Easy and convenient to use

End users or customers enter new tickets. The Tickets are automatically sent to a Help Desk folder, where the Help Desk reviews and assigns them. Also, the Help Desk can fill out and assign new tickets directly on an as-needed basis.

Once assigned, the technician is sent an email with a link to the ticket. The technician reads the ticket and enters status reports and time spent on the ticket log as work progresses. End users are able to see what is being done on their issue without having to contact the Help Desk. The end user is informed by e-mail when the issue is resolved.

Support for Multiple Languages

Outlook Help Desk 3.0 is available in English and German versions. We can also translate the end user interface pages to your language, if needed.

Generate Reports with Report Builder or Crystal Reports

With our included utility "Report Builder", tickets can easily be exported to an Excel spreadsheet or a Text file. With the click of a button, the tickets are copied to a file that can be used as is or imported into a database -- great for running reports and tracking the performance of the Help Desk.

Reports can also be generated by Crystal Reports and other third-party reporting tools that can connect to Exchange folders. See example (requires Adobe Acrobat to view).

Knowledge Base -- new in 3.0!

The Knowledge Base provides a valuable and easily accessible repository of information on Help Desk issues. It is built from completed tickets and from articles the Help Desk staff enters directly. By having a readily available list of articles categorized and sorted, the Help Desk staff and users have an important resource to draw from when issues arise.

Utilities to Manage the Help Desk

• List Manager gives you the ability to control the contents of all drop-down boxes on the Help Desk Ticket form.
• Automatic Notification allows you to set email addresses that receive notice of a new tickets. You can set a special address to receive notices of critical tickets. 
• Popup Message lets you configure a message to display to the users whenever they fill out a new Ticket. The message is easily changed or turned on and off.
• Ticket Mode sets tickets to open in end user mode (end users create tickets) or help desk mode (help desk creates all tickets -- great for call centers!)
• Ticket Numbering sets up sequential numbering of tickets with prefixes and suffixes, if needed.
• Ticket Colors allows you to change the ticket colors on the fly.
• Upgrade Utility makes it simple to do upgrades.

Customizable!

We can customize Outlook Help Desk 3.0 to match your corporate colors and add in your logo. Click here and here to see examples. We can also change the titles, remove boxes and add features such as an auto-responder. This provides flexibility in making the Help Desk Tickets attractive and useful to your users.

"Crow Canyon Systems has proven with its Outlook Help Desk suite that it understands the fundamental business needs of an IT organization by developing software that can easily be deployed, quickly adopted and shows immediate return on investment.  We looked at other solutions which costs many times more for both the product and implementation costs and takes months to deploy. We were able to deploy the Outlook Help Desk suite in a matter of days. Within a week, our entire IT organization was managing cases entirely via this application." – Eugene Alfaro, IT Director, iManage, San Mateo, CA

Connect with an Asset tracking or auditing database

Outlook Help Desk can integrate with any ODBC-compliant Asset tracking database or LAN audit software database. When you are working on a ticket, this will allow you to bring up information about the computer or asset involved. We can work with you to integrate Outlook Help Desk with the system you already use. Our tickets can connect with your audit database, providing information that is invaluable in solving problems quickly.

Works with Exchange 5.5, 2000, and 2003 and any version of Outlook

Outlook Help Desk will work with Exchange Server 5.5, 2000 or 2003 and any version of Outlook, including Outlook 2002, XP and 2003.

Do you use a Hosted Exchange Server? Outlook Help Desk can work with hosted servers

Crow Canyon Systems has partnered with Hosting.Com to provide Outlook Help Desk for companies that use hosted Exchange Servers. Hosting.com is a Microsoft Certified Partner, providing Hosted Exchange Solutions in the Shared and Dedicated Environment. Companies using Hosting.com’s Exchange hosting will now be able to track, record and monitor all Help Desk tasks and support requests using Crow Canyon's award-winning Outlook Help Desk.

Outlook Help Desk 3.0 includes other great features:

• Fully compatible with Outlook 97, 98, 200, 2002 and 2003, no security warning boxes appear
• User contact info (phone, department, office, email address) is pulled from the Exchange or Active Directory and auto-populates the ticket.
• Time Tracking and History Log on the Assigned tickets. Technicians enter status information and time spent as they work on the ticket.
• Update and Completion emails sent to end user from the Assigned ticket.
• Copy to Tasks allows techs to copy tickets to their personal Tasks for synching with a PDA or handheld.

Standard versus Service Provider Editions

The Standard edition is for supporting users inside your organization. It pulls the contact information from the Exchange or Active Directory, and the fields used are Name, Department, Office, Phone and Email. End users can fill out the Ticket form in Outlook, send in an email, or use a Web browser. For the Web browser, they can log in, just like Outlook Web Access, since they have Exchange mailboxes. Of course, users can also call in and the Help Desk staff can fill out the tickets directly.

The Service Provider edition is for supporting customers and clients, that is, people outside your organization. It pulls contact information from an Exchange public contacts folder. If your customer contact information is kept in another database, we usually can arrange to connect to that instead. The fields used for the contact information are Name, Company, Address, Phone and Email. In this edition, customers are not on the Exchange system, so they cannot fill out Outlook tickets directly or use the Outlook Web Access-type interface. Instead, they can send email or they call in and the Help Desk staff can fill out the ticket.

Also, we provide Web pages that you can put on your Web site so that the customers can fill out a Support Ticket there. This is a Web form that you can make as simple or elaborate as you like and customize to match your Web site's look. Once the customer fills out the Web form, ASP code turns it into an email and sends it to the Help Desk where it is converted like any other email into a new Help Desk ticket.

These Web Support Pages are available in either edition, since there are some cases where an internal Help Desk may want to offer their users a way to enter tickets through the Web without logging in. (With the OWA-type Web interface, users log in using their Windows/Exchange account.) Most often, these Web support pages are used for supporting external customers and as way to enhance your Web site's support offering for your customers.

There is an example of this at our site: Support Ticket