Support Fusion Tips and Tricks

Why use Dynamic Menus?

2006-10-13T11:33:00.000-04:00

Jim Cuoco,
CTO, Support Fusion, Inc.

When we first designed what is now Support Fusion's Help Desk solution back in 1999, we realized that businesses did not want to buy a cookie cutter solution. No business handles support the same as another or even uses the same terminology for their customer service processes. Dynamic Look and Feel was first and foremost the basis of our design.

One of the key features behind this philosophy is our navigation system. We wanted to make something that the user could manipulate. With a dynamic menu the user can add and remove features, change the order in which the features are shown, the way they are grouped, the language they are in, or the general terminology. Add the fact in that the system is completely web-based, the user can even add menu items that point to places outside the realm of our system. Dynamic menus give our users immense power of how they want their system to look and what functions they want their users to see.

We started out with a Javascript-based menu in 1999, in 2003 we added a pure HTML-based menu, and in 2005 added a Control-based menu. Each of these menu types has its pros and cons, but all three are available, letting our customer's decide what works best for them.

Another benefit of a dynamic menu system is that our customers can create menu items that point directly at items in the system that they would normally need to drill down to via other pages. For example, if there is a key attachment attached to an issue in the database, pointing a menu item right at that attachment's URL will bring it up immediately. The same goes for reports. Any report can be placed in a menu item rather than accessing a report list. Parameters can also be placed in the URL changing the Title of the report or you can pass information to modify the Where clause and change the enter result set.

Customers can also utilize the Message functionality in the system to generate their own secure web pages. The Message feature includes a rich-text editor so users who do not know HTML can create great looking pages. After a Message has been created, it can either be tied to a Profile, Company, or Individual and will appear in their general News page (news.aspx). But many more messages can be created and accessed directly from menu items, by specifying the news.aspx?name=xxx where xxx is the name that was given to that message. Each message also has a security level so users with lower security levels cannot access messages they are not meant to see.

In the end, the dynamic menu feature is one of the biggest differentiators between Support Fusion and its competition. Add in Profiles and the combination of Site Wrappers, Site Parameters, and many of the other features Support Fusion offers and our customers can create an endless set looks and functionality sets for one of our systems.

Jim Cuoco
Email: jcuoco@supportfusion.com
Comany: Support Fusion Inc.
Blog: From the Desks of Support Fusion

The Power of Status Alerts

2006-09-20T13:00:00.000-04:00

Jim Cuoco,
CTO, Support Fusion, Inc.

Status Alerts have been a feature in our system for quite some time now, but some cutomers are still not taking full advantage of them. For those of you unfamiliar with Status Alerts, let me give you a quick summary. For every status defined in the system you can create a Status Alert. When active this alert will be triggered when the status of an issue is set to that status. The author of the Status Alert can define when the first and subsequent alerts will be sent, how many will be sent, who they will be sent to, and what will trigger them being sent while the issue remains in that particular status.

I am not going to get into the details of how to setup Status Alerts in this article, but rather why they should be set up. For example, we have a customer that currently uses Status Alerts to query their customers on their support experience. They have set up a Status Alert on the Issue Closed status that sends an email to the customer one day after an issue has been closed. In the email there is a link to a survey on their web site that the customer can fill out. This information provides them with the data they need to assess the effectiveness of their support staff.

Status Alerts can also be placed on statuses that are customer based. Meaning if a customer places in activity in an issue and that activity is set up to change the status of the issue (another topic to be discussed), then a Status Alert on that status can be set up to email the representative at regular intervals reminding them to get back to this customer.

Status Alerts can also be used to notify supervisor when an issue is set to a specific status and notify department heads based on an issue being placed in a specific status and so on.

In the end, the ability to notify different people inside and outside of your company, in a format you define, based simply on the change of status (again which you define) is a very powerful of tool for sharing information.

Jim Cuoco
Email: jcuoco@supportfusion.com
Comany: Support Fusion Inc.
Blog: From the Desks of Support Fusion

Create Newsletters with Email Blaster

2006-09-19T16:25:00.000-04:00

Jim Cuoco,
CTO, Support Fusion, Inc.

There some companies out there today that generate some very nice looking newsletters. These newsletters can emailed out to your customers and/or prospects for a fee. If you have the need to generate electronic newsletters, don't waste you money with a fee-based service, use the Email Blaster that is included in your Support Fusion system.

Using Support Fusion's web-based rich text editor you can generate professional looking newsletters without knowing HTML at all. You also have the ability to chose recipients directly from your contact list in the system. No need to manually enter any email addresses. You can also schedule the newsletter to be sent at a later time.

Jim Cuoco
Email: jcuoco@supportfusion.com
Comany: Support Fusion Inc.
Blog: From the Desks of Support Fusion