New Ribbon control
In addition to the existing toolbar control, users now have the option to use a new "Ribbon" bar to navigate around HelpMaster. The ribbon controls offers a new look and feel to HelpMaster, along with a more streamlined way of getting things done. We've updated a few of the icons, and tried to organize similar features and options together. Let us know what you think.
Logging a job - better support for finding clients and sites
Ever wish you could just log a job for a site instead of a client? Well, now you can....almost.
The search functionality when logging a job has been greatly improved. Now you can type the name of a client, a site, or details about the client or site (email, phone, etc) and HelpMaster will display a list that matches your criteria. If a site is selected, a list of clients that are linked to that site are displayed, with the primary client appearing at the top of the list. HelpMaster will always log a job with a client, but this new way of searching for and selecting clients will make it much easier to those focus on sites rather than clients.
It's now possible to search for clients / site using different search fields, including custom text fields. Individual users of HelpMaster can configure which fields in the client or site should be searched. This is achieved via the user preferences screen.
Billing and Invoicing
By popular request, billing and invoicing is a new major feature for v11. The action screen has had a major upgrade and now each action can be marked as "Is billable". HelpMaster always supported the concept of time and cost for an action, but now you can go a step further. With the new "Billing Templates", you can create any number of billing templates that can be used when adding an action to a job. See this discussion post to see the evolution of this new feature.
"Stop the clock" functionality for job status
Also by popular request. Each job status now has the ability to "stop the clock" for a job. This is perfect for service level agreements and determining the age of job in business time. Stopping the clock refers to the business hours (operational hours) that a job is active for. With this new feature, now you can nominate any number of job status codes that will "stop the clock".
Whenever the job is set to one of these job statuses, the time calculation for the age of the job takes into consideration the time the job is open for each of the job status durations. This makes it great to determine how service level agreements are going. See the "Working hours time line vizualizer" below.
Working hours time line visualizer
A new time-line visualizer allows you to see how a job has progressed. The visualizer displays the job assignments, the times when the clock was stopped or running, as well as the status of the job.
Job screen status bar
Simple, but effective. The job screen now contains a status bar at the bottom of the screen to display important information about that job. Job status, assignment and age of job are just some of the fields easily viewable on the new status bar.
Job screen helpdesk history search
Have you ever been working on a job and wanted to do a quick helpdesk history search for the client, site, or asset that is linked to the job you're working on? Well now you can. The job screen now has a new quick search feature for displaying helpdesk history.
New Email Manager filtering mechanism
The Email Manager filter mechanism has been re-written with a new visual user interface. This new interface allows complex filtering rules to be applied to each Email Manager profile. Filters can now be applied to the "From" address, and instead of just "does include" and "does not include" filtering, advanced users can also use regular expressions to build filtering logic. Filters can be copied and pasted into other profiles.
A new "test" mode can also be used to test the filtering of each profile. This will really help you design the best possible filtering for this powerful module of HelpMaster.
New reports
Every report has been updated. New reports have been added. The database reporting views have all been updated for easier custom reporting. Reports are quicker, more informative, more flexible and many offer a new parameter-based approach to deliver dynamic and flexible reporting.
Many reports now have additional, dynamic filtering options built in to them. This allows for even more helpdesk data analysis.
Updated web interface controls
The entire web interface has been updated. We've ditched some of the older controls we were using and replaced them with industry-leading Telerik web controls. The result is a faster, slicker, better looking web portal that allows you to use HelpMaster via the web more easily. Upgrading to these new controls is just phase 1 of our web improvement strategy. There's lots more to come.
Updated desktop / Windows controls
Many of the controls and coding libraries we're using for the desktop edition of HelpMaster have also been replaced and improved. This means a better user interface, a more consistent way of dealing with data and better performance all around. HelpMaster v11 now uses the Microsoft .net 3.5 framework.
New "plug-in" architechture
Another one for the developers and system integrators....and it's a beauty! In addition to the already powerful API, HelpMaster now has the ability to load and execute code that you write and have the user interface integrated right inside any of the entity screens within HelpMaster.
This is great news for system integrators and for the flexibility and interoperability of HelpMaster. The add-in interface gives a very tight integration between other software systems that you may be using in your environment.
Example custom integrations available.
A new logo for PRD Software
...because the old one was getting a bit old.
