Ferrysoft Help Desk is a web based help desk portal. It is designed for organisations who wish to provide support, via an effective customer relationship management (CRM) system, to their customers. It is also ideal for organisations wanting to provide an in-house help desk service for their own members or employees.

At its core, Ferrysoft Help Desk keeps track of cases; any issue or query needing a resolution from the help desk. Cases can originate from within your own organisation or from external customer organisations. Cases can be entered by the originator via the web based portal or via email sent from the originator. These emails are automatically turned into cases by Ferrysoft Help Desk.

Read on to find out how Ferrysoft Help Desk can be used to manage cases as well as the other features of Ferrysoft Help Desk.

New cases can be entered via the New Case web page. All new cases need a 'Title', 'Summary', the name of the person logging the case and the name of the person assigned to resolve the case. There are additional fields such as 'Status', 'Priority' and fields customised according to the local needs of the organisation.

New cases can also be entered via email. With this arrangement, Ferrysoft Help Desk monitors a POP3 mailbox and downloads any email sent to that mailbox. Email received in this way is automatically converted to a new case in Ferrysoft Help Desk.

Cases are normally assigned to a named user. Each user sees the list of open cases assigned to him / her by default on the home page. The home page also allows selection by 'Status' (open/closed), 'Priority', 'Assigned To' or individual 'Case ID' so that any case can be retrieved. Customer Contacts are restricted to seeing only those cases belonging to themselves or contacts of the same organisation.

Updates to cases are recorded via the Existing Case web page. Updates to cases can include status change, priority change, re-assignment to a different contact and the addition of free format text to amplify the original case summary.

Updates to cases are recorded in the event history which is visible each time the case is displayed. The event history tracks all changes to 'Status', 'Priority' etc. plus comments entered in the 'New Comment' field at the time of the event. If an update is made to a case by a customer or by a user, other than the assigned user, then an email alert is sent to the assigned user to warn of the change.

Reports can be generated for all currently open cases (filtered by customer) or all cases (filtered by customer) related to a particular month. This allows summary reports to be generated as of the end of each month; covering a twelve month historical period. Contacts are restricted to reporting only on those cases belonging to themselves or contacts of the same organisation.

This option is only available to users who have the Administrator role. It allows the Ferrysoft Help Desk system tables to be maintained including:

• Announcements table.
• Discussions table.
• Internal Contacts (contacts within your own organisation).
• Knowledge Bases table.
• Lists table and entries within those lists.
• Organisations (customers, suppliers and your own organisation) table and contacts within those organisations.
• Priorities table.
• External Interfaces (the POP3 and SMTP email interfaces).
• Registration Key.
• System Defaults.
• Users table (contacts who are allowed to login to Ferrysoft Help Desk).

On-line help is available throughout Ferrysoft Help Desk. Each web page of Ferrysoft Help Desk has a corresponding help page describing the use of hyperlinks, buttons and fields on the page.

The screen shot shows the on-line help page for the Ferrysoft Help Desk home page.

Discussion Forum is an electronic meeting place where a community of users can get together to discuss a common interest. Discussion Forum is available from any Ferrysoft Help Desk page. It is not necessary to login to Ferrysoft Help Desk to contribute to the discussions. An administrator can setup a series of discussion categories. The screen shot shows three example discussions; 'Company Gossip', 'Global News' and 'Local News'. Participants can post new topics to any discussion. The screen shot shows the recently posted topics in the 'Local News' discussion.

Topics include the author's name, web site addresses and whether the author will accept email replies. Replies can be posted to the discussion forum or a private email can be sent via the discussion forum if the recipient accepts email replies. The screen shot shows one topic with a single reply. Both the original poster and the reply author have signed their posts with their personal web address, business web address (web icon) and indicated that they will accept email replies (email icon).

The Delete topic icon and Delete post icons shown in the screen shot are only visible to users who have the Discussion Forum Moderator role.

Knowledge Base is an electronic database of knowledge that can be used to contain solutions to common issues. Knowledge Base is available from any Ferrysoft Help Desk page. It is not necessary to login to Ferrysoft Help Desk to access knowledge topics. An administrator can setup a series of knowledge base categories. The screen shot shows three example knowledge bases; 'Development Issues', 'Ferrysoft Help Desk KB' and 'Support Issues'. Participants can access topics in any knowledge base. The screen shot shows the knowledge base topics in the 'Ferrysoft Help Desk KB' knowledge base.

Topics include the title and description of the knowledge base topic. The format of the description is up to the knowledge topic author. The screen shot shows one topic with a description composed of sections for Symptoms, Cause and Resolution.

Announcements is a feature to display messages to users of Ferrysoft Help Desk on the login page. Announcements can be used to display status information about Ferrysoft Help Desk or other useful information. Each announcement is set up with a Sunrise Date (the first date when it will appear) and a Sunset Date (the last date when it will appear). The screen shot shows an announcement being setup to run throughout June 2007 to announce the availability of the latest version of Ferrysoft Help Desk.

The screen shot shows the announcement being displayed on the login page along with another announcement setup on 1 January 2007.

Ferrysoft Help Desk includes a web services module that allows external applications to integrate with Ferrysoft Help Desk using the web services protocol. As web services use open, XML-based standards and transport protocols, this means that a wide variety of external applications can potentially interact with Ferrysoft Help Desk.

If you would like to try Ferrysoft Help Desk for yourself, you can download it from here.