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SupportCenter Helpdesk / Knowledgebase

10th April, 2008 - Posted by Chance - No Comments

SupportCenter is a full featured helpdesk / trouble ticket system as well as a feature rich knowledgebase manager. I’ve been meaning to write a quick post about these guys for a while now as its a great piece of software for a great price- the full version costs only $99 and they have a free version too.

We switched to SupportCenter after having some issues with Kayako. Kayako was great software too, but it’s encoded and required a performance robbing decoder that affected the entire server. That and Kayako’s customer service sucks.

The Support Desk

SupportCenter does just what we need it to do without all the extra fluff. You can tell they really took a Gmail philosophy to UI design with their “less is more” AJAX interface that is clean and easy to use. There is a full featured trouble ticket system complete with escalation rules, multiple cues and notifications, custom data fields, and email piping. We use these features in a couple different ways:

Web Based Tickets-

SupportCenter allows you to insert a ticket submission form anywhere on your website. For us this was key as we wanted to integrate the support form in to our Secure Delivery app and pass user information from Secure Delivery to the help desk system. We set up a few custom data fields for user information that we use in troubleshooting problems customers are having- things like their account email address, customer ID in our system, and account class. Once there were set up we designed the integrated support ticket form to pass these variables for logged in users using simple hidden form fields.

When the tickets come in the are automatically filtered based on the custom fields like account class- tickets from paid accounts go in to a high priority queue while free accounts go in to the regular queue. Using the Support Center notification system I have an alert set up to send me a text message to my cell phone email address for priority paid tickets so even if I’m sipping on burbon in the back yard I’ll know a paying customer needs me.

Email Based Tickets-

Support Center also supports email piping, the must have feature for a serious support solution. Basically what email piping does is parse incoming emails to a specific address, read them, and insert them in to the web based support ticket system. This is important basically two ways-

First, when we reply to a web based ticket (the standard way for SD users to create support requests) the reply is automatically sent to the customer’s email. They can then simply reply to the email in their email reader to update their ticket. Their replies are piped to Support Center, parsed in to the support database, and show up in our web based administration panel automatically. This is far superior to other systems where you have to click on a link to go to a reply web page, enter a ticket ID and password, and then reply.

Second, email piping allows users to create new tickets by simply sending an email to our support@ address without even going to the web site. Although we don’t get the custom field information on the customer such as user ID when they email their support requests in directly, we do store the custom field information within Support Center so if they have ever submitted a ticket through the web form in the past it still shows up with their email. All custom fields have the option to be ticket based (associated with this incident) or user based so that their custom info shows up on every ticket they submit, even through email.

There is great value here for the money, and at $99 as opposed to the $299 Kayako eSupport price its really hard to beat.

Knowledgebase

Support Center also includes a built-in knowledgebase system that is quick and easy to use. You can easily create categories and KB articles. You can attach images to KB posts while you create it making the generation process that much quicker- no seperate ftp uploading. The KB generates search engine friendly URLs automatically and actually generates static HTML pages as opposed to dynamic docs. To check it out in more detail you can see the Secure Delivery Knowledgebase.

The knowledgebase is nearly perfect- the features you need without any extra crap slowing you down. I love it- now I just need to find the time to write about 100 kb articles…

Oh, and one other thing- the web based ticket forms, even custom integrated forms, can load KB article suggestions as the users type their questions in through a bit of javascript- an awesome feature that keeps users from asking already answered questions over and over again :)

Support Center… Support

I have only had one problem with Support Center- a funny error with generating KB articles. The great thing is that after contacting the developers they diagnosed the issue, solved the problem, and had an update posted to their website in less than 3 days! I know a little bit about web application development, and let me tell you- this was awesome.

They regularly update Support Center as you can see from their changelog. They use web based delivery to issue updates, so you can easily log in to your account and download the most current version at any time.

The only gripe I have with Support Center, if you can even call it that, is that its mildly difficult to customize. I’m used to looking at complex web applications, so I can somewhat sort through the mix of AJAX, php, and HTML to find what I’m looking for, but they sure didn’t make it easy. While they did provide some basic template files to change the basic submission form, knowledgebase layout, etc. I could see novice developers having a hard time wrapping their head around customizations.

Still, this is a small price to pay for all the power and functionality you get for such a great price, and I would recommend Support Center to anyone who wants a full featured, reliable support desk without breaking the bank.

Give Support Center a look, try their online demo, or download the free single agent version to give it a try- you won’t be disappointed.

Note: The links above are not affiliate links. We personally use this software at Secure Delivery, I love it, and thats why I’m recommending it. If you want an affiliate link you can click here :)