{"id":9405,"date":"2009-02-06T17:17:00","date_gmt":"1999-11-29T20:00:00","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/aidanfinn.com\/?p=9405"},"modified":"2009-02-06T17:17:00","modified_gmt":"1999-11-29T20:00:00","slug":"smartertrack-3-helpdesk-software","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/aidanfinn.com\/?p=9405","title":{"rendered":"SmarterTrack 3, Helpdesk Software"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>I was on the lookout for a new helpdesk solution that would give us something more interactive.\u00a0 I don\u2019t want to waste money but I also want something that has the required functionality and with a professional appearance.\u00a0 I remembered a thread on the <a href=\"http:\/\/web2.minasi.com\/forum\/topic.asp?TOPIC_ID=24431&amp;SearchTerms=helpdesk\" target=\"_blank\">Minasi forum<\/a> from a few years ago and dug it out.\u00a0 One of the products recommended (by a savvy engineer\/manager) was <a href=\"https:\/\/www.smartertools.com\/SmarterTrack\/Features\/Customer-Service-Software-Web-Interface.aspx\" target=\"_blank\">SmarterTrack<\/a>.\u00a0  <\/p>\n<p>I checked out their site in hopes of finding a demo.\u00a0 Even better; they had a fully functional free version.\u00a0 It took just a little while to get the VM up and running to try it on.\u00a0 I also fired up a Vista VM as a client.\u00a0 The product runs on either a SQL (including 2005 and 2008) or MySQL backend.\u00a0 It can run it\u2019s own web server or on IIS6 or IIS7.\u00a0 It ran fine for me on a W2008 x64 server with SQL 2008.\u00a0 I tested the functionality. <\/p>\n<ul>\n<li>I had a choice between self-registered, helpdesk registered (with optional mail verification) or AD integrated users. <\/li>\n<li>There is the ability to create support groups. <\/li>\n<li>You have a news page. <\/li>\n<li>There is a user searchable Knowledge Base (KB) page. <\/li>\n<li>The portal shows news, recent KB articles and the most popular articles. <\/li>\n<li>There is a web based live chat. <\/li>\n<li>Users can create their own tickets. <\/li>\n<li>It can integrate into your mail system. <\/li>\n<li>There\u2019s a big reporting system.<\/li>\n<\/ul>\n<p>I\u2019m very impressed with it.\u00a0 The free version gives you all the functionality which you can run on your own server.\u00a0 You\u2019re just limited to one agent.\u00a0 You can have many users\/customers.\u00a0 There are purchase versions that give you more agents and there is a hosted option as well if you\u2019re not interested in having your own server. <\/p>\n<p>They eat their own dogfood too.\u00a0 Their support site runs on their own product.\u00a0 I availed of their LiveChat to disable user self-registration.\u00a0 That was a quick option in the settings and a change of the site default document.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>I was on the lookout for a new helpdesk solution that would give us something more interactive.\u00a0 I don\u2019t want to waste money but I also want something that has the required functionality and with a professional appearance.\u00a0 I remembered a thread on the Minasi forum from a few years ago and dug it out.\u00a0 &hellip; <a href=\"https:\/\/aidanfinn.com\/?p=9405\" class=\"more-link\">Continue reading<span class=\"screen-reader-text\"> &#8220;SmarterTrack 3, Helpdesk Software&#8221;<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"om_disable_all_campaigns":false,"_monsterinsights_skip_tracking":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_active":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_note":"","_monsterinsights_sitenote_category":0,"_uf_show_specific_survey":0,"_uf_disable_surveys":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-9405","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-uncategorized"],"aioseo_notices":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","amp_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/aidanfinn.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/9405","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/aidanfinn.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/aidanfinn.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/aidanfinn.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/aidanfinn.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=9405"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/aidanfinn.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/9405\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/aidanfinn.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=9405"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/aidanfinn.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=9405"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/aidanfinn.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=9405"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}