The newsletter will also feature information about new and future product information. A special section called Ask ISS will be a forum for users to ask specific questions of the development team and support groups Internet Software Sciences. To send a question in for future Newsletters, send an email with a question to: AskISS@inet-sciences.com

The newsletter is also opened for users to contribute articles on how they use the software and any unique applications and ways they have used the software.

• Ask ISS?
• User Spot Light: San Mateo Community College District
• Product News –
• New Product Versioning Tools
• New installation trouble shooting tools
• Web+Center Support FAQ and Knowledge Base

• Web+Center User Tips – Putting Tech+Center frames into other browser windows

Todays questions will include some of the most frequently asked question for ISS support staff ?

Answer: Yes.. the Customer+Center application was recently re-written to be easily customized to incorporate your headers, banners and footers in the files named ccheader.inc and ccfooter.inc. Other more custom changes can be made by directly editing and changing the Customer+Center Active Server Pages (ASP) scripts that we provide to you.

Answer: The reviewing all of the included documentation (Installation guide, User guide, and Getting Started Guide and Training Modules) will definitely outline all of the product features and help users discovered more of the hidden and custom ways of using the software. These are all located in the documentation directory of the Web+Center installation tree.

Answer: Yes we do. The Web+Center Customer support package is a perfect way to users submit problem tickets and it allows our support staff to quickly create a searchable knowledge base and frequently ask question list as problems get entered and solved. It also helps us create a customer database by letting users that require support submit their contact information.

San Mateo Community College District – Community College Help Desk

San Mateo Community College District, as well as many other Community College Districts in California are using Web+Center as their internal Help Desk Tracking Software.

San Mateo Community College District includes three large campuses consisting of Canada College, College of San Mateo, and Skyline College. Since the product is web-based, all three of the campuses can easily access and contribute to the knowledge base.

CSM (College of San Mateo), Web Support Analyst Jasmine Robinson can best describe how Web+Center works for tech support staff when she recently wrote:

"I spent months researching software, calling companies and testing demos. Functionality of the product was our main concern, it needed to be web based. One of my co-workers had attended a conference and suggested Web+Center as a possible solution. I contacted the company, downloaded the free version and it was an instant hit with our technicians. Not only did the product do everything we needed, web based, included a knowledge center, kept statistics on requests and completed jobs, it did things we hadn’t even though of, such as knowing when a technician is online and available or importing our LDAP exchange directory. I still had large companies calling me with their $100,000 dollar products asking how I liked their demo. It was a little hard to tell them that I found a product competitive to theirs at 10% of the price. "

CSM has taken the product and quickly integrated the "Customer" component with their own look and feel. They even added a free text-based chat component from Human Click (www.humanClick.com) that allows live text chat between support staff and College staff members requesting support. (See Figures below).

(Figure #1 CSM customized Customer+Center Login page)

Figure #2 CSM techs pictured above using Web+Center software include:

Adam West in the top left corner. Stan Leyva in the bottom right corner, Ted Nguyen in the top right corner and Jerry Buck in the bottom left corner.

Now available as part of the new free 5 Tech download package is a two web scripts that will tell you what modules are out of sync with the latest version and it will immediately let user download any files out of sync.

A special script called checkversion.asp will catalog all your current Customer+Center and Tech+Center scripts and then check for compatibility with the current version on the current release directory at Internet Software Sciences. Any files that do not match by date and file size will be flagged with a link to directly download any of the files that are out of sync.

To run a version compatibility check for the Tech+Center application, run the script on your server like:

To run a version compatibility check for the Customer+Center application, run the script on your server like:

To help solve and debug some of initial installation and configuration setup issues that come up across the thousands of users that have downloaded the product we have created a single web page that has performs 6 specific configuration tests. The script which can be run by browsing the URL:

http://<your host name>/techcenter/installtest.htm

The steps performs test including virtual directory permissions setting checks, database connectivity, read, and write tests and SMTP mail utility configuration tests.

If any test fails, it will tell you and this should help to correct the problem by fixing the ODBC setting, or database or web virtual directory settings.

These scripts are available for download from our web based support site which can be found from our main support page.

To see how Web+Center can be used in a product website FAQ and knowledge base configuration, surf over the Internet Software Sciences website support page located at:

http://www.inet-sciences.com/support.html
and then click on the link labeled Web+Center support site link inside of the web-based support section.

This page you are viewing is the Customer+Center in a real product mode by providing three types of support options:

1. FAQ – Frequently asked questions
2. Knowledge base searches based on category or keywords
3. Customer self-registration and new problem reporting

Many of the typical questions and problems reported to Internet Software Sciences have been put into the FAQ list or the knowledge base so please review this resource when searching for Web+Center problems or questions.

There never is enough screen resolution space to provide all of the immediate functionality desired but by opening some of the Tech+Center frame windows to new browser windows, you can provide more screen space for a single window.

To open up a case form in new window, click on the small blue and white application icon link in the open cases list or the case or search engine results. The Open Cases frame window can also be opened up in another browser window by clicking and dragging that frame to another open window. This technique is useful on lap-top and screens with limited resolution since you can have a full screen window of the open cases and then switch between windows of open cases and case forms.