When it comes to software development, duplication of effort is one big deal. Large or small, Enterprise Software Development Companies power countless other sensitive industries, including private sector businesses and government sectors through software technology. As such, efficiency is more of a requisite than luxury. Most enterprise software companies offering product customization have a handful of customer feedback and product development tasks to handle. Outsourcing their development and support tools is the viable approach to reducing the workload on the in-house development team and help focus on corporate objectives.
A small software development company specialized in enterprise software development for the Legal and Health sector was prompted by the need for better project management and helpdesk system, and OneDesk provided the answer. Our new client has a product line of software designed to solve specific problems in the Health and Legal system. They also offer customization services for desiring clients in which case the company’s team must work with continual client feedback to develop custom solutions. Our new client was challenged by an inefficient system and sought OneDesk to eliminate the duplicate effort involved in running separate project management and helpdesk systems. Our client had also hoped OneDesk would make an excellent replacement for the old-fashioned helpdesk system in use.
As a platform, OneDesk supports Agile Project Management and Helpdesk, enabling our new client to manage projects and support their customers within the same platform. The OneDesk platform is comprised of three integrated applications: the Main App, Customer App, and a Mobile App. While the Main App facilitates the administrative side of project management and customer support. The Mobile App is like a portable version of the Main App, carrying over most of the features of the Main App, such as following up on assignments, managing timesheets and discussions, among others. In effect, it ensures our clients’ teams can stay connected to the system on the move. The Mobile App is available for both iOS and Android operating systems.
System accessibility for customers is critical to the operations of an Enterprise Software Company, and OneDesk allows customers to the system in multiple ways – accessing the customer portal through an invite link sent to a customer, or through the customer widget. While both methods get customer access done right, the customer widget takes it a step further with a knowledge base. Customers can access the widget through our client’s company website. To install the widget, our client only needs to paste a generated snippet on the website or install the widget plugin in the case of a WordPress website.
The customer widget is packed with quite several features to help customers stay connected with our client and manage their interactions. The first feature of the customer widget is the messenger which is essentially a live chat tool for customers to engage agents. Second is the portal where customers can view and manage tickets they have submitted to the company. A webform feature allows customers to create and submit new tickets based on fields predefined by the client. Last is the widget knowledgebase feature. This tool allows our clients to publish articles that are considered helpful to customers.
Although customers can submit tickets via the widget webform, OneDesk makes it possible for the clients to accept tickets in several other ways for convenience. An excellent way to go about ticketing is the email. OneDesk provides a custom address for the client. Email sent to the email address by customers is automatically captured on OneDesk as a ticket. For a more personalized experience, the company can have its customers send tickets to the company’s support email within the tasks app.
To mitigate the customers’ challenge of managing redundancy, tickets converted to tasks are auto removed from the tickets app and placed within the same folder in the tasks application. That said, all information, discussions, and files initially in the discussion and ticket are maintained within the new task, and they can be accessed within the tasks app. Similar to the tickets app, automated messages can be sent through workflow automation in response to certain task events. To keep users and agents engaged, OneDesk email notification system notifies users of last received messages from ongoing discussions following a few minutes delay.
The task panel is similar to the tickets panel and operates the same, except for two new features within the tasks panel: Agile point and task schedules. The task schedule features allow users to set up working mandates and apply constraints. Task schedules can be modified, and OneDesk will automatically update the adjust constraints to match the new mandate, making it easy to manage schedules. This can be done within the tree view, which presents the ongoing tasks as they relate to the respective projects.
OneDesk also provides other views with each giving a unique perspective of activities within the system. The flat view, for example, only displays the list of all tasks irrespective of the containing folder. The Gantt view gives a graphical representation of the schedules on a daily, monthly, and yearly basis. It works by presenting a comparative view of the planned schedule against the actual schedule in motion. Gantt view also indicated schedule gaps and overlaps, making it easy for our client to track and manage project implementation with respect to their initial projections. The status board is another view which shows the state of tickets or tasks by grouping them into columns representing the various lifecycle statuses. The view also allows users to group tasks and tickets using other criteria such a project, assignee, and priority. Managers can keep an eye on virtually every aspect of the system using the dashboard, which uses intuitive charts to represent priorities, workload, assignees, hours worked, item types, statuses and more. Users can also create customized views, save such views, and even share them with other users.
Another project management feature common to the tasks and ticket app is the timesheet. Timesheets allow users to log time spent on designated activities. This can be used by starting a timer on the task or ticket panel. When the timer is stopped, the time elapsed can be logged as billable or non-billable. Alternatively, users can add timesheets to tickets or tasks and manually log the hours worked. A project manager can view a list of all user-submitted timesheets with attached notes, approve or disapprove the submitted timesheet, and even created customizable reports by exporting the timesheets.
Making customizable reports is also possible for any other application on the OneDesk platform by simply exporting to any format of choice. Project managers or admin can also choose to forward the report to any of the user email addresses registered on the system. Our client can create customer organizations, and user accounts for their customers within the main app. They can also define the types of user accounts and add them to ongoing projects if they want them to follow a project. Customers can view projects they are following and projects created by other members of the same customer organization. They can also view their tickets and tasks regardless of access to the folder agents have decided to place the item in. Our client can send invite link by mail to enable customers to sign up for access to the customer portal.
OneDesk is completely customizable. The administrator settings allow our client to make changes to the OneDesk UI. This helps them align their customers’ user experience with their branding objectives from the company logo to working hours, time zone to the color theme. Our client can customize the system as seen fit. OneDesk also ensures our client can send authentic emails by customizing email templates through modifiable email headers and email signature.
Integrating third party app with OneDesk is a breeze. OneDesk uses zapier to synchronize with third-party applications. The platform already has several hundreds of ready-made integrations for most mainstream enterprise applications, and the system allows users to create custom integrations for in-house systems.