We have long time plans for the development, and below are some enhancements we wish to give PF HelpDesk. The priorities are fluent,
but if you like a feature and wish to make it reality soon, you are
very welcome to
sponsor it.
PF HelpDesk has been on the market since 2000,
so we have many users sending in suggestions for improvements and new features. Therefore the list is long, but
over time we will develop everything in it. The needs of the Community Members will decide the development order, and sponsored features comes first. |
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Under development: PF HelpDesk version 12 ‒ Folder HelpDesk |
Since PF HelpDesk actually may be installed in any Outlook folder, we will rename the application to Folder HelpDesk from version 12.
We thank The Swiss Post, Member of kalmstrom.com Community, for the sponsorship of several new features in version 12.
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Show only Caller tickets when an e-mail is added to a ticket manually
When e-mails are convert into tickets manually with the Conversion button in the Outlook toolbar, a dialog is shown where the user may choose between creating a new ticket and adding the e-mail information to an existing ticket.
If the option add to existing ticket is selected, a search function may be used to find the ticket to which the e-mail should be added.
Folder HelpDesk will have a possibility to directly show earlier open tickets from the caller of the converted e-mail.
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Custom general subject in manual e-mail to Caller and FAQ answers
In the current version it is not possible to give a custom subject to e-mails built on templates. If it is sent manually the subject may be edit by the user before it is sent, but it is not possible to change the predefined subject to a custom one directly in the template.
In version 12 it will be possible to use the template for a manual e-mail to the caller with a custom subject and also to give a custom subject to all FAQ answers.
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Notification to Responsible on manual addition of e-mail to ticket
In the current version an automatic notification to the Responsible person that a new e-mail has been added to the ticket is only sent at automatic addition to the ticket via the e-mail threading feature. When an e-mail is added to a ticket manually, there is no notification is sent.
In version 12 the automatic notifications will be sent to the Responsible in all cases, whether the new e-mail is added to the ticket manually or automatically
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Search feature like in Outlook
This feature will make it possible for users to search the helpdesk in the same way as they normally search Outlook. The result will be shown in the tickets list as yellow marks on the found words or phrases.
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Addition of a mini HTML editor for the Template tab, like the one under the FAQ tab, to make it easier to modify the templates.
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New technology
In Folder HelpDesk we will use .NET in the Outlook add-on instead of VB6. With this more modern coding we will no longer have to use several additional .dll files. The client will load faster, and it brings the application closer to compatibility with the 64 bit version of Office 2010. With the .NET technique Folder HelpDesk will also handle inline images in RTF e-mails in a better way than before. |
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Features we want to add in future versions |
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Ticket |
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Sort Ticket IDs as numbers, not as text.
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Make the Open ticket button work for Tasks created from tickets also. |
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Add a possibility to make an appointment from a ticket, like you can make a task in the current version. |
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Make it possible to include CC in the ticket and to reply to all persons included in the e-mail. |
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Addition of a Merge Ticket feature, which will make it possible
to merge existing tickets or parts of tickets into one parent
ticket. This feature might be useful for many reasons, for example if you wish to merge all tickets from one customer into one single ticket. |
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 Possibility to manually create tickets from several e-mails at the same time by using the CTRL button with
the Create ticket button. |
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Make it possible to create ticket templates and to quickly create new instances of those templates.
Helpdesks often get tasks that need to
be done often. In a template ticket the admin may put
information about such a task, with lots of information filled
out This will save the helpdesk staff time in not having to fill
out the same information over and over. |
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Make it possible to drag an e-mail to a ticket so that it is added to the ticket. |
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If you enter a value that is not present in the Settings in a default ticket field, it can be added
automatically according to the settings under the Ticket form tab.
We would like to add the same functionality of adding new values also for the custom fields. |
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Quicker Search and Reopen closed tickets if there are many tickets. |
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If the "save e-mail history in subfolders" is checked: option to automatically delete e-mail subfolders when the corresponding ticket is closed or deleted. |
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Option to keep attachments in closed tickets.
In the current PF HelpDesk we do not store attachments of closed tickets. Ticket body and other field values are stored in the database, but if the ticket is reopened the attachments are not there.
With the "keep attachments" option selected, closed tickets will instead be
stored in an Outlook subfolder, "Closed tickets", from where
they can be reopened with their attachments. |
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Possibility to convert e-mails to tickets even if no one is logged in to PF HelpDesk. Today one user must have the PF HelpDesk folder in Outlook open or it can be running on a server. |
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Possibility to set a default due date value, so that the user can select no. of days from current date.
Now the default value is always the current date. |
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Close Ticket button in the Outlook toolbar, which will close the selected
ticket. This way you don't have to open the ticket if you are sure it
should be closed. |
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Responsible |
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Add a possibility to set a default responsible for an Incident type. |
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Add a possibility to set more than one Responsible. |
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Make it possible to automatically send an e-mail to the second responsible if a ticket is
reassigned, just like an automatic e-mail can be sent when the ticket is assigned the first time. |
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Other |
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Display Print Options. When you press the PF HelpDesk
Print button you will have a possibility to select another printer than the default
one.
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Possibility to use PF HelpDesk with smart phones like Android and iPhone.
We plan to build simple web-interface for both our issue-tracking
solutions wherein the user can view and update his/her own tickets. In addition to that we hope to give users the ability to record audio updates as well as upload images directly from their mobile phones. |
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If the network path to the file PFHelpDesk.htm is changed, each person with PF HelpDesk
installed has to browse to the new location and set the homepage
manually. We want the PF HelpDesk client tools to handle that situation instead. |
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Addition of a mini HTML editor for the Template tab, like the one under the FAQ tab, to make it easier to modify the templates.
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Rules Wizard. With the help of a Rules Wizard you can create rules that make PF HelpDesk do many things that you now have to do manually, like
sending e-mails, setting responsible or caller, move e-mails etc. It will work in the same way as the Outlook Email Rules Wizard.
An example: Alpha has bought two products from your company,
and therefore their incident reports need two different
Responsibles. As Alpha often sends their requests by e-mail, you
can create a rule that is triggered when an e-mail from Alpha is converted to a ticket.
If the subject line of the e-mail contains "Product A", the ticket is assigned to
Maria and an e-mail is sent to her about the new ticket. If the subject line of the e-mail contains "Product B" it is assigned to John and
he gets the e-mail instead. You may also make a rule to
send an e-mail to Alpha that the request is received and will be taken care of,
and other rules can send messages to Alpha when the ticket is
updated and when it is closed.
Each Rule is made up of
- Trigger for the rule, like when
an e-mail is converted,
or when a ticket is
updated or closed
- Condition(s) that must be present for the
rule to act
- Action ‒ the task you want PF HelpDesk to
perform automatically
Your rules will be gathered in a list, where you can enable or
disable them.
In a later step we plan to add a possibility to make the
rules send out SMS also.
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Support for 64-bit Office 2010. The 32-bit Office works well with the 64-bit Windows versions, and as the current version of PF HelpDesk supports Office 2010 32-bit,
as well as the 64-bit Windows versions, that is sufficient for most
users. However, for those who need it we also like to support the
64-bit version. FAQ
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Folder HelpDesk version 13Folder HelpDesk version 13 is going to be a total change
from the previous versions. We will re-build it from the ground,
while maintaining the features that you have come to like and rely
on in the earlier versions. Our foundation will continue to be in
Outlook where there is a lot of functionality we will build upon.
The back-end
architecture will be different, though! Folder HelpDesk will no longer rely on
a shared network folders, or Outlook public folders. Instead we will use a more modern ASP.NET and SQL
Server back-end. Each user will connect to the shared data by
entering username, password and URL. The add-on will be entirely
based on the VSTO tools and .NET. That will give us a lot of new
opportunities, and we will also be able to remove the dependency on Office Web Components entirely.
Folder HelpDesk may be deployed as a company intranet-solution or be hosted by kalmstrom.com. We also look forward to having partners host Folder HelpDesk as a cloud service
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Welcome with your own suggestions on how to improve PF HelpDesk! We are grateful if you use the
support e-mail for this, and the more you can describe how you want it to work, the better. You can leave technical solution to us, just tell us how you want to
use your new feature.
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