Release 2.5.1 - Help Desk, SupportPortal and LiveHelp updates

14-May-2008 Release of Escon Help Desk and Customer Support solutions 2.5.1

We're excited and you will be too about the release of Escon Help Desk and Customer Support solutions 2.5.1 (applies to HelpDesk, SupportPortal and LiveHelp).

There are significant updates that will enable you to experience even more benefits from using Escon help desk and customer support solutions:

• Windows liveAlert client
• LiveAlert is a desktop application for Microsoft Windows, which resides in your system tray and connects to your support server. LiveAlert will notify staff users as new tickets and ticket replies. Whenever a new ticket is submitted, or a client has made a reply to an existing ticket, an alert is issued. The alert comes in the form of a small pop-up screen displayed on the Windows desktop. A sound file can also be chosen to play when an alert is received for audible notification. Also, whenever a new Live Chat request from your customer through your web site is sent to a server, an alert is issued and sound file plays. You can download Escon liveAlert free at http://escon.e-supportportal.com in Downloads section
• LDAP/Active Directory user management integration
• – If you are using LDAP (Lightweight Directory Access Protocol) in your networking environment for accessing directory service and locating your organizations and users, now you can integrate your LDAP database into a User management. There is no need to manually replicate user's attributes: email address, passwords and groups. The LDAP integration functionality uses directory service data (Microsoft's Active Directory, Novell's NetWare Directory, etc.) and automatically replicates all changes into a customer database.
• Install on shared servers without root permissions
• Since most of our users doesn't have ability to change PHP.INI file and to set short_open_tag to 'On', we've developed a deployment version without tag setting. One obvious advantage to this is if your web host restricts you to a set host's configuration files, you can still install the application on shared web servers.
• Empowered Search - Ranking functionality
• Although search engine is very fast in search response time, their effectiveness in finding useful and relevant documents at the top of the search hit list needs to be improved. We've built an advanced algorithm, which fetch all available databases (e.g. Knowledge Base, Downloads, News, and Users) and retrieve pages with keyword results ranking. Additionaly we now support for search strings less then 4 characters in length.
• IMAP support
• For users that prefer to use IMAP protocol as a method of accessing electronic mail that are kept on a mail server, the IMAP support has been added.
• Integrating Knowledge Base with Dictionary
• The site administrators can organize dictionary with the most used terms. Every of defined terms is linked with the knowledge base articles and appears underlined in text, so a user can see tooltip with the term described in dictionary.

Download the latest release (Free Version) here:

HelpDesk

SupportPortal

LiveHelp

Numerous improvements for use in excellent companies

11-Apr-2008 Give your small and medium business the edge it needs

At Escon, we built our reputation on innovative, reliable, and scalable software solutions. With industry-standard products, NOW is the time for small to medium businesses to take note.

From email requests handling, to creating an CRM Web suite, we can give you what you need – quickly and affordably:

• Need to run Customer Support and Service solution on Windows or Linux-based apps?
• Escon products are certified for Windows, Solaris, and Linux, offering top performance and energy efficiency. With standard web-lightweight platform introduced, you can achieve the best from your PHP/MySQL web-site capabilities.
• Are you handling too many email and phone requests?
• Get a 100% decrease in the number of email requests you get and deploy virtual service desk in minutes with Escon's HelpDesk.
• Want to grow quickly and cut IT costs?
• Escon’s SupportPortal software can reduce power and operating costs by 75%.
• Do you manage your news and announcements?
• Check out the News management features that offers news and announcements distribution, through web interface or through common news lists.
• Looking for integrated web live chat solution?
• Try Live Help feature, make your web-site live and start online chat with your customers

Get yours Service Support Software and experience continued improvement

Like hundreds of our customers, you can afford to receive quarterly product’s new features and improvements. The April features include:

1. Setting the operational hours

The operational/working hours that you configure to use while calculating the request due by date and time.

2. Configure Email templates

Set email templates for different help desk workflow tasks: Reply (to a customer), Assign (to a service specialist / support stuff), Close (to a customer).

3. Select Support/Service Department by web-form entry

An user can choose whether the request should be sent to the Support or to the Sales department (or any other, of course), while the Department manager gets automatic notification about every sent request. You can add as many departments you want to, and choose which could be public available or only to the registered users.

4. Download and Knowledge Base Report

The new report page is available where you can view how many hits each article or download receives like the most popular on the status page.

.. and a lot of other component’s improvements, which includes improved Installation procedure, where the PHP short_open_tag is set automatically to avoid installation crash; improved Configuration Panel, for easy navigation between numerous configuration option; ability to use regular PHP expression for the advanced additional fields validation; improved newsletter sending to avoid Spam filtering - message headers modification;

And even more from our Services

If you feel that our product’s customization capabilities is not enough to set your own support index page look and feel, we can make your own page template – for free! Just send to us your favorite layout screenshot, and we’ll build your page template, even if you are trial user.

We're here to help

You need something that's easy to buy, deploy, and can meet your IT needs today - and tomorrow. See all the ways Escon can quickly, easily, and affordably boost your bottom line

Start NOW

Custom Layout Theme - Using Joomla templates

11-Mar-2008 Customizing Look and Feel with free or commercial Open Source templates

Escon products now includes functionality to use Joomla templates to control and change software overall look and design at your whim.

We've taken a new approach to software layout customization. Since the Joomla template market is one of the most significant in Open Source Content management Systems, and holds dozens of excellent and fashioned designs, we've built a feature which allows to use the Joomla templates.

Software administrators are now able to choose any of available templates on the market, and then download them to /templates directory of HelpDesk, SupportPortal or SupportPortal Plus current installation. The installed template shall be then available to choose within Configuration panel and Appearance menu.

Of course, the current approaches to theme customization still exists: "Portal Customization" page that enabled color and logo selection using a simple configuration screen and/or enabled replacement of the stock CSS style sheet with a custom one which allows significantly more control.

See some of available templates at http://www.myescon.com/news/templates.html.