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Home: Completely Web Based: WonderDesk:
Reviews?

 

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Author Subject:   Reviews?

Guest
Anonymous

Feb 13, 2001, 5:22 PM

Reviews? Quote | Reply

Can anyone tell me how this product performs? It looks impressive, but I want to make sure it's a stable and bug free.

Thanks for any help.




Guest
Anonymous

Feb 14, 2001, 11:56 PM

Re: Reviews? Quote | Reply

We have been using WonderDesk for ... well, it's been a long time. I can't even remember now when we first implemented it - it was still in beta versions back then, though. It's become an absolutely critical part of our operations - it single-handedly cut our support staffing needs from 2 full-time and 2 part-time down to just 1 full-time and 1 part-time person.

Is it the absolute perfect solution? No - I really, really wish it would handle incoming e-mail in addition to the web based forms, but unfortunately it doesn't (although the developer has told me several times that that functionality is planned for a future version).

But really that's the only complaint I have about the software - it's fantastic. We evaluated a lot of help desk systems, and just couldn't find anything that even comes close to matching Wonderdesk in it's price range (and we didn't then nor do we now have the budget to buy a $15,000 help desk - Wonderdesk got us into a help desk application for about $500 - a significant savings that fit our budget very well).

Thanks,

Jason Ellis, CEO
Hosting Solutions, Inc.
www.windowswebhost.com


Guest
Anonymous

Feb 15, 2001, 8:40 AM

Re: Reviews? Quote | Reply

WonderDesk is a great product. Like Jason we also use it to manage the technical support services for our hosting company.

We went for the SQL edition due to the number of calls we typically deal with and because it's faster for searches, and overall a better format in my opinion.

It's very stable and I've yet to come across a bug in it. It's also an incredibly fast program considering all the features programmed in to it. We use the FAQ all the time and that is built directly in to WonderDesk.

I couldn't recommend it any more highly.

Todd Ebersviller
http://www.hyperhosting.com


DPlace
Member

Mar 21, 2001, 12:18 PM

Re: Reviews? Quote | Reply

Just a bit of history here, which I ran across from a follow up report I did last year to my management who wanted to know why we didn't run out and buy "Remedy",
"Vantive", "HelpStar 2000", or (I think it was "CallTracker" but I can't remember). I have edited this a bit but the main substance remains the same.

In 1999, we discovered that the system we used for taking cases in our dept.
(dated, internally produced, app) was not Y2K ready and the machines it was running on were slated to be sunset on December 31, 1999.

Side note: Our dept. consists of approximately 15 people which handles all the publishing access rights, troubleshooting of publishing tools/systems, off hours emergency publishing, as well as being intermediary between our clients (internal personnel (international and US based) and contracted advertisers and shopping partners) and close to 20 different publishing systems/tools development staffs for the largest Online/Media company in the world.

On 12/15/1999, the task to find a replacement system was given to me. The following guidelines were established;

  • Replicate the minimum functionality of the old application - provide basic call tracking of tasks performed by dept. personnel.

  • Look for a Web based solution, both on the customer and technician side (no installing ODBC drivers or UI interfaces) which
    the old application was not.

  • Provide automatic ticket numbers, which the old application did not do.

  • Provide automatic confirmation of opening of cases, modification of cases, escalation of cases and closing of cases, not done by
    the old application.

  • Have the ability to assign cases to specific people or have them sit in a queue until picked up by a technician.

  • Provide reporting, both ad-hoc and canned. The early reports were to provide information on open and closed cases. Reports for later phases were for reports by type and those by technician.

  • The database of cases would be searchable, which the old application was not.

  • Easily modifiable to add new products or functions as the dept. mission changed.

  • Easy to use for users, with many pull downs and/or radio buttons.

  • Have a main category and a sub category (where appropriate), and then have user complete request. An Example would be Main category of CATFISH and sub categories of Access, Support/Troubleshooting, and Feature Requests.

  • Have the user enter their information once, validated by a dept. technician and then they would have complete access to the User portion of the system.

  • There would be a notes field, which would not be visible by anyone whom wasn't a technician. It would enable a technician the ability to have additional notes or comments not visible to the user.


Most of the commercial systems we looked at required an NT server, mSQL database, a tremendous learning curve to setup and teach Techs to use and consultants to come in and make modifications to the system as we required them. These systems also ranged from between $30,000 and $60,000 before the modifications, NT Server and mSQL additions. Estimated modifications just to setup the base forms we already used (30 different forms for various request types and information gathering) was estimated at between $5,000 and $24,700 varying from company to company. We also discovered that most commercial systems were designed for Helpdesks in Internal Computing, Network or ISP type fields, which didn't help us at all.

I suggested that it might be in our best interest to find a non-commercial program that came close to our needs, such as a Perl program, and then go in and make basic modifications to that. While we did not find a non-commercial program, we did find a very reasonably priced (ok, dirt cheap at $500/$1500[SQL]), Perl based system called WonderDesk, which, while not fulfilling all our initial requirements, did give us a great base to work with and was totally customizable by anyone with a little knowledge of Perl scripting. It also freed us up to use our choice of computer OS, and MySQL so we were able to avoid the commercial and costly NT/mSQL combo.

The initial CMS (Case Management System) met and actually exceeded the goals we laid out, and did so within the timeframe given, (being online with the new system by April 1st, 2000). It is versatile, easy to work with for both our customers and technicians and has increased our productivity and effectiveness.

--[SNIP]--

Coming back into the present and as a side note, when I was given this project initially, I didn't know Perl (except for being able to use pre-made scripts). Now, a little over a year later, you probably wouldn't even know that our CMS code was based off of WonderDesk, except for the fact that throughout the coding and enhancements, the basic UI has remained similar. I also want to note that the folks over at WonderDesk have been extremely helpfully, courteous and responsive to our requests and much of my early modifications could not have been done in the time required without their assistance.

While this software package might not be the best for every application or company, it has served us well and in the last year handled over 20,000 cases while having no problems whatsoever.

David Place,
Publishing Support Engineer


(This post was edited by DPlace on Mar 21, 2001, 12:21 PM)
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