A couple of presales questions - slightly long

[Alex H]

Hi

We have been looking at support desk software, fell across Kayako Support Suite, and really like what we see. However I have a couple of question s and would be very grateful for the benefit of this forum's members experience.

Whilst each staff member will clearly be able to access their own assigned tickets, is it possible for Admin members to see the complete listing of all tickets, and to whom they have been assigned?

The second question is slight more fundemental. We operate a distance learning course with 1200 approx students based all around the UK. Our tutors are also based at different locations in the UK. We run an SBS2003 server and Exchange and our tutors log onto via terminal Services to access the Student Management Information System.

At present if a student has a query, they will email the tutor directly (emails usually have attachments), who will respond directly to the student. Although we get about 20 requests per day, we have little clear analysis about the detailed support requests being submitted; timings of these requests and such similar information.

We have intended to set up a support desk where all support requests were received centrally, before being forwarded to the respective tutor. This would enable us over a period to generate a knowledge base of FAQ's. Initially, requests would still be submitted by e-mail, as know, but we would envisage these also being submitted via web-forms and eventually live support.

My question is therefore where is the best place to host the support desk. Is it best to host it as part of our public web site, or as part of our internal network.
From a students point of view I guess the Public hosting would be best, but from a tutors viewpoint it means that they have a further application that they are required to log onto.

I would be grateful for any existing users thoughts on this question

Thanks

Alex

[Jamie Edwards]

Hi Alex,

Whilst each staff member will clearly be able to access their own assigned tickets, is it possible for Admin members to see the complete listing of all tickets, and to whom they have been assigned?

Yes - this is possible. For the Administrator group, you need to enable this permission property:
> Can View All Tickets (Unassigned, Assigned to Self and Assigned to Others)

My question is therefore where is the best place to host the support desk. Is it best to host it as part of our public web site, or as part of our internal network.
From a students point of view I guess the Public hosting would be best, but from a tutors viewpoint it means that they have a further application that they are required to log onto.

My suggestion would be to host it as part of your public website. The reason for this is that as you start to grow a large knowledgebase, your students can make use of that and may find answers to their queries before submitting a ticket (or if you enable the instant response system, articles will be suggested as they type out their ticket). However, this assumes that you will also be willing to accept ticket submissions via your web interface as well as through directly e-mail.

Another advantage to this is that your students can login to the support centre and review a history of all their submitted tickets and replies to each; saving hassle and resubmission of a ticket if they lost any replies or e-mails.

If you are eventually planning to receive support requests via your public web interface and live chat, then I would simply start as you mean to go on and install SupportSuite as part of your public website; this will save you time moving it in the inevitable future (if your plans stay the same).

I hope I covered everything here. Thank you for considering SupportSuite If there is anything else, do post back.

[Alex H]

Thank you Jamie

Your suggestion is more or less in line with my own thoughts

Cheers

Alex