Escon - Customer Service and Support Software

Customer support systems for beginners

2011-11-23T13:45:00.000-08:00

Effective online customer support and service has become a strategic business imperative. Whether a company is in manufacturing or in services, what is increasingly making a competitive difference is the customer support and service that is built into and around the product, rather than just the quality of the product.

There is no small organization or large corporate network remaining in business for longer without an adequate customer support service. Many firms have realized, as their marketplaces have become more global and service oriented, that customer support is critical to their competitiveness.

Customer support software and help desk software are useful aids to manage communications with both actual customers and potential clients. A typical help desk software package often includes a convenient way to record issues received by phone and by email, as well as those submitted via support ticket system.

Help desk software also contributes to enhance interaction between staff and customers that usually comprises knowledge and problem management, workflow, and data analysis. Detailed reports and analytic are basic to tackle effectively all those issues handled by the help desk software on a daily basis, but the software itself contributes also to develop teamwork efficiently.

Doing a research on a comparative basis among the different web-based customer support solutions available in the market will find that many of them are compatible with the traditional office software that is already in use, including Microsoft Outlook, Word, or Excel. This characteristic allows a seamless integration of new help desk software into traditional software applications, making easier updating contacts, sharing task, events, and bits of information already recorded elsewhere.

Just by adding customer support software or online help desk software to business, is adding value to the products and services, promoting tacitly trustworthy and customers' confidence. Web-based help desk software improves productivity of the business and efficiency of workers, increasing also customer satisfaction and improving communication and troubleshooting. The Internet has literally deleted geographical frontiers.

The implementation of online help desk software is an excellent strategy for any business, reducing the need of toll-free hotlines, and saving money in long distance calls between offices, or those calls placed from customers located abroad.

Online customer support software is also a convenient way to obtain feedback from customers. Afterwards, the information obtained can be added to the help desk software database for further analysis and improvement of your business affairs.

Support tickets classification

2011-05-23T07:28:00.000-07:00

In most service desk systems, support ticket classification exists primarily to classify tickets and issues in order to provide initial support. Initial support means proper analysis, evaluation and assignment.The issues behind the actual classification itself may experience problems in a typical help desk workflow. Typical classification schemes are often too complicated, or there are too many classifications that when you make your report, none of them are significant. Eventually, the number one categorization becomes "other," and the classification actually drops.

Help desk needs a scheme that works, and the first question that needs to be answered is: what you are really trying to accomplish with the classification and how do you plan to use this data?

Many help desk organizations use a simple Category / Type classification. The problem here and in any other classification is that technical staff do not perform classification and initial support, but relatively non-technical service desk agents and contact persons.

The initial classification does not need to establish root case or predict technical resolutions but rather to enable initial support. Support ticket classification and categorization necessarily becomes more refined as the ticket progresses and more is learned via the investigation or diagnosis activities.

When a ticket is initially recorded, the best that the analyst can typically do is to identify the service. In a further ticket processing, there should be an additional classification tag where the root cause can be documented and subsequently recorded and reported.

Using this approach, HelpDeskSAAS (Help Desk Software-as-a-Service) has established a support ticket Tags feature, which allow to record classification for initial support, as well as additional classification that determine the root cause. Both classification tags can be added to support ticket in any ticket state, and can be used for help desk reporting purposes.

HelpDeskSAAS Released Version 3.0 With New Design

2011-05-17T08:01:00.000-07:00

What's New in the HelpDeskSAAS?

New features for chart & report creation, enhanced knowledgebase article editing, four different layout design schemes, and much more.

On May 01, 2011, HelpDeskSAAS introduced Release 3 of its product line. Help Desk SAAS Software Version 3.0 provides important updates for chart and report creation, numerous data mapping enhancements, new features for knowledge base editing, almost totally new layout design, support for the latest versions of major browsers, much more!

You can access the new release using your current login credentials and learn more about HelpDeskSAAS. Visit the HelpDeskSAAS signup page to register for free 15 day Premium plan trial.

HelpDeskSAAS Improved Navigation Efficiency

2011-02-09T12:59:00.000-08:00

HelpDeskSAAS, a leader in help desk software-as-a-service, is beginning 2010 by launching significant new upgrades to its acclaimed SaaS product. During January, the company has released version 2.2 for customers using multiple support queues to the all-new queue browsing feature.

This upgrade features an easy-to-use interface, improved Tickets mode browsing functionality. Further, the company launches its new tickets' list tags, providing essential information in a format where clarity is the key feature.

If you are not registered your account yet, we invite you to register for free 15 day Premium plan or visit HELPDESKSAAS for more info.

Help desk e-mail to ticket conversion from multiple inboxes

2010-12-27T14:08:00.000-08:00

HelpDeskSAAS version 2.1 was released on December 20, 2010. This release includes a variety of new features, enhancements and bug fixes for a significantly improved user experience.

As already available since version 1.8, the help desk e-mail to ticket conversion feature automatically converts service request emails sent by customers to your HelpDeskSAAS email address. All support submissions can be captured and centralized in order to maintain effective customer service.

The version 2.1 introduces the enhancement to this feature. Unlike previous versions that where able to convert messages from one email address, this version provides more email addresses to which messages can be sent.

Your organization may utilize the HelpDeskSAAS across many of your existing email accounts. Simply create an action rule for each inbound email address, which will optionally move converted tickets to ticket queues such as Sales, Support, Facilities Maintenance, Human Resources (HR), Accounting, etc.

What else HelpDeskSAAS Release 2.1 brings to you?

Simplified action rules: End user actions, Support agent actions and scheduled escalations.
Facelift: New layout for ticket processing on both support and customer side.
Improved overall efficiency and performances.

HelpDeskSaaS version 2.0 released

2010-11-16T12:36:00.000-08:00

Besides the usual and ordinary improvements and fixes, the release 2.0 has introduced a several new features, which can help you to customize your Help Desk SaaS system:

Manage access to knowledgebase categories – The permission-based category access allows you to assign permissions for access to each category by client’s organization or group.
Customized support ticket rating – Ticket rating allows your customers to rate the responses they get to tickets and this then allows you to monitor how pleased your customers are with the support they receive from your staff. Since this new version, you can enable or disable the ticket rating feature, and also to set default ticket rating value.
Introduced help desk maintenance section – Account administrators are now able to take data export in one place: the ticket registry with related processing history, and user registry. The ticket recovery feature is also available, if a ticket is deleted by accident
Improved user ticket processing area – Customer replies and text editing
Allow or disallow knowledgebase article rating.

The upgraded Administration Manual is also available for download (PDF, 1.03 MB): HelpDeskSaaS Administration Manual.

Multilingual Help Desk Software as a Service - HelpDeskSaaS

2010-10-10T13:31:00.000-07:00

HelpDeskSaaS software version 1.8 released

Multilingual capability

HelpDeskSaaS, a comprehensive help desk software as a service, today announced the general availability of multi-language support. HelpDeskSaaS will now be available in Spanish, French, German, and Portuguese.

HelpDeskSaaS simply use the end-user's browser locale setting to determine the application primary language. For example, if the user's browser is set to Spanish, that user will see the Spanish version of the application.

Availability and Pricing

The latest release of HelpDeskSaaS with multi-language support can be accessed from the website. HelpDeskSaaS offers a 15 day evaluation Premium Plan and a permanent Free Plan is also available for small businesses. The monthly subscription price for multi-language Edition starts from $19 per month with unlimited number of end-users. There are no add-on costs for any modules.

To read more about new help desk software as a service features and benefits, please visit us at HelpDeskSaaS.com

or

Sign Up for Free 15 day Trial

HelpDeskSaaS.com provides help desk software as a service (SaaS, On-Demand, Hosted) as an add-on to websites. It gives website owners, small businesses and large companies a web tool for customer support and service. For more information, e-mail sales@helpdesksaas.com or visit HelpDeskSaaS.com.

New help desk software design

2010-09-29T07:15:00.000-07:00

HelpDeskSaaS software version 1.7.2 released

HelpDeskSaas version 1.7.2 was released on July 31, 2010. The release includes a variety of new features, enhancements and bug fixes for a significantly improved user experience. Notable items of the update are User registration, Ticket attachements, Knowledgebase to ticket linking, Custom fields and Theme Backgrounds.

New Design and Layout

The new design should make HelpDeskSaaS more appealing and give it a more modern and professional touch. One of the most significant design changes is a new accordion menu. Accordion menu is a very handy tool to show and hide information as needed, so you can navigate through the help desk application the more quickly and more easily.

Background and menu themes

New color-theme backgrounds and menus for HelpDeskSaaS have been added to enhance the user experience and provide a more coordinated presentation of content. Users can combine current 7 background themes with 24 menu themes for the accordion left-side menu. Using such a kind of design scheme, you can fit your HelpDeskSaaS account more closely to your current website design.
You can control the presentation of content by setting themes from Setting > General menu.

Improved features

This list describes only a part of the improved software features and functionality of the HelpDeskSaaS system:

Send notification email to a newly registered user: During the new user registration process, you can choose whether to send email notification to a user, so users can be notified with their login information.

Ability to attach files from Microsoft Office family: Ticket attachments now can accept files from the Microsoft Office family, other than the existing archive, image and text files.

Relate ticket to a Knowledgebase article: Insert any of the knowledgebase articles right into a reply text, so user can refer himself to a previously solved issue or request.

Improved user defined custom fields: Create and manage custom fields for a new ticket creation, and also for a new user self-registration process.

To read more about new Help Desk Software as a Service (SaaS) features and improvements, please visit us at HelpDeskSaaS.com

or

Sign Up for FREE 30-day Trial

Major update from HelpDeskSaaS - Knowledgebase features added

2010-07-31T14:08:00.000-07:00

HelpDeskSaaS software version 1.7 released

HelpDeskSaaS.com releases a new version of its help desk software as a service with a set of convenient improvements and upgrades. The main new feature is the ability to create and share the knowledgebase.

Create and share a Knowledgebase

The knowledgebase software-as-a-service allows you to create a collection of commonly asked questions and their answers. You can group these into categories and set them to be either visible or private (support stuff only). The client area offers the user the choice of browsing through the articles in your knowledge base or searching based on keywords they enter.

Self-service portal

The Self-service portal is a vital component in reducing support resources. By enabling users easily log problems and check on the status of tickets via the Web, Self-Service Portal improves the productivity of your helpdesk stuff and reduces the total cost of service delivery.
Customers are able to resolve some issues without ever contacting the help desk. HelpDeskSaaS Self-Service will allow customers to search for solutions to common problems event without login:

Customized portal page - modify the look and feel of your help desk to direct end users to the tools and information they need

Friendly web interface for creating new requests via simplified data entry form

Enable your end users to submit trouble tickets online, and monitor their tickets throughout the support process.

The HelpDeskSaaS enables companies to view their entire small business client base with a single sign-on. Using an intuitive point-and-click menu, support representatives are expected to track and solve help desk issues, preview the reports, and offer online access to help desk information and direct ticket processing for their clients' employees.

Read more at: HelpDeskSaaS.com and Sign Up Free Help Desk Trial

HelpDeskSaaS opening subscriptions

2010-02-26T08:37:00.000-08:00

We are pleased to announce the opening subscription from February 26th 2010 to HelpDeskSaaS – help desk software-as-a-service for customer service and support.

HelpDeskSaaS is a online help desk software (SaaS, On-Demand, Hosted) that provides a web tool for website owners, small businesses and large companies for customer support and service.

The basic set of features includes:
- Public or Protected access
- Routing rules
- Automatic escalations
- Notifications
- E-mail templates
- SLA Management
- Custom form fields
- Change history
- Ticket classification
- Built-in time tracking
- Private notes

and many other help desk features provided through 3 subscription plans.

Given the profile of our customers, the subscription plans are designed to provide set of options that are best suitable for their size and their needs:

1. FREE plan for $ 0.00 /month. This plan contains basic set of features, suitable for:
- Small and startup companies
- Personal sites
- Blogs

2. Standard plan, from $9.50 /month. Combines features designed for:
- Middle sized companies
- Online sales
- Affiliates and resellers.

3. Professional plan, from $14.50 /month, is a full featured plan for:
- Large companies
- Customer service and support
- Multi-lingual sites

All plans include free support and monthly software updates.

Since the application is designed as a fully browser-based, there is no needs for downloads or additional software installations. Everything you and your visitors need to use HelpDeskSaaS is a standard web-browser.

We invite you to Sign Up for FREE and start using this plan without any obligations and time constraints.

Read more at: http://www.HelpDeskSaaS.com/

Help Desk SaaS Announcement

2010-01-19T08:32:00.000-08:00

HelpDeskSaaS - Help Desk Software-as-a-Service (SaaS), has officially started to work at 19th January 2010. HelpDeskSaaS team has provided a targeted capabilities and options, including unbundled pricing and flexible payment plans for online help desk software. The features were specifically designed from information outlined through extensive customer feedback in the past few years in working during the work with our main product – SupportPortal.

HelpDeskSaaS is designed with the mission to satisfy a significant number of requests from current customers for help desk software available as a service. Since most of the small and medium companies want to use help desk software without dedicated resources, we’ve decided to provide an excellent product that would satisfy their requirements. These solution fulfill the current and future business requirements of our worldwide customers

With previous support software processes expertise and a proven track record, HelpDeskSaaS has mobilized the right people, skills, and technologies to help its customers get maximum value from adoption of technology.

Our upcoming plans include development of more significant features for covering the full set of requirements of advanced Help Desk SaaS.

Reat more at http://www.helpdesksaas.com/.

LiveSupportSaaS Opening subscriptions

2010-01-13T04:12:00.000-08:00

We are pleased to announce the opening subscription from January 13th 2010 to LiveSupportSaaS – online messaging application specially designed for website owners, small and middle sized companies.

LiveSupportSaaS is a live chat software-as-a-service (SaaS, On-Demand, Hosted) that provides a web tool for Live Support and Proactive Sales. Easy-to-use features allows you to be online for your website visitors and customers, answer their questions, or direct them to the product they are searching for.

The basic set of features includes:
- Live chats,
- Real-time visitor monitoring,
- Search chat transcripts by messages,
- Auto-changing online/offline image,
- Transfer chat to operator, Prewritten responses,
- Operator to operator chat,
- E-mail chat transcript,

and many other features provided through 3 subscription plans.

Given the profile of our customers, the subscription plans are designed to provide set of options that are best suitable for their size and their needs:

1. FREE plan for $ 0.00 /month. This plan contains basic set of features, suitable for:
- Small and startup companies
- Personal sites
- Blogs

2. Standard plan, from $14.95 /month. Combines features designed for:
- Middle sized companies
- Online sales
- Affiliates and resellers.

3. Professional plan, from $24.95 /month, is a full featured plan for:
- Large companies
- Customer service and support
- Multi-lingual sites

All plans include free support and monthly software updates.

Since the application is designed as a fully browser-based, there is no needs for downloads or additional software installations. Everything you and your visitors need to use LiveSupportSaaS is a standard web-browser.

We invite you to Sign Up for FREE and start using this plan without any obligations and time constraints.

Read more at: http://www.LiveSupportSaaS.com/

Transform your website into an online sales channel

2010-01-07T04:52:00.000-08:00

If your website is getting traffic then do no spend more on marketing. Spend on making it as user friendly and accessible as possible. Incorporate LiveSupportSaaS. It will not only increase your sales but will also decrease the cost of supporting your website.

LiveSupportSaaS is a type of software that allows you to chat with the visitors of your website in real time. It enables you to decrease the phenomenon of “shopping cart abandonment”. What’s more, it is easy to set up and easy to integrate with your website. LiveSupportSaaS enables you to provide immediate services to your online buyers. The normal turnaround time of 24 hours to an email enquiry is reduced to a few seconds. Unlike telephone support, the live sales center staff is also able to assist more than one client at a time. Dropped calls hamper sales. Your customers will be happy to get the personalized service through live chat. In a nutshell, live chat enhances and improves your customer relationship. Over a long time, your first time customers become your loyal buyers. An online shopping website without live chat is like a store without a salesperson. Go ahead and hire a professional and no-nonsense salesperson for your online store.

LiveSupportSaaS Announced

2009-12-25T05:35:00.000-08:00

LiveSupportSaaS, instant messaging applications designed to provide online assistance to users of a web site, is officially started to work in September 2009. Escon and LiveSupportSaaS team has developed new capabilities and options, and enhancements, including unbundled pricing and flexible payment plans. The new features were specifically designed from information outlined through extensive customer feedback collected during the past months.

Registered users are to able to fully use LiveSupportSaaS features and benefits in the testing phase for free. LiveSupportSaaS plans to deliver new service during January 2010. We'll continually follow changes in the way software is delivered to businesses and consumers.

Read more about LiveSupportSaaS live support software features and benefits and sign-up for Free Account.

SupportPortal 3.0 available

2009-01-22T02:57:00.000-08:00

SupportPortal 3.0 is now available.

----------------------------------------------------------------
New Features For Your Customer Service and Support ...
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Quick Highlight:

- Content sensitive rules for received emails with auto-assignment and routing
- Spam filter in "incoming mail settings" configuration panel
- Allow "HTML in ticket text" option
- Send email notifications on ticket escalation events
- Sender email in "Departments" table. Ticket replies will be sent from that email.
- Options to assign ticket when creating by administrator/manager
- Use HTML fckEditor if "allow HTML in ticket" option is enabled
- Forum sends mail notification to moderators
- Updated "Message to visitor" form in Live Chat
- Allowed chat operator image in chat window header
- And much more ...

White Paper: Ticket/E-mail Management in Brief

2008-08-07T08:41:00.000-07:00

White Paper: Ticket/E-mail Management in The Brief

This article explains how the Ticket/E-mail Management system behaves when receiving service or support requests / tickets by the end-users. This system is part of Escon SupportPortal application, and is intended to be a central point for customer's request collection and communicating between end-users and service/support stuff.
A number of systems administrators are embarrassed when met with Ticket / Email management system configuration in order to meet a basic requirement: Collect requests from users into a single database application and assign tickets to the proper service/support specialist.
Since the system requires a good knowledge of the functions and features that can be configured, it is important to know how the system behaves. This is especially useful in the phase of implementation of the system, when several important parameters needs to be set, depending of the company's system requirements and work with end-customers is agreed.

Two Ways to Submit Requests

As you know, there are two ways in which end-user can send the requests to Escon HelpDesk and SupportPortal application:

I) Through the Web form, where the user types the following information sufficient to create a ticket and assign to service / support specialists:
1. General Information:
- Name and Email. Anonymous users enter this information only, if such a listing is previously allowed (Option in Config: General -> "Users must login to access site" is cleared).

- Target Department – Choose from drop-down list. You can allow the user to choose targeting department where wants to send a request / ticket, if this option is enabled (Option in Config: Departments –> "Allow user to select department when creating ticket" is set).

2. Ticket Details:
- Subject – Free entry
- Text – Free entry
- Attachment – File, Picture, ... – optional.
3. Verification Code – For anonymous end-users only, due to a spam protection.

II) By E-mail, where the user creates and sends an email to one of the e-mail addresses configured in the application. When an e-mail is received, the application automatically converts data in email to the ticket in the following manner:
- Subject to the Ticket subject
- Email address is used to identify users in the existing user's table.
- Message body to the Ticket text
- Message attachments to the Ticket attachment (all attachments are archived to one ticket attachment – using zip function)

System Behavior

Regardless of users can use both ways competitive, it is useful to know how the system behaves inside, after the request is received.
There are several different combinations of the configuration parameters that affect the behavior of the system. Such parameters are primarily related to the way the requests are assigned, but also to automated notification of users on the status of their request.

Configuration options that are important for system behavior are:
- Department list (Config : Departments),
- Support stuff list (Users : Support stuff)
- Email accounts settings (Config : Incoming email settings)
- SLA rules (Config : SLA rules)

Depending on the ways of using the system, there are three different business process scenarios in which the users require the different actions.

For the first way of sending requests (Customer End-User sends an email with email client pogram (MS Outlook, Fodora, Web-Based client, etc.) there are two different scenarios:
- Scenario (A) – Emails are collected manually by the support operator – After a signup to the operator's dashboard by clicking on the button "Get Email messages" (at the top of page Email : Inbox) and
- Scenario (B) – Emails are collected automatically by Cron job or Task manager at predefined time intervals (5 min, 10 min, ...).

For the second was of sending requests is where the Customer End-User sends request by the public or private Web-form and this is described as Scenario (C).

Within this scenario scheme the three different roles appears:
1. End-User / Customer
2. Help desk Operator, and
3. Service / Support Specialist.

On the picture bellow is displayed the scheme with compared three scenarios:

If you have any questions regarding the features and configuration described in this article, please contact us at support@myescon.com.

About Escon

Escon Information Consulting (http://www.myEscon.com) is a global provider of Service Management software solutions that capitalize on continuous changes in IT business technology: Help desk, Customer support software and CRM solutions. Escon provides software for enterprise solutions that give a competitive business advantage and total control over their IT infrastructures.

Release 2.5.1 - Help Desk and Support Software updates

2008-05-15T01:08:00.000-07:00

A lot of news - Free Version available and more!

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

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. Additionally 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.

Give your small and medium business the edge it needs

2008-04-15T06:05:00.000-07:00

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.

Custom Layout Theme - Using Joomla templates

2008-03-11T09:22:00.000-07:00

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 or SupportPortal 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.

Open-Source Products Integration

2008-02-11T11:54:00.000-08:00

Escon releases the latest version of their leading-edge service management solutions. Escon develops new software features, promoting better web layout and overall design. SupportPortal and other products are enhanced with creative menus and navigation and also integrated with the Joomla content management system.

Escon Information Consulting today unveils version 2.0 for layout design of its service support applications. By improving custom design and adding new features, including vertical menus and submenus, Escon delivers superior freedom in using its software and better end-user collaboration capabilities.

Through an all-new dashboard-style welcome page, users can view elements that direct them to view and resolve requests, edit knowledge base articles, create, edit and review content news items, create product catalogs, edit user profiles and rights and more, making it easier to use. From new vertical menus, to icons, to shortcuts, design 2.0 just looks and feels completely new.

The new 2.0 release will make it possible for many future updates and services, enabling Escon products to offer even better integration into organization’s web site and serving benefits to clients of all kinds. Site index page is now available as tightly integrated into any owner’s site with the most freshly information: latest News, Knowledge base articles and latest downloads.

The Joomla Add-on

Furthermore, the Escon applications are also asked to provide another functions: integrating with open-source content management system and to feeds a Web publishing system. Now you can add Escon SupportPortal and SupportPortal+ menu into Joomla. This add-on allows users to navigate through the Escon menus and to be displayed as Joomla module. The Escon products login form is added to Joomla modules, also.

For more information on all Escon Information Consulting products and services, visit http://www.myescon.com/.

LiveHelp Hosted announced

2008-01-11T03:15:00.000-08:00

Escon LiveHelp hosted version is now available

Escon LiveHelp, instant messaging applications designed to provide online assistance to users of a web site, is now available as FREE for 60 for registered users in Hosted version.

Registered users are to able to fully use LiveHelp features and benefits, even without installing it at web site.

Starts to deliver hosting option

2007-12-11T04:56:00.000-08:00

Escon software available as hosted

Escon has developed new capabilities and options, and enhancements, including unbundled pricing and flexible payment plans. The new features were specifically designed from information outlined through extensive customer feedback collected during the past three months.

Escon Information Consulting plans to deliver new service during February 2008. We'll continually follow changes in the way software is delivered to businesses and consumers.

New features in SupportPortal 1.3 release

2007-10-09T08:30:00.000-07:00

SupportPortal: Customizing Look and Feel, and more

Escon SupportPortal 1.3 will include free extensions and and free post-installation support to add functionality and themes to change the look and feel at your whim. SupportPortal also has made some welcome changes without breaking anything in the process, but there are features that could still use some work.

Look and feel customization is a top feature request here at Escon SupportPortal. It also presents an interesting engineering challenge for a software like ours: accommodate a wide variety of custom styles while delivering new features and avoiding unpleasant surprises.

We've taken two approaches to theme customization. The first is a "Customize Theme" page that enabled color and logo selection using a simple configuration screen. The second approach enabled replacement of the stock CSS style sheet with a custom one.

The configuration page method is simple to use, and if customers lacks the power to change the actual layout and finer details of the page, they can use more powerful CSS replacement method which allows significantly more control.

Escon has developed a few Custom Themes, with developed main menu look and feel, so customers are free to choose their favorite: Vista, Aero, and Gray.