Ian Landsman is Starting From Scratch, June 3, 2008:
Modules You’d Like to See in HelpSpot Version 3
If you're in the market for a powerful and user friendly Help Desk solution, please take a look at my company's flagship product HelpSpot.
I’m nearing the end of planning for version 3, but to be honest I’m going back and forth on a couple of modules that I want to add. So I’m looking for input. If you have a new module you’d like to see in v3 please post a comment here. I’m not talking about features of existing functionality here, I mean all new areas. Think new top tabs. If there’s something you’d really like to see added please post it and give me a short explanation of why you’d like it included.
The usual disclaimers apply, there’s no guarantees that any ideas here will be included, but your feedback is taken very seriously and is always a major factor in my planning.
Discussion
Before I propose any new features, I'd like to ask a question:
How easy would it be (plugin/module/beats me) to add support for tight(er) integration with third party hosted apps like lighthouseapp.com, basecamp, highrise, etc to a hosted helpspot installation?
Created by Walker Hamilton on 06.03.2008 9:33 am
Well it depends what you mean. This is already possible via the request push and web service API's and customers are integrating with those apps now. If you mean very tight integration like a tab that says Basecamp inside HS that's not possible now. It's something to consider though.
Created by Ian on 06.03.2008 9:42 am
Hi Ian
Ok - not sure if this qualifies as a 'new tab', but here is something that would help, or would help us anyway. This may be a bit long-winded (sorry)..
The Big Idea
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A customer account login/pw area, where they submit tickets, and then each ticket they submit is available to them as a history from one area (instead of them having to enter keycodes for each ticket) is what we need.
Justification:
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1. Many (most) customers lose their keyphrase to their ticket.
2. Customers currently have no way of seeing their entire support request/answer history (which is especially valuable to us since we send an copy of their software license to the ticketing system as a backup, and then send them a key to the ticket so they can always get to it - but of course, they lose the keyphrase).
The way I see it, tickets submitted from the 'public' view would still work as they do now. I would not remove that - I would 'add' the customer login/pw area. This would enable people to use both.
For most of our customers, the account-based system would be the preferred (and they will be able to see the value in renewing their support contract each year if they can see how many tickets they had).
And a bit further ..
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A way to flag forums and KB's as 'customer-account-accessible' would be another great feature (builds on the recommendation above). This would enable us to put 'premier content' into their login area. For example, you have the KB's flagged as either private or public. How about another level - customer-account-level (or something like that). Then, each of our customers that have a support contract can 'log in' to their support area, and then submit a ticket, or, access the premium content (another bonus for getting support).
If you need clarification on the ideas expressed, please let me know. If it sucks, that's fine too, but you did ask for ideas ..
And One More Idea
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If you could add a way to either turn a ticket into a KB and/or Forum article, OR, even just COPY a ticket easily to a KB or Forum article, this would be awesome. Many tickets are the same thing over and over, an easy way to click COPY > TO KB > {BOOK} > CHAPTER or something like that would work wonders for us.
Ok I am done - thanks for listening 
Created by Anthony on 06.03.2008 10:49 am
Well this is an easy one Anthony. That feature is in version 2.4.2 which is coming out today (or tomorrow).
The login only applies to seeing their history, not your idea for forums though that's also interesting. I'm hesitant to create a large login area though where all the info gets hidden behind the login wall as that's a big differentiator of HS vs the competitors, but it's something I'll be giving more thought to.
Some type of way to log/store solutions to recurring issues. Got it.
Cheers!
Created by Ian on 06.03.2008 10:56 am
Hi Ian,
Being a customer of HelpSpot for some years this post is really interesting to me. However the thing is I couldn't really think of a completely new module that would really excite me. I'm sure once I see what you come up with I'll be excited, but off the top of my head I can't really come up with anything. That's not a bad thing, that simply means that you already have a pretty awesome help desk system!
I did come up with one idea though, but I don't know that we ourselves would use it. It's the ability to offer live chat support within the HelpSpot system. And keep those conversations recorded.
Otherwise all my suggestions are features or enhancements. Things like the ability to create a pdf from the knowledge books, etc. The ability to mark an email as spam and delete it right away (training the filter) rather than doing it in a two step process. The ability to keep track of people to contact when the next major release is available (for example people waiting for a new module to be released, etc.). Basically niceties.
That being said I can't wait to see what you come up with! Keep up the great work Ian!
Created by Stephane Grenier on 06.05.2008 3:36 pm
Thanks Steph!! All of these are great ideas.
In some ways I feel the same actually. Most of the big universally useful features are in there at this point. Now it's more about enhancing what's there and trying to pick the couple of modules that make sense to a good chunk of the users, even if it isn't everyone.
Created by Ian on 06.05.2008 6:01 pm
A batch merge might be useful. For some reason my users start discussions amongst themselves and it creates new issues, rather than updating the existing. If I could just select and merge them all at one time, rather than individually, it would speed things up from a ticket management perspective.
Created by Chris Paul on 06.09.2008 2:03 pm
HelpSpots primary features include email request tracking, providing a customer self service portal, and general help desk reporting and tracking features.
Created by Mikasa on 06.11.2008 3:03 pm