Chat, Notifier, v3.2 - What Next?
It has been a busy time for us getting v3.2, the notifier and the Chat beta out all at once but what’s next you might well ask?
Well apart from getting the instant chat plugin stable the focus is going to be two fold, v3.3 and a billing plugin. There are going to be a number of key new features in v3.3; a focus on improving and uniting the various self help elements in DeskPRO, Spam filtering, Multiple users per ticket (a major change) as well as a new user interface style which will work more as a pop-up helpdesk as opposed to one you directly integrate into your site. There will of course be the usual hundreds of improvements and mini features, most of which have been suggested by DeskPRO customers, which will be enhance your daily use of the software.
The billing plugin may be released with v3.3 or possibly a little bit after. It is deigned to be a one stop shop for all your billing needs allowing for billing monthly services, support contracts or fixed amounts. It will integrate with the popular payment gateways and have extensive reporting. Of course the software will naturally tie into DeskPRO concepts such as user groups and companies allowing a range of options. We do welcome any suggestions you might have on the billing plugin; just create a ticket in our helpdesk to let us know or post a comment here.
We have a range of other plans for DeskPRO over the next few months including a new website and rebrand and a well mapped out v3.4, v3.5 and about 5 other plugins. There is lots to keep us busy.
Chris Padfield
New Server Requirements
With the launch of DeskPRO v3.2.0 we have increased the server requirements. This is something we sent a pre-warning about a few months ago but is now a reality.
The new requirements can be found here: http://www.deskpro.com/deskpro/requirements/ essentially the major changes are requiring PHP 5.2 and mySQL 4.1.
There are a number of reasons for this. Firstly PHP4 reaches it end of life in August when the PHP group will stop fixing any bugs. Any good host will be migrating from PHP4 to PHP5 before then. By focusing on PHP5 we can also remove a lot of old PHP4 code and use more excellent 3rd party components that are only written in PHP5.
Chris Padfield
DeskPRO 3.2.0 & Friends
It’s been a good long while since the last post. That whole “every week a new post” promise from a few months ago just made me a liar, didn’t it? Well I have a good excuse: I’ve been so utterly busy, I haven’t had time to post. Today I thought I should take some time out of my oh-so-busy schedule to share some news with you.
First thing’s first: DeskPRO 3.2.0 is almost ready. Most of the work that has gone into 3.2, you won’t even notice. The jump from 3.0 to 3.1 was huge, we had a bunch of new features to play around with. But with 3.2, most of the work is behind the scenes.
In reality, 3.2 is really all about the new plugins.
Desktop Notifier
The first plugin is a Windows application that is designed to alert your techs when there are new tickets that need their attention. The main window is a list, grouped by two criteria (Category and Workflow, by default) that just shows numbers of tickets that are awaiting tech.
The second feature of this cool little app is a little notification popup box by your taskbar that shows you an excerpt of any new tickets. If you’ve ever used MSN messenger or some other instant-messaging app, you’ll know what I mean. It looks just like the little box that comes up when one of your contacts IM’s you.
And of course you can enable a sound to play whenever something changes. This is the perfect tool to compliment your helpdesk setup.
Instant Help (Chat)
The second plugin is the infamous chat. I’ve been knee deep, no, neck deep in Javascript for the last few weeks writing this thing. I have been dreaming about Javascript, that’s how much of it I’ve been writing. (I mean that quite literally, by the way. I’ve never had a nightmare worse than the one about the Grid and the event listeners… *shiver*.)
So what does this baby do. Well, it lets you chat, obviously. We still have some more work to go before this thing is available, but I thought I’d give you a little peek at it while we’re here.
You might notice the “tracking” tab there. In DeskPRO 3.2 we’re introducing new tracking features that’ll track users around your site (even non-DeskPRO pages!). This is mostly useful for the chat app because you can send chat requests to users as they are actually on your website. Pre-sales, anyone?
“Eh! What happened to Adobe AIR?” I can hear you thinking. We ditched it — for now. We realized that all of the features really could be handled by current browser technology, so we decided not to use AIR. We were a bit worried about the lack of Linux support, and AIR was still in beta (figures, the stable 1.0.0 was released just a little while ago!). We’ll revisit AIR (and similar technologies) a bit later, but for now, just know that the tech interface won’t require any additional software beyond a modern browser.
So anyway, that’s about it for now. There’s even more stuff in the works (more plugins, more features) but let’s save those for another day. We’ll have more info about these plugins soon, and more info about future developments whenever I feel like posting again.
See yah later,
– Christopher Nadeau
3.1 “Gold”
“Are we there yet?”
Yes! We are! After one beta and one release candidate, we’re just about to glue the “Gold” sticker onto DeskPRO 3.1.
If you don’t know what’s changed, I’ve put together a pretty nifty PDF release document that goes over some of the best additions; it includes screenshots and all that jazz.
This is the release to get, folks. If you’ve been using DeskPRO 3.0.x and think that’s good — then you’ll be amazed with some of the new features. If you’ve been eyeing DeskPRO for a while — then this is the perfect time to dive right in (by the way, the homepage says you’ll save $1500 on Enterprise:Unlimited if you order soon!).
We’ve gotta say a big thanks to everyone who downloaded and tested the pre-releases, we couldn’t have done this without you (well, perhaps we could have, it just would’ve taken a lot longer ;-)). A few users were especially helpful, if for nothing else then putting up with all my questions and debug procedures.
When can I get it? I hear you asking. At the time of this writing, we’re just a few short hours away (just some random website stuff to do). By the time your RSS reader downloads this post, you’ll probably be able to head to your Members Area and download it.
Until next time, happy DeskPRO’ing!
– Christopher Nadeau
Feature Requests: You’ve Got’em, We Want’em
Now with 3.1 just about ready for download (read next post), we really want to know what you want!
We get enough feature requests to have a good idea of what to tackle next. But why not have your say as well? I’m officially commanding you to send in your deepest desires (as it pertains to the product of course!). The easiest way is to simply send us an email at support@deskpro.com. If the feature is not the kind of thing you’d typically see in helpdesk software — tell us anyway. We’re constructing a nice list of plugins we want to eventually investigate.
New Admin/Tech Look
We’re trying to make it a weekly thing, this blog. Each week is so packed full of stuff sometimes I forgot that people read my posts. And sometimes the stuff I do is just too utterly boring to the non-programmers in the crowd (which is what, 98%?).
I’d love to go on and on about how we updated our internal build numbers from simple incremental digits like 11 to a nice long and seemingly complicated number like 3010003 (which, by the way, is the build number for 3.1.0 Gold). I know how you’d just love to hear more build numbers and why the change so important, but I thought a short post about the new admin/tech interface would be a tad more interesting.
So here we are:
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Not bad, eh? We think it’s a vast improvement over the old look. One of my colleagues said, “Finally we’re out of 2004!”
Most of the layout and widgets are the same, but that old bulky blue table header was re-done (rounded corners, how Web 2.0!), and the header and footer were spiced up.
In the admin interface (the screenshot on the right), you’ll notice a small facelift on the old droll ’you should investigate’ list’. You also might have noticed the new Notices table. From time to time we will add a message after an upgrade to explain something important. For example, when you upgrade to 3.1 from 3.0.x you’ll see that notice about gateways and permissions, and one about enabling secure user passwords.
Anyway, that’s that. Just wanted to upload a screenshot for those of you who aren’t running 3.1 yet.
’til next week!
– Christopher Nadeau
Multiple User Sources
The next public release of DeskPRO 3.1 is very very close (it will be RC1, by the way). But before you get your grubby little hands on it, I want to talk about yet another new feature we managed to implement.
DeskPRO 3.0 had the ability to fetch user login details from a source other then DeskPRO. You could use a vBulletin or phpBB forum, LDAP etcetera. This was a very popular feature because it allowed administrators to set up a helpdesk that complimented the systems they already had in place. But this wasn’t enough in some situations.
The most requested enhancement to this feature has been the ability to have multiple sources. For example, get login details from two vBulletin forums, or a vBulletin forum and an LDAP directory or any other combination of sources. But mostly people just wanted to enable the DeskPRO system (so they can take advantage of auto-registrations and such) as well as accept logins to systems that were already operational. Since changing an authentication source meant disabling DeskPRO’s, it wasn’t exactly a holy grail.
There is basically one giant problem with accepting credentials from multiple sources: “collisions”. That is when a user exists in two sources. For example, John Doe has signed up on your forums as well as in your website.
So we put our brilliant minds to the problem, and came up with a solution.
In DeskPRO 3.1 a user can have any number of accounts linked to it. We have one “local” user record, which contains details like a user ID, their preferences and so on. Each local user record is linked with any number of “remote” user records. A remote user record would be one from vBulletin, phpBB, your website or whatever other source you have set up. Once an account is linked this way, the user can log in using any credentials from any source to access the single helpdesk account.
From the user end, it’s as easy as its always been. The first time they enter their username and password, DeskPRO talks to each source you have configured to see if there is a match. If there is, the helpdesk record is created in the background and the user can use the system as normal. If they log in using a different set of credentials but the emails match, they are asked to verify they want to link the accounts.
A ton of changes were needed for this feature (mostly technical stuff, how users were handled by DeskPRO), but we did it! We listened to your demands and have provided.
Here are the user sources shipping with DeskPRO 3.1:
- Custom - Allows you to insert details about a custom database
- Custom (MsSQL) - Same as above, but works with a MsSQL database instead of MySQL
- DeskPRO - Of course, you can have DeskPRO manage all the users.
- eZ Publish
- LDAP
- osCommerce
- phpBB
- SugarCRM
- vBulletin
And as time passes, we’ll add even more.
That’s all I really wanted to say today. We’ve been working very hard on 3.1, I have no doubt you’ll be amazed at some of the changes!
Until next time,
– Christopher Nadeau
Work on the Chat Plugin Recommences
Now that 3.1 beta is out in the open, our work on the infamous instant chat plugin has started once again. We thought we’d venture out of the norm a bit. We’re being all web-2.0 about it (sorry, but you just know I had to use the term sometime).
The tech side of things is being created as a client-side app using Adobe AIR. This basically allows us to create a desktop application using the stuff we know best (HTML and Javascript). AIR has some added benefits over a normal browser. We can write preference files, use local SQLite databases, work with the clipboard… All sorts of neat things. And the added benefit of only having to debug under a single environment will save me from banging my head against the IE icon.
Since the user-side of things is much simpler, it will work in any modern browser without the need to download additional software. Everything is AJAX-driven, no olden-days of continuous refreshes. Our prototype looks very similar to a normal chat window you might find in AIM or MSN, minus nudges, video emotions and other annoying “features”.
By using generic web technologies like HTML and Javascript (perhaps Flash in the future) with the power of AJAX to get and send data, you don’t need to have any special server software like chat daemons; and your techs and users don’t need to load up special chat Java applets or anything like that. Everything can just work.
I’m not going to say what features we are actually planning since they will undoubtedly change. But the spec we have now is pretty cool. When we get further along I’ll try and post more about it.
– Christopher Nadeau
DeskPRO 3.1 Beta 1
Hey everyone,
After months of hard work, we’re ready for some beta testers to break DeskPRO 3.1. You can download this beta version from the members area. For all of the curious amongst us, I’ve added a new section to the site about the new features in this version. Also read that page for links to the bug tracker where we’d like you to report any bugs.
Download. Enjoy. Break stuff!
– Christopher Nadeau
New DeskPRO Blog
Hiya folks,
The other Chris got the crazy idea in his head to start up a company blog. “It’s so crazy, it might work!”, we said. And here we are!
If you’re interested in the goings-on of DeskPRO then you should stay tuned. We’ll give you the inside scoop, reveal new features, and give you the pleasure of hearing our rants about why such-and-such should be thrown out the window.
I hope the others can pop in when they have a chance but it looks as though I’ll be the main blogger here. Being the crazy developer I am, most of my posts will be talking about new features we plan to unveil in DeskPRO. At the time of this writing, version 3.1 is just around the corner. Too bad we didn’t start the blog a couple months ago, I could have leaked so many cool screenshots for you.
So here’s to months and months of happy blogging action!
– Christopher Nadeau