Support Forum

[David]

Hi,

Is anyone using TrackStudio as a technical support issue tracking tool? I'm not talking about bug tracking, which is suitable for a development team. I'm speaking of taking technical support incidents from users, assigning them to technical support personnel, recording all the email and files that are exchanged, querying for open support incidents, etc.

Does anyone have thoughts on whether TrackStudio would be appropriate for this?

Thanks,
David

[Maxim Kramarenko]

Is anyone using TrackStudio as a technical support issue tracking tool? I'm not talking about bug tracking, which is suitable for a development team. I'm speaking of taking technical support incidents from users, assigning them to technical support personnel, recording all the email and files that are exchanged, querying for open support incidents, etc.

Does anyone have thoughts on whether TrackStudio would be appropriate for this?

We use it for technical support internally: just create additional custom fields, such as customer and workaround, create workflow and specify access rights and email notification rules for support team and developers.

But because TrackStudio doesn't automatic support email tracking, its used as communication tool between developers and support team.

[David]

But because TrackStudio doesn't automatic support email tracking, its used as communication tool between developers and support team.

Thanks for the reply, Maxim, but could you explain further what you mean when you say TrackStudio doesn't support email tracking automatically?

Do you mean that if I send email to support@trackstudio.com, it cannot be logged into TrackStudio into a new (or existing) technical support incident?

Or if I update an incident with additinal information or change the state in the current incident's workflow, the updated details can't be automatically emailed to the customer?

Thanks,
David

[admin]

Thanks for the reply, Maxim, but could you explain further what you mean when you say TrackStudio doesn't support email tracking automatically?

Do you mean that if I send email to support@trackstudio.com, it cannot be logged into TrackStudio into a new (or existing) technical support incident??

Yes, we support only adding notes to existing tasks/bugs by email from registered users. But you can parse email by third party software and insert them and user info into database, after that all should be OK.

Or if I update an incident with additinal information or change the state in the current incident's workflow, the updated details can't be automatically emailed to the customer?

TrackStudio supports email integration only for registered users.

I try to describe how we use it. All of our customers are companies or organizations of some sort. Sometimes we have multiple customers within a single company. For example, in the Company X, we might have three different customers.

Even within the Company X, each account does not necessarily know about the other accounts. Each account has several people, who are employees of the account. Each person on each can account open new technical support issues and view/edit issues within that account.

For some users, data from each account should not be shared with other accounts, even with other accounts from the Company X. For another customer some account can share only small set of data with another account.

User interface is primary web-based (not email-based), so customers can come in and open/view/edit/close technical support issues. Users can create their our usernames (moderated by us -- permission required by us before actually creating the username). Users in different companies has different custom fields, different issue processing workflows (that can include email notification on some steps), different set of roles and so on.

As far as trouble tickets go, each technical support case is worked on by one or more technical support engineers, who send/receive emails, records notes, save files associated with the case, etc, etc.

TrackStudio supports many hierarchial groups of users in single database(we has more 1000 independend users in out hosted service) and upper management can monitor support request processing for some project or subprojects. Project manager can configure what data should be visible to customers, when they should receive email notification and so on. Also, we can track employee time for our support engeneers, for example, we know that support engeneer Max spent 1 hour for customer X and 20 minutes for customer Y - please check out our "money report" for example.

But we use this only for registered customers, for non-registred users there are three option available:
1) They can submit bugnote from they company website (simple HTML form, no PHP/JSP/database required). For example, please check our support->submit bug/request feature on our site and our FAQ. All entered data logged into our issue database.
2) They can contact with technical support, and, if support engeneer decide they can create issue in system.
3) Forum is also available.