Hi,

I've just been looking at V 4.0 as we still use 2.7 at the moment.

Couple of things,

a) cannot create a ticket for a customer from our phone support.

b) Cannot print/fax a ticket for signoff ( without comments ) on chargable jobs

[Hildy]

a) cannot create a ticket for a customer from our phone support.
Try a recent build... "compose" has morphed into "send mail" and "log message". You want the "log message" link.

b) Cannot print/fax a ticket for signoff ( without comments ) on chargable jobs
See http://www.wgmdev.com/jira/browse/CHD-165 -- This is currently scheduled for 4.1 (mainly so we can concentrate on getting 4.0 out).

[chris bell]

Thanks for that Dan,

Will the latest build be loaded to the customer Demo area some time soon ?

As we have one of your demo installs on your server and it doesnt appear be to on that one.

Thats good new re the printing, We would need all of the conversations though but to remove the "comments" - any idea what sort of timescales ?

Oh - one more thing it'd be great if you could link this into remote support assist tools / like logmein rescue etc.

Best,

Chris

[jstanden]

Hey Chris!

I can answer part of that. I'll leave the rest for Dan. :)

I'll go ahead and upgrade the public demo.

For your private demo, if you e-mail sales(AT)webgroupmedia.com with your hosted evaluation URL you can ask to have it upgraded to the latest build. Brenan@WGM (or anyone here) would be happy to do that for you.

I don't have an ETA at the moment for the printing feature request, but it's pretty silly that feature is still missing. I also just realized a few days ago how many votes that has in the development portal. I'll move it from 4.1 to 4.0. As far as a priority, it's after the other "What do you want to see next?" items on the poll above -- but we don't always work on things serially. Knocking off some smaller fix/request victories usually makes it easy to tackle a bigger request later in the day. ;)

Thanks!

[Carl Abert]

I agree with Jeff - Pre-parse mail rules (lack thereof) is a bit of hole compared to the older version of the HD.

[chris bell]

Thanks Jeff,

Email Sent.

Best,

Chris

[Hildy]

Oh - one more thing it'd be great if you could link this into remote support assist tools / like logmein rescue etc.

Jeff addressed everything else, I think... Can you elaborate a little on what you mean by link? Somebody sends in a ticket, it automatically looks up their computer name, and gives you a link to spawn an outside application to remotely manage their computer?

[Hildy]

I agree with Jeff - Pre-parse mail rules (lack thereof) is a bit of hole compared to the older version of the HD.
This is in progress right now (You can see the placeholder in the Helpdesk Setup already).

[chris bell]

Hi all,

A bit dissapointed to see that the create call function still requires you to type in the email address of the requester.

We had a lookup created before as the web designer we had on staff new such things, would it be possible to get one for V4.0 ?

Best,

Chris

[jstanden]

Hey Chris,

The "Requesters:" input on Log Message will auto-complete based on e-mail address, sender first name or sender last name.

Go ahead and try typing a last name of one of your contacts -- it doesn't matter that the letters don't line up with the e-mail address.

This same thing works for 'To:' on 'Send Mail' as well.

[jstanden]

I agree with Jeff - Pre-parse mail rules (lack thereof) is a bit of hole compared to the older version of the HD.

Yeah, I've had a chance to advance the pre-parse rules a bit. Shouldn't be long.

I just finished up a lot of work revamping the Configuration area to make things like this much easier.

[jstanden]

Here's a progress report on the top 3 requests from this poll:
http://www.cerb4.com/blog/2008/03/14/progress-report-time-tracking-support-center-translations/

[chris bell]

Hi Jeff,

That only seems to work on the first or last name - not on the email address.

With schools we often get new/supply teachers dropped into the pot so if they give us the school name we could log the call via the admin officer - if the lookup worked on the domain part of the email address or better still the company name, this would work great for us.

Best,

Chris

[jstanden]

... if the lookup worked on the domain part of the email address or better still the company name, this would work great for us.

Hey Chris!

Makes sense. Both of those are absolutely possible.

http://www.wgmdev.com/jira/browse/CHD-571

[jgrose]

My group has been researching issue tracking/helpdesk/PM applications, both commercial and open-source and have found Cerberus to be our favorite so far. We are very impressed with the speed and features.. except for one critical requirement that did exist in 3.5...

We need the ability for end users to attach files (usually it's a screenshot) to their ticket submissions via the Support Center form. This is one of our key requirements to use the system.

We're aware that attachments can be sent with tickets submitted by e-mail but our company (verizon) uses Lotus Notes and does not offer imap or pop3 access to the domino servers... so we can't use e-mail although we're hoping to figure that out internally in the future.

Please add this feature! It's already existant on the compose message form in the main area, just not on the support center issue submission form.

A workaround would also work... thanks for all the hard work on an excellent product!

We hope to implement Cerberus soon...

[chewtoy]

Replying to myself, never a good sign. Still, here goes...

I'd love to know where the best spot is to post suggestions. I have a lot of them (as I'm sure Brenan can wearily attest ;-) ).

For example:
--- Time stamps on 'notes' and 'comments' should show the time and the date, not just the date. This is really limiting for me. One of the main things I need out of a helpdesk package is just simple automatic timestamping of work, and it almost always happens way more often than once per day. I'll open a ticket on a WAN circuit outage, for example, and update it a dozen times, then close it, all within the same day. It's very important to be able to tell the exact times each of those things happened.

--- The new "log message" function doesn't let me select a bucket, only a group, which means that *every* time I use it I immediately have to go back to the same ticket and move it into the correct bucket. That's kinda silly. :)

--- If you're going to replace due dates with "re-open dates", then closing a ticket ought to give you the opportunity to set the re-open date every time. At present you can only set a re-open date if you send a reply. There are lots of times when I want to get a ticket out of the way and have it show back up later, but I *don't* want to send an email.

--- Repeat after me: "All emails in a helpdesk have tickets, but not all tickets have emails." :-) Why is "log message" not called "create ticket"? Why do I need to send an email or enter any email address just to create a ticket? There are many times when I want to create a ticket just to record work completed, either so that my time is more easily accounted for or so that some bit of information is searchable later.

[chewtoy]

One more "tickets, not email" suggestion:

Message subjects ought to be displayed for every message in the ticket, not stuck at the top of the ticket. It's possible and likely that the messages in a single ticket will have different subjects. I don't think "ticket subject" should be expected to match "message subject" for all messages in a ticket.

This would also help with how difficult it is to get a quick feeling for the flow of a conversation when messages are "minimized". Actually, showing the first several lines of each "minimized" message would be a big help too.

[dsugita]

Replying to myself, never a good sign. Still, here goes...

I'd love to know where the best spot is to post suggestions. I have a lot of them (as I'm sure Brenan can wearily attest ;-) ).




Generally the 'Concepts' forum works best for suggestions, tips, etc. Though you'll notice (or already have) that we read/respond pretty much everywhere, but it's nice to have things somewhat organized :D

[chewtoy]

Though you'll notice (or already have) that we read/respond pretty much everywhere, but it's nice to have things somewhat organized :D

Thanks. You guys certainly can't be called unresponsive by any stretch. :-)

[chris bell]

After letting one or two of my engineering staff browse the demo system - They or rather I noticed a lack of spell checker ....

Any chance of getting this added ?

Chris

[rfarnell]

After letting one or two of my engineering staff browse the demo system - They or rather I noticed a lack of spell checker ....

Any chance of getting this added ?

Chris

I use Mozilla Firefox's dictionary add-in. Provides a much more visual and instant way of checking spelling than most web site scripting could provide.

You can get it from here: https://addons.mozilla.org/en-US/firefox/browse/type:3

[richdice]

What requested feature would you most like to have our immediate attention?
Something I'm really interested in -- in improvement to reports to track SLA, i.e. service level agreements. In my mind this would be reflected in reporting. For instance, a report that shows a cumulative frequency distribution of time-to-first-response of a ticket and time-to-resolution of a ticket. This would make it easy to find out that, for instance, 95% of tickets were resolved within 4 hours. One could just read it off the chart.

[hbryan]

I am not a developer, so I will describe how I use time tracking in order to get my message across. I use time tracking mainly for billing although I have always thought it would be useful to have a flag of some sort to delineate between billable and non-billable time for project work.

I am running ver 2.7

* A ticket is created and assigned to an agent/worker.
* The worker puts in time on the issue for the client and so enters in the time worked.
* Several tasks or parts of the ticket may be completed this way adding additional time worked.
* Then the ticket is resolved.

At the time I invoice my customers I go through another process. (usually weekly for sanity sake).
* I created a custom field for "billed" which is just a text field.
* Initially the field is blank so I created a "ticket view" where the tickets that are resolved are listed with null "billed" field tickets showing at the top.
* Obviously this runs at a snails pace!
* I take all the tickets that have a "billed" field that is null and add them to a batch.
* I start with the first ticket in the batch and create my time in quickbooks.
* Each of my time entries in quickbooks shows the ticket subject (including number) the date resolved, time worked, and agent assigned. (especially important for sub-contractors).
* Once I am done retrieving billing info off of the ticket I fill in the "billed" field with todays date. (It actually doesn't matter as long as its filled in).
* Then I move on to the "next batched" ticket.

This process is incredibly slow and what I really need is two things a simple reporting feature where I can grab all my tickets that have been unbilled on one screen so I can just quickly go back and forth to fill in quickbooks. At then end I want to be able to select all the tickets and mass update the "billed" field so that they don't come back up.

The second item I need is to be able to have more than one worker work on a ticket and be able to separate or see the individual workers time. I think if the time was tied to the tasks area on ver 4 this might be doable.

I am not a database person, I did this on my own over time just to address my own needs. Its not elegant by any means, nor is it efficient. Most of the time I would rather chew my own arm off than sit down and do billing.

There is my 2 cents on time tracking,

Heather

[fcspaul]

Heather, I think most small business owners hate to do accounting/billing lol. Sure we like to cash/deposit the money but the paper work sucks!

I would add to this that it would be nice if we could export time worked, worker name(s), ticket number, etc. (CSV maybe?) to be imported into our accounting program (QuickBooks, MS Office Accounting, etc).

[Carl Abert]

This is in progress right now (You can see the placeholder in the Helpdesk Setup already).

I updated to 566 - I don't see the 'placeholder' anymore... wasn't it under 'Helpdesk Setup -> Mail'?:confused:

[hbryan]

To FCSPaul. Yes it would be ideal to have some sort of method for exporting data from cerb to import into quickbooks. I imagine someone with a little finesse could get this info from mysql, I am not clued in that area.

[edward.beny]

Hi,

I must agree that reports shall be improved. We're missing some export to excel, containing all available information about the response time, ticket and response itself. It should be possible to drill it down to the worker or ticket on the end.
But overall great work guys.

Ondrej

[chris bell]

But I'd have to use firefox for that to work. And we dont.

Anyway of doing the same thing on IE ?

Best,
Chris

[Hildy]

But I'd have to use firefox for that to work. And we dont.

Anyway of doing the same thing on IE ?

I've never used any of these, so I can't vouch for their utility, but a quick google search pulled up several likely possibilities: http://www.google.com/search?q=internet+explorer+spell+check+plugin&ie=utf-8&oe=utf-8&aq=t&rls=org.mozilla:en-US:official&client=firefox-a

[barryo]

Hey folks,

I _LOVE_ the AJAX use in version 4.

I have a customer who is still on 2.7. They would like to move to V4 bit the
transferal of comments (or lack there of) would be an issue as it's a big enough installation with typically >200 open tickets and some with comments.

Thanks,
Barry

[Hildy]

I have a customer who is still on 2.7. They would like to move to V4 bit the transferal of comments (or lack there of) would be an issue as it's a big enough installation with typically >200 open tickets and some with comments.

See http://www.wgmdev.com/jira/browse/CHD-347

[dsugita]

This thread has gotten quite a few views so far, but could use more feedback (like everything that we do, we love feedback! :D ) so if you're out there and reading this, please feel free to post here or if you don't wish to post on the forums, please send an email to support @ webgroupmedia.com or sales @ webgroupmedia.com

[SchwannyT]

This thread has gotten quite a few views so far, but could use more feedback (like everything that we do, we love feedback! :D ) so if you're out there and reading this, please feel free to post here or if you don't wish to post on the forums, please send an email to support @ webgroupmedia.com or sales @ webgroupmedia.com

Well since you asked:
1)We are trying to use Cerb 4. Most of our support is phone support. What we have done is set up an "Internal Community" and made questions that our operators can ask and fill out before it gets sent to service, and doesn't require them to have access to the helpdesk. It has 2 flaws, one if the caller doesn't have an email, and it doesn't log who entered it (even if they are "logged in" on the support center. It works ok, but with the "log message" the service people can do it from the inside, however they cannot enter custom fields info in the log message.

2)I've noticed the "Communites" tab bounce from helpdesk setup to the main bar and back again every few versions. For our setup it'd be nicer to have it outside the "helpdesk setup" where a non-admin user could update it.

[Hildy]

1) I don't know that there's ever going to be a really good solution for supporting people with no phone numbers, since Cerberus is, at heart, a group email application. You could always use a dummy address, like noemail@yourdomain.com, for those clients that don't have or wish to provide their own.

2) The Communities config is (fairly permanently, I believe) in Helpdesk Setup now, for exactly that reason (doesn't need to be visible to or modifiable by normal Workers).

[chewtoy]

1) I don't know that there's ever going to be a really good solution for supporting people with no phone numbers, since Cerberus is, at heart, a group email application. You could always use a dummy address, like noemail@yourdomain.com, for those clients that don't have or wish to provide their own.


Forgive me, but focusing only on email makes cerb4 limited in usefulness. I found cerberus while looking for helpdesk software, NOT email management software. If email management were what I needed, great...but um it seems to be more oriented towards helpdesk, which is where I'd hope you're going.

What I need out of a helpdesk tool is the ability to keep all correspondence and files related to an issue together, in one easy to find, easy to browse area no matter how long the issue takes to resolve (even if it's many months). That doesn't mean email -- I may never get an email on the problem, nor ever send one on it -- that doesn't mean I don't need to track my communications (phone, face-to-face, etc) and keep everything organized by time.

That means being able to:

Being able to have many completely separate email threads in the same ticket, all with their own subjects and their own recipients.
Granular timestamps for every action.
Being able to search everything, or at least all textual parts of the tickets.
Being able to compose new, separate messages from within a ticket...

[SchwannyT]

1) I don't know that there's ever going to be a really good solution for supporting people with no phone numbers, since Cerberus is, at heart, a group email application. You could always use a dummy address, like noemail@yourdomain.com, for those clients that don't have or wish to provide their own.


Did you mean email address? That is what we are doing currently, and it is acceptable, but is there a way to have the contact info go directly into the address book, from the support center? Or to have the info from the "log in" on the support center available to the conversation?
While we are on the support center, is there a way to have a drop down list that is appended to the message (not a custom field)?

[kappy]

Is there any update on the Time Tracking?
Time Tracking was amongst the highest vote-getters in this poll AND one of the most popular tickets on JIRA, yet we haven't heard anything on it.
http://www.wgmdev.com/jira/browse/CHD-197

And what about Email notifications (http://www.wgmdev.com/jira/browse/CHD-519)? It is the most popular ticket, and has been for a while now. The last update was on 3/5 saying that the plan was to get it implemented "this week", yet we've heard nothing since.

So....the two most popular issues receive no updates to the users as to any progress that's being made or timelines that may be reasonable. But, of course, this hot-button topic (http://www.wgmdev.com/jira/browse/CHD-602) was jumped right on and quickly resolved. While that issue needed to be addressed (as you do not want to give your product away), it just rubbed me wrong that an issue that benefits noone but yourselves got addressed so quickly while the issues that matter to the users sit idle (acknowledging that you are likely working on them, but not updating us on the progress).

[bcavish]

Hi Kappy,

" Is there any update on the Time Tracking?
Time Tracking was amongst the highest vote-getters in this poll AND one of the most popular tickets on JIRA, yet we haven't heard anything on it.
http://www.wgmdev.com/jira/browse/CHD-197"

Of the three most popular issues, time tracking was number 2 on our list of major development endeavors that we understand that our users wanted for the helpdesk. The number one voted and asked for key feature was support-center/knowledgebase improvements and integration. Over the last month our development resources have been focused on this and the result is viewable in the latest svn build. We are only able to do one major feature at a time, and the KB/SC changes took a lot of resources from our end. Time tracking is one of the next features that we are working on.

"And what about Email notifications (http://www.wgmdev.com/jira/browse/CHD-519)? It is the most popular ticket, and has been for a while now. The last update was on 3/5 saying that the plan was to get it implemented "this week", yet we've heard nothing since."

Jeff and team have been pretty busy and were not able to add that minor feature or a few others. I as well would like to see that feature, it would be useful for me ;)

"But, of course, this hot-button topic (http://www.wgmdev.com/jira/browse/CHD-602) was jumped right on and quickly resolved. "

There is a difference between a one line fix in our code that is a bug, and adding new features. Features, even minor features, take a lot of time and testing. We do not have the resources to add tons of features at a time and test them to make sure they are relatively stable. We will get to both of the issues you are waiting for, but it will take a bit of time.

[joeberg]

[from 4/14/2008]
Of the three most popular issues, time tracking was number 2 on our list of major development endeavors that we understand that our users wanted for the helpdesk. The number one voted and asked for key feature was support-center/knowledgebase improvements and integration.

[from 3/13/2008]
Time Tracking hasn't actually received any attention yet, but we're shifting some focus to it because it's ranked #1 on the "What do you want to see next?" poll.


Seems to me there is some disparity over what is most popular. I guess some votes carry more weight than others? I am definitely looking forward to seeing the time tracking also...

[chewtoy]

Obviously you have to allocate your time. I will note though that if there were some more documentation on the code itself and a discussion group for outside development, as well as a way of submitting code upstream, I would probably already be digging in to try to make quite a few changes that I personally would see as improvements ... and I'm barely a programmer, so I have to assume there are at least a few real programmers out there in your customer group who stood a chance of having you become happy about their submissions. ;-)

Any code docs yet?
Any procedure for how to submit upstream?

[bcavish]

"Seems to me there is some disparity over what is most popular. I guess some votes carry more weight than others? I am definitely looking forward to seeing the time tracking also..."

If you take a quick look at our community voting poll SC and KB adds up to more than time tracking. We also gathered feedback in other areas. These things needed to be done at the same time to be done right, so we considered them a similar issue.

"Obviously you have to allocate your time. I will note though that if there were some more documentation on the code itself and a discussion group for outside development, as well as a way of submitting code upstream, I would probably already be digging in to try to make quite a few changes that I personally would see as improvements ... and I'm barely a programmer, so I have to assume there are at least a few real programmers out there in your customer group who stood a chance of having you become happy about their submissions. ;-)

Any code docs yet?
Any procedure for how to submit upstream?"

I'll flag this for a dev to take a look at, but short answer is we have documented the API and the schematic, however more detailed devblocks documentation isn't something we have been able to get out yet.

[giftculture]

Cerberus 3.x had the concept of queue watchers, and people who were watching a queue would get emailed not only replies to tickets but copies of comments as well. I can't seem to see where to set that up under 4.x - it's pretty important to us that comments get emailed as well to queue members, since many of our staff interact with the ticketing system solely through their email clients

There is an open improvement/feature request for this at: http://www.wgmdev.com/jira/browse/CHD-578 - it would be helpful if it got more votes, this is preventing us from upgrading

[kappy]

Well....since I whined earlier this week, I will also take the time to say thank you now. Thanks for getting Email Notifications in place. They will be a big help.

[bcavish]

Hi Kappy,

Thanks for the thanks! :)

We are working on getting some of the smaller feature requests and bugs fixes into the helpdesk before moving on to the next big feature overhaul. The support-center/kb tweaks took a good deal of time, but we remained aware of a lot of the issues being reported.

I still don't have an eta on time tracking, but we know its a big issue still.

[jlehrhoff]

this should have an update module, or easy way to upgrade without losing data

[chewtoy]

Here's a request that seems like it would be easy to add -- it would be helpful if the email notifications included a link to the ticket the notification pertains to.

[chewtoy]

Notifications only occur on email actions -- it would be better if they occurred for everything, including adding comments and notes.

[SchwannyT]

Hey can you add a custom mask area to the config. I've gone in and edited the code to use a mask we like, but it keeps getting wiped out when I update. :rolleyes:

[chrisdowns]

Live help, no one's talked about it for a while is there any chance we are going to get it??

[NickInOZ]

The lack of ticket closed notifications is a total brick wall for us.

I have added my vote over at http://www.wgmdev.com/jira/browse/CHD-496

I see this issue has 16 votes, along with two other issues, can we get an idea of when we might see some activity towards addressing this. I'd really like to hit my purse holders for the upgrade cash in this budget period (by June 30 08) but cannot justify the expense for a product that is not going to do as much as or more than the product it will replace (Cerb 3.6.0 b431).

Cerb4 is looking really good, but presently it just takes up hard drive space on my server.

[jstanden]

The lack of ticket closed notifications is a total brick wall for us.

Dan implemented that for you guys a few days ago based on the overwhelming votes. It's in the release notes for Build 623:
http://forum.cerb4.com/forumdisplay.php?f=10

Thanks!

[NickInOZ]

Yep.
Got it and now and I'm as happy as a spark in a fireworks factory, thanks Dan and anyone else involved.
I got my green light for an upgrade on July 01. The more I use 4 and the more you guys fine tune it to our whims and demands the more I am really liking it.
Now I just gotta work on figuring out how to write pre parse rules to filter out out of office replies and stuff.

[mallen]

Better reports is what we would like to see the most, with customizable date range selection , totals for company wide stats, and an export to Excel for all reports.

Thanks!

[TheFearlessDog]

it would be nice to be able to vote several times every now and then.
may create a new poll based on the top 5 from this one.