Pro Desk Support Center Component

***Now available for Joomla 1.5 Native Mode***
Pro Desk is a 4-in-1 Help Desk and Support Center. Pro Desk offers more than most other help desks. It offers a Knowledge base, Support Ticketing Management System, FAQ Center, and Customer Testimonials all wrapped up into one easy to use system. Which gives your site a more professional advantage and makes your life easier.

Do you sell extensions, products, services, or templates? Using a forum for your support? No support system yet? Using email for support? WHY? Give your customers the attention that they deserve and keep your inquiries organized.

THE ONLY HELP DESK YOU'LL EVER NEED AGAIN!

Why mess around with 4 different systems when Pro Desk can do it all in one single system? WHY SPEND HUNDREDS EVERY YEAR? NO MONTHLY OR YEARLY LEASE! INSTALL AND USE, NEVER PAY AGAIN!
Help desk software is vital to the success of your help desk and customer support staff.



* Attachment support. Send attachments from both front and back ends.

* Multiple admin support. Multiple administrators can work within the same support department.

* Easy to use, user control panel-Each of your users will have access to their own mini control panel from where they can view old tickets, check ticket status, submit new and reply to old support tickets.

* Built in customer testimonial system-Pro Desk makes it easier then ever to collect and display your valuable customer testimonials.
If you receive a nice comment just by chance along with one of your support tickets, you can easily convert/edit and display that testimonial within your Pro Desk help desk users area. Pro Desk also makes it easy for visiting users to browse through your existing customer testimonials and even specifically submit a testimonial if they feel so inclined. Pro Desk even offers a link back to their homepage as a way to say thanks.

* Knowledge base comment system-Pro Desk offers a user comment system for your knowledge base articles. All articles pending administrative approval so you can be sure that only quality comments appear in your help desk.

* The Pro Desk Pending Approval System-Both user comments and customer testimonials will be flagged for administrative approval prior to their addition within your Pro Desk help desk area.

* Ticket Archiving-Ticket archiving is an easy way to tuck old support tickets safely away without deleting them and you can easily un-archive archived tickets later if you wish.

* Support category customization-Pro Desk allows for the addition of any number of custom support categories : IE. billing, pre-sales questions etc.. The choice is yours.

* Support department customization-Further expand on your support ticket organization with Support Departments. We at Joomlashowroom.com might use a support department for each of our PHP scripts, what you use them for is up to you and remember, you can assigned either a support de

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Editor's Note
  • This extension requires registration to download.
byjayblaq on June 25, 2009
This product is no good for knowledge base and articles

you cant post images, html, or any type of example code

It just only allow you to add plain text.

Which renders any kind of instructions for users useless
This product is good for very basic site.

it seems to be using its own database.

there are major limitations!.
1) Knowledge base- a proper knowledge base require not only just to type text. it require to support attachments, screen shots etc which is really required for a serious KB. AND the worse part is that you cannot disable the main sections say KB if you need a more comprehensive KB system such as Blueframe KB. So you are stuck with this.

2) This component does not integrate with any of joomla editors. It just only allow you to add plain text.

3) No plugin or support for popular Xmap or any other site map system. We are not sure whether it could be ever done for this component as it may be using its own DB.

So lot of limitations and compromises- may be the best option to do is to have interdependent full featured Ticket system, KB (which could be installed as FAQ system as well) and testimonial system. Even if you buy paid components for all above the licensing costs would have been less than this one. I may have made a wrong decision...
byWebJIVE on January 21, 2009
After reviewing all the helpdesk components on JED, we purchased ProDesk because it has a lot of features that otherwise would take several components to accomplish. While digging into the code, we noticed that it's not a native Joomla app which doesn't concern us that much since it's well integrated with Joomla.

Being able to move a trouble ticket to a FAQ is a real plus so that your not always copying and pasting text to accomplish this. Another plus is that the system includes testimonials, announcements and archiving capabilities.

Overall, a good choice for a system which seems to have a comparable feature set to the Kayako support suite which is a bit pricey.
bysmoki on December 15, 2008
Latin characters aren't supported and customer support wanted us to pay to fix this bug.
This component does well to integrate a knowledge base, FAQ and testimonial system with the help-desk, a feature that made it stand out from the crowd for us initially.

However, when we bought the product and installed it, it became clear that the categorization of the tickets is done mainly at the front end, and the department and issue type of the ticket is fixed once submitted.

This means there is little back-end management, little chance to assign the ticket to staff members, so this is only really useful for a fairly small support set-up.

This is one of the pricier components in this category, so this is a bit of a disappointing gap in the functionality.
I spent months looking at full-blown help desk systems including Cerberus and OTRS - both excellent products in their own right - before this product appeared last year and I bought it. Although not as comprehensive as the afroementioned products, Pro Desk Support Center integrates smoothly into Joomla and comes usefully packed with both a Knowledgebase/FAQ and Testimonial functions.

Overall, the product "does what it says on the box" and largely "out of the box" as well. Early versions seemed a little rough at the edges, but now the J1.5 version has been released, I felt it was worth recommending. I've modified some of the code to meet my particular requirements, so bear this in mind if you're not comfortable with the Joomla API/PHP/MySQL.

Can't give it a straight "5 stars" as there are still things I'd like to see, but it's great to see that Joomla Showroom continue to improve their products.
bydping28 on September 6, 2008
Im a very small business but have had a need for a trouble ticket system and didn't like the options I had found out there for big ticket systems until I ran across Pro Desk Support. It has a very reasonable one time charge and does everything one could want and does it very well! Now they even have it for Joomla 1.5! And I have talked to their support team a few times for assistance in getting mine configured a way I needed and they were VERY helpful and very fast in response! I highly suggest looking into them and their components!
byEnPassant on May 19, 2008
My first time building a Joomla site, and I needed to add on a Help Desk. It took me less than 5 minutes to purchase, download, load this (component?) into Joomla, and in a few minutes more I had the help desk linked and live. Really incredible. Everyone at the client site loves it. We tested it, got familiar with workflows and steps, and are now loading up FAQ's and Knowledgebase content.

I still have a few questions about the two-tier categories in the knowledge base and I'd like a specific search just for this content. But this thing is sweet.
I bought it and modify much codes for integration with other model(virtuemart, mail list, .etc). It's excellent as a independent system.

The advantage is:
1)support file uploading, it's very important for a help desk system, I can't find any other one that can do the same function;
2)codes are very clear, not much embeded class/function. It means it's easy to modify.

But, It's difficult to integrate with other joomla extensions. The shortage is:
1)structure is not joomla standard. It start the session by php by itself, not index.php. So many joomla functions can't run from pro help desk's php.
2)as the above problem. It can't support multi-language. It's a nightmare for me. Coz my website support more than 3 languages. I am studying how to fix this problem.

Finally, it is a good extension and it's worth $99, if you have enough php and html skill.
byHaelix on January 7, 2008
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
byDenitz on October 15, 2007
This component doesn't use natural Joomla component structure and database layer with Joomla database prefixes.

It looks like an adaption of the usual PHP script to use it within the Joomla.
bysea dog on October 12, 2007
Straightforward to install - had a few issues with the installation (which upgrading to php v5 solved). I contacted the developer via his help desk and answers were prompt.

A few things which this could really do with which would turn it from a good component to an excellent one:

The ability for the customer to add an attachement (errorlog, screenshot etc) to help with the troubleshooting.

The ability for the customer to close his own ticket.

An option to append the priority to the email subject.

Front end ticket administration (I'd rather my engineers could respond to tickets without going into the backend).

Otherwise, it's a pretty slick, good looking component....worth the £50 :)

Cheers,
SD
Owner's reply

Attachment upload support has been added to Pro Desk's features.

byyamada on September 16, 2007
I was using another ticketsystem component but missed a lot of things and finding the Pro Desk was a coincidence when i was looking for another helpdesk.
Pro Desk is very impressive and comes with a lot of stuff other systems dont have.
Ok it costs a few bucks but its worth it and im glad i bought it.
Very positive was that the author was very fast and supportive in answering my questions.
What i like most is the freedom i have in how i want to create everything and that there aren't any restrictions.
Its professional and personaly i think it can be used on every site thats in need of a good and reliable help desk.
With this component it shows once again how many skilled programmers there are.
We're a full service ISP and Web Dev firm and hardcore Joomla users. We've tried most of the trouble ticket, help desk and knowledge base components on the Joomla Extensions site and found them either too restrictive, too basic or just plain non-functional.

Not only is ProDesk clean and professional looking, its smart design makes customization easy. The greatest value however is the customer support. When I misconfigured a setting, I simply filled out a ticket on the JoomlaShowroom site and was contacted in about 5 minutes! The support staff went into my site and disgnosed and corrected my setting.