    Pretty Damn Good, January 7, 2008 |
1 of 1 people find this review helpful:
I don't usually write reviews, but since I actually PAID for this module, I might as well let others know whats up.
FIRST, I love this Component. Period. It saved me AT LEAST 50+ hours of dev time, hand coding something this integrated into Joomla. If you receive the same Support Tickets over and over, You can save your techs' time by easily converting the ticket into a Knowledgebase articles or FAQ Q/A in a few clicks. Even though if a customer is panicked they usually don't take time to read thru FAQs/KBs. But the feature is there and it will knock out a few common questions before they even get to take up your Techs' time.
SUPPORT: I had a question about why the front module was acting a certain way. Their site has documented work hours that they'll be glad to get back to you posted. I posted a question on a saturday, and as advertised, they got to it monday, and by noon I had received two comments from them. I was happy to see this very professionally quick response time.
Now for the heads up... Two questions: 1-How do you want your Help Desk to work? 2- Do you know PHP/SQL to modify the code?
1- I want a help ticket system where each individual user (or guest based on config options) can ONLY see their specific ticket to maintain confidentiality on the front end, and keep those browsing your page from seeing the many potentially unfavorable questions being asked... this sucker is amazing. That is EXACTLY how this Help Desk works:
-User posts a ticket, providing all the information you've set 'required', email is sent to both User and Dept. Admins.
-User can not see other users' tickets,
-Department admins get email notification and can see any tickets posted to their department (Tech Support/Billing/Sales etc all configurable)
-Department admins respond to ticket, and/or close., email sent to User alerting them that their ticket has a response, driving them back to the site to see the response and/or respond back.
-Department admins close ticket, or mark it to be converted to FAQ/KB
2a- If you DO NOT KNOW PHP and need modifications to the code, the guys at JoomlaShowroom will be glad to help modify it for you.. though I am not sure what the fee is.
2b- If you KNOW PHP and/or Component modification, you can make this HelpDesk do ANYTHING you have the skills for, with all of the basics previously mentioned and all of the Joomla integration already done for you saving you at least a week or three of headaches coding something like this yourself.
It has a standard BrowseButton Attachment Uploading feature if you need users to upload screenshots of error messages or log files or whatever.
It integrates perfectly with Joomla users table, I checked, and changing a member's user level to Admin/SuperAdmin instantly puts them in the ADMINISTRATORS table for the module, you dont have to do any extra step of sync'ing users or anything.
The configuration has a place where you can add your own custom fields, TEXT & TEXTAREA ONLY, so if you need to add custom Radio/Checkbox/etc.. you need to modify yourself.
My experience:
My client wanted a help ticket system so the 'switchboard' could post tickets and the company's Techs could see all tickets and respond. I had basic-to-advanced PHP experience, but no real serious component modification experience before. After a few hours of looking at the well-documented code, within 5-10 hours, I was able to learn how the component worked AND modify the code to get it to where the client needed it. For those that know PHP on an expert level and have modified Components/modules before.. you could chop that to just a couple hours as it's mostly just changing SQL statements.
5-10 hours, vs. easily 50+.... While the component wasn't exactly what I needed out-of-the-box, the Pro Desk component was WELL WORTH the price I paid, and any time any other client needs a help desk, I will GLADLY pay the license fee again and again.
Some other things I had to change:
I had to add a way for Admin+ users to post FAQ and KB articles thru the front end. This took very little time as these features/code is all set up in Admin Control Panel back end, just an ease-of-use for the guys out in the field so they wouldn't have to learn the back end of Joomla (they whine too much and don't like new things).
Also had to add a way to assign techs to tickets, but that was just a new table in DB and some light php/html in a couple places.
All in all, I'm glad I bought this component, and will do so again every time.
Haelix
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