Automate your business with Web+Center!

For many business and organizations, there exists a combination of  business functions and process requirements that most ticketing applications cannot handle since they require both a comprehensive solution that is also customizable.

It is not cost effective to have a developer create an entirely new custom application to fit those requirements when Web+Center can be a perfect, out-of-the-box solution that comes with a chest of tools and features that can be easily customized to build your complete solution.  This newsletter describes two basic business requirements and how they are solved with Web+Center.

Business Process 1 – Tracking Widgets/Products/Services with Customers

Many businesses sell or loan a specific widget (hardware, software, equipment, service contract, etc) with a  customer purchase that needs to be carefully tracked.   The customizable asset management component of the Tech+Center application allows organizations to build a database of assets or services that can then be tied to an individual customer or company.    The Business+Center and Tech+Center allows you to create internal notes about your customers and associate them into various user groups or assign that customer to particular tech or sales staff.  The Tech+Center provides a comprehensive ticketing/support solution to round out a collaborative, inter-departmental business solution that enables several areas of a typical business to operate more efficiently by sharing data and information with Web+Center.

The new Customer+Mobile application and the Customer+Center application empower your own customers to obtain a higher level of support that can help differentiate your business from other competing businesses.

TOO MANY SYSTEMS!

When we talk to many of our Web+Center users, we learn that many organizations and businesses have historically created a large set of disconnected applications and processes.  Information about the customer, product purchases or service provided, is often located in some spreadsheet  that is not accessible to everyone in the company and not easily coupled with customer information and the customer history.

With a small amount of customization, Web+Center can be the tool to automate your business to a higher level of productivity and better customer satisfaction.  The Web+Center is an excellent tool to bridge the information gap with information relating to  to pre-sales, sales, product distribution, support and purchasing information.

Business Process 2 – Building your customer relationships with personalized customer emails

The Business+Center application provides a set of email message utilities  to send out personalized emails to customers and customer user groups.  A new feature in Web+Center version 7.5  was recently added to the Customer summary page in the Business+Center application to quickly and efficiently email customers with messages and add updates to the customer notes and set specific customer user categories.

If you are a small business owner today, an important requirement is to continually make personal connections with your customers.  When it comes time for renewal, upgrades or purchasing more products, they will be more likely to continue their business relationship with you if you have kept in contact in a way that enables them to  feel connected with your business or organization.  Many products and services become a commodity and users simply do a quick Internet search to find another vendor offering the same service or product for less if they don’t feel a personally connected with the vendor.

To help establish  that important vendor-customer relationship, we have added a new feature to Business+Center  that allows you to create and send  personalized emails from a combination of a template message and personalized text.  As you create this message, you are also presented with the complete “summary” of information about this customer  showing a list of their support cases, invoices and internal customer notes.  An email sent to the customer with this new form is documented as an entry into the customer notes.

The screen shots and text below explain how to use this new feature within Business+Center.  Business+Center is one of 6 applications bundled with Web+Center including Tech+Center, Pocket+Center, Customer+Center,  Reservation+Center and Customer+Mobile.  We have created this example on our own web-site evaluation site, so you can review the information presented in this newsletter directly on-line at:

Business+Center  On-line evaluation Test Site

Step 1: Login into the Business+Center (http://hostname/business70/ ) with your Tech account

Step 2: Create an HTML or plain text personalized  message.  Include the necessary special tags to personalize your email to include their name and the customize email text.  To create an email newsletter/email template:

•  Press Email Options button
•  Enter Email Template Subject
• Enter Email body (see screen shot below)
• Enter Email Reply to organizational name and Email
• Press Submit

Step 3:  Find a  customer and review their summary information  (additional contact information, invoices and support cases) and then compose a personalized bit of text to be embedded into the personalized email.   The summary page allows you to review all of the customer’s important information on a single screen view showing customer notes, invoices, support cases, etc.

Step 4: Fill out the Send Customer Personalized Email form at the bottom of the Customer Summary page and press the Send Personalized Email Message. This form will perform all of the steps with a single submit:

• Send a personalized email using the selected template to the individual customer.
• Set a particular user category setting if selected
• Add a note to the customer notes section for that customer

Conclusions:

Most businesses and organizations can benefit from this consolidation of reporting and tracking of customer information and outlining what products or services they have purchased.
Web+Center provides that easily configurable whole business solution that you can’t create using other one-size-fits-all Help Desk applications. 
Contact Internet Software Sciences to find out how we can help you solve your business automation requirements.

Sincerely,
Scott Vanderlip
President, Internet Software Sciences

The post Automate your business with Web+Center! appeared first on | Internet Software Sciences | Help Desk Software.

• Tech+Center – Technician Portal for support management
• Customer+Center – Customer portal for customer self help
• Customer+Mobile – Mobile and tablet interface for customer self help
• Business+Center – Sales CRM/ Contact Management/Business application
• Reservation+Center – Resources and equipment reservation system
• Pocket+Center – Technician interface for mobile devices

The Customer+Mobile application performs most of the same functions as the Customer+Center but is specially designed to fit on smart phones, mobile devices and tablets using jQueryMobile interface element designs that provide a native mobile device user experience with a web application.  Customers can choose between using the Customer+Center interface when accessing the Web+Center Help Desk with their full screen computer browsers or create or update support cases with their mobile devices.

When accessing support ticket notification messages, the Web+Center application will automatically route you to Customer+Mobile ticket page  if it detects you are viewing the notification email on a mobile device or direct you to the Customer+Center if it is detects a regular computer browser device.  Customers can  create, open, view or update cases on either the Customer+Center or the Customer+Mobile application portals.

How to integrate Customer+Mobile into your current Web+Center site

We have designed the Customer+Mobile application to be easily added to existing Web+Center Version 7.5 or 7.x installations with very minimal changes and no database upgrade requirements.  This component is included as part of a new Web+Center installation or available as a free upgrade for those 3 or more tech licenses  and a current support contract in place.  Please contact Internet Software Sciences directly to check your support and license status and obtain the Customer+Mobile upgrade code.   Check out our Pricing page and Purchase page for details on  Web+Center licensing and support if you wish to upgrade at this time.  Contact ISS directly at support@inet-sciences.com to get the upgrade zip that contains the new files for Customer+Mobile

Customer+Mobile Design and implementation details

The Customer+Mobile application code resides in a new physical directory called CustomerMobile which is located at the same directory level as techcenter, customercenter, businesscenter, etc.  It references the same ODBC DSN database connector called webcenter70_db that points to your backend Access or SQL*Server database.

This mobile application is referenced by your mobile web browser by creating an application or virtual directory under the Microsoft Internet Information Services (IIS) called “customer70mobile”.

Testing on-line works  too!

If you want to test Customer+Mobile application on-line first, we have it hosted online on our website test sandbox:

http://helpdesk.inet-sciences.com/customer70mobile/

Point your Smart phone or tablet to that URL and feel free to create new customer accounts and create tickets with the interface.
Follow those tickets and customer accounts you created with Customer+Mobile application  in the sandbox with our  comprehensive ticket tracking Tech+Center application  at:

http://helpdesk.inet-sciences.com/tech70/

We hope you are as excited as we are about this new addition to the Web+Center suite of Help Desk and customer support offerings.  The addition of this Customer+Mobile interface is completely compatible with your existing Web+Center installation, and will allow your technicians  to track and manage cases that have been created or updated by either the Customer+Mobile or the Customer+Center application.

More Mobile and Tablet Interfaces to come!
We are busy developing Web+Center version 8.0 which will include a Mobile Tech interface application to allow technicians to track and manage support tickets and perform certain reporting and asset functionality.  If you have any special requests for Tech+Mobile interface, please contact ISS with your design requirements so we can make you part of our design team.

Sincerely,
Scott Vanderlip
-President – Internet Software Sciences
http://www.inet-sciences.com

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What’s under the hood of your Help Desk Software?

Do you ever consider the under-lying technology that comes with a software application and potential life cycle of any of the dependent technologies, and the long term architecture of the product itself from which the application is built upon?  When making a purchasing decision, do you ponder the potential buy out/merger of a company and it’s affects it may have on the usefulness of a product in 1-2 years?

After working with several new clients in the past few months who are now evaluating our Help Desk package after being abandoned by their vendor from a company merger/buyout consolidation, I decided it was valuable to write an article about 2 important criteria to consider when making your next Help Desk software or any significant software purchase.  One is to review the technology components from which the application is built, and the other is consider the potential company and product changes.

Lack of Control over the future of your Help Desk Product Life cycle

In the past 10 years, there has been incredible consolidation, mergers and buyouts of help desk product companies. Products that were leaders in the Help Desk market one day are often sold only 1 year later to a company that now controls 3 of the leading help desk products.  This new owner of the product may have their company interests ahead of the end user customer interests.  As a consumer, you have very little control and insight over the product direction the long term life cycle due to company churn .  Your significant investment in time and resources invested in your Help Desk  implementation may be short run by decisions outside of your control.

It is fairly common for a help desk product and their companies to be purchased by a larger company to include it as part of their portfolio of products.  The acquisition may be more strategic for their company future profits by acquiring a product and then discontinuing the product or replacing that product with another product and calling it an upgrade when it fact, it’s a new product.  This forces the customer to either perform an unplanned upgrade or research, purchase and configure an entirely new application.  The value of a software package require several years of  service to achieve a high Return On Investment (ROI), and this is often cut short by unforeseen company mergers and acquisitions.

Case Studies  – Software Churn and consolidation
Here are some examples of some common help desk products that in the past 2 decades,  have changed company owners on a fairly regular basis. (Disclaimer – The article below was researched from various sources on Wikipedia.  The exact dates and buyers of specific software vendors we hope are accurate, and we are sorry if there are some dates or company information that is not fully accurate.  The information below is primary compiled to show important trends in the industry rather than defining  particular companies and products history.)

Remedy:
According to Wikipedia, the Help Desk Giant Remedy was founded in 1990 and went public in 1995 and was named by Business Week as the “Number 1 Top Growth Company in America”.  They were purchased by competitor Peregrine System for 1.2 billion in 2001.  In 2002, Peregrine filed for bankruptcy.  Two months later Remedy was bought by another Help desk competitor BMC software.

Track-it:   A company called Blue Ocean Software founded in 1991 created track-it.  It was sold to Intuit in 2002.  In 2005, it was purchased by TA Associates and renamed to Numara Software.   In 2006, Numara Software purchased another competing help desk product called Footprints.  In January 2012, Numara Software entered into an agreement to be acquired by BMC software.

Magic Solutions: Another help desk product created in the 1990 was part of the consolidation of the Help Desk products with other companies and support of their products and customers suffer from the continual churn of their parent companies.    In 1998, Magic Solutions was purchased by Network Associates.  This product continues now as a component of BMC software when McAffee sold the business in 2004.  We probably missed a buy out or merger or two in there somewhere, but you can see the continual churn of companies and products, often leaving the help desk product user in limbo as the company sorts through buyouts and mergers and acquisition of very competing products.

Checking under the hood!

So even if you can’t predict how and when the next software merger and acquisition could affect you and your help desk product, you can research the underlying technology architecture and if it’s possible to continue to maintain the application with your own in-house staff or another firm if the architecture and technologies are straight  forward enough to allow for this type of support and continued maintenance.

Internet Software Sciences  Web+Center Transparent Technologies

At Internet Software Sciences, we purposefully have architect our Web+Center help desk to be transparent in our technologies so that you can continue to use our software year in and year out.

One of the strengths of the Web+Center product is its simple architecture.  The application consists of application code in Visual Basic Active Server Pages (ASP) that connects to a solid and industry tested SQL*Server or Access database.    We provide with you 100 percent of the source code in a format that is designed to be somewhat self documenting and provide a  programmers guide to help layout the database and any technologies architecture.  There are few technologies dependencies such as Microsoft IIS web services, SQL *Server databases, and ASP scripting.  These are very well know, stable, and reliable technologies.    There is nothing hiding in black boxes or components from a variety of sources that make the product life cycle volatile.  Lastly, we are one of few Help Desk providers that have not merged with larger firms, so we can be more responsive to our customers and can focus more on our users new feature requests rather than having to assimilate new competing products.

Conclusions:

It is well worth the extra time spent to evaluate a product’s underlying software technologies and to research whether the company has plans to sell, obsolete, (end of life for product) or continue to support a software product for 2,3,5, or more years.

Sincerely,
Scott Vanderlip – President – Internet Software Sciences

The post What’s under the hood of your help desk software? appeared first on | Internet Software Sciences | Help Desk Software.

Web+Center Mobile on-site Beta Program!

Let’s face it!  People love their smart phones and can’t live without them.  Users today  are “always on”, and the anything, anytime, anywhere future is here. With those devices comes a user expectation to be able to contact their IT and customer support operations  with the convenience of their smart phone, anytime, anywhere!  Companies and support organizations need to quickly implement options to handle this customer driven requirement.   The Mobile+Center component of Web+Center will lets end users create, update and view their support tickets without having to jump in front of a computer.

WE NEED YOU!

We are now looking for a few Web+Center installation to help perform our limited on-site beta test program for the new Customer+Mobile application for Web+Center Help Desk.  We will provide your organization with a zip file containing the Web+Center code that integrated with your existing Web+Center 7.x  server installation in a way that does not require changes to your existing system but offers this optional, additional customer interface option to create, update and view support cases or perform other customer self help functions.  To join the beta program , simply email Internet Software Sciences at support@inet-sciences.com and request the latest Customer+Mobile zip file and instructions.

Additionally, we are looking for more feedback on using this new interface with a variety of smart phones and tablets to check for compatibility issues.  There is an increasing number of devices and we are interested to capture feedback on new smart phones and tablets coming on the market.

Testing on-line works  too!

If the on-site beta isn’t for your organization but you see want to see what the Mobile+Center application will look like, you can continue  to monitor our daily development changes of our “mobile” application at:

http://helpdesk.inet-sciences.com/customer70mobile/

We hope you are as excited as we are about this new addition to the Web+Center suite of Help Desk and customer support offerings.  The addition of this mobile interface is completely compatible with your existing Web+Center installation for your technicians to properly track and manage  support issues with your Web+Center Help Desk.

Sincerely,
Scott Vanderlip
-President – Internet Software Sciences

The post Web+Center Mobile on-site Beta Program Launch appeared first on | Internet Software Sciences | Help Desk Software.

Customer+Mobile

The world of various mobile devices from Androids to iPhones to tablets of every flavor is now here to stay and users want to access their IT and customer support services with these mobile devices..  To achieve as much compatibility in the mobile and tablet space, we have chosen jQuery mobile device development platform.  This platform strives to achieve compatibility and maintains to evaluate new changes to the tablet interfaces as they evolve.  This technology handles many of the platform specific issues internally so that developers can write to one jquery API that will be handle (hopefully) successfully,  across an increasing and changing landscape  tablet and mobile phone technologies.

On Site Beta Program – Customer+Mobile

Be part of this exciting new product that allows customers to register, create, upgrade their support tickets from their mobile devices using web-based smart phone/tablet interface.  Contact Internet Software Sciences directly if you wish to obtain a ZIP file with this new set of files that can be easily added to existing Web+Center 7.5 systems without touching your existing system.  The Customer+Mobile application installs into a new, separate subfolder under the Web+Center folder and is accessed under a new virtual directory URL called customer70Mobile.

Test on-line:

You can continue to test the latest development version at

http://helpdesk.inet-sciences.com/customer70mobile/

Customer+Mobile on iPad

The post Customer+Mobile Version 1.0 On Site Beta Test Program appeared first on | Internet Software Sciences | Help Desk Software.

We have launched a major new development project to create a smartphone and tablet based interface for customers to create and update support tickets and perform other customer self help portal functions.  We are planning on providing the same basic functionality as the Customer+Center, but utilizing the smart phone and tablet user interface elements and design standards.

Collaborative User Development!

We are planning to develop this additional interface using continual feedback from existing Web+Center customers who are testing our new designs as we implement them.

We will be putting incremental levels of pages of the mobile and tablet interface for review and testing and plan to continually refine the application as it we develop it from feedback from users.  So pull out  your smartphone or tablet and start testing!

You will be able to monitor daily development changes of our “mobile” application at:

http://helpdesk.inet-sciences.com/customer70mobile/

We want your feedback to help develop this application.  Please send all comments to support@inet-sciences.com.  If you wish to be on our development group email list for this new project, we can include you in an email  user group helping us collaboratively building this application.  We anticipate this web-based customer mobile interface will take about 2-3 months to complete.

Sincerely,
Scott Vanderlip – President – Internet Software Sciences

The post Web+Center Goes Mobile appeared first on | Internet Software Sciences | Help Desk Software.

To start out the New Year, we are sending out our annual Web+Center user survey to get a reading on our Help Desk Software and spot new trends and requirements that you find in your environment.  Please help us create a more valuable product for you and other Web+Center users by participating in a simple 5 minute survey.

To take the survey, simply click on the link below:

ISS 2013 Web+Center User Survey

Our overall product  features and designs have been  implemented from requests from users like you to satisfy their real world support requirements on a platform that is stable, easily maintainable and customizable, and reliable from one year to the next.  Completing this survey will help to shape our next release of Web+Center as well as refine existing functionality enabling you to continue to use Web+Center as your Help Desk product of choice for years to come.

If there are new critical requirements that are not currently served by our help desk offering, please contact ISS to see if they are already in the works or if could be implemented by the ISS consulting group specifically for your organization.

The post 2013 Web+Center New Technologies and Features Survey appeared first on | Internet Software Sciences | Help Desk Software.

Internet Software Sciences is somewhat unique in the Help Desk market in that our products and services designs and directions are customer driven and not directed by large corporate takeovers, mergers and acquisitions.   Over the past 10 years, there has been significant consolidation, mergers, and acquisitions of most of our competitors.  All too often, these changes leave the customers out high and dry with products that quickly become no longer support or upgrades that are not upgrades, but new products forced on to existing customers for reasons to benefit the company and not the product user.

We feel the customer knows their own customers the best and we create products and services that allow them to create that perfect support solution that continues to work for years without forced upgrades and constant changes that now exists in the industry.  From the very beginning, we have developed software architecture models that allow for customizations that focus more on extended life cycle of the support system and incredible return on investment rather than delivery of a software product or service that focuses on the initial sale of the product and not whether that product will still be functioning with support in 5 years.

ISS seasoned software engineers understand the difference between a well designed product that offers a customizable, maintainable,  scalable system using industry standard tools and technologies versus products who life has too many external dependencies on browser technologies, company directional changes or other current technologies that quickly become  obsoleted.  When designing our products, we are cautious when using new technologies to avoid issues for existing customers and also reducing issues with new clients.

We hope that you will find our product functionality complete, solid, stable and easy to understand and use and maintain, for several years to come.

The post What makes Internet Software Sciences unique? appeared first on | Internet Software Sciences | Help Desk Software.

Please review the screen shots below to see the updated User Interface available with the latest release of Web+Center. If you wish to obtain a zip file with just the updated files, please contact ISS support via email at support@inet-sciences.com. Upgrades will be available for licensed and supported customers.

New Tech+Center user interface

New Customer+Center user interface

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