Hey Guys,

I have been scowering the forums here for sometime however, I would like others advice and it seems there are very many knowledgeable people here :)

First some background info:
I am actively researching a help desk solution for the company I am employed at. We have an active user base of approx. 40,000 users and offer both phone and email technical support. (currently employ 20 full time customer service reps)

Features that we would like:
- Customer Self Service Portal
- Public facing knowledgebase / troubleshooters
- Email piping / filtering
- Issue and ticket management / escalation
- Reporting
- Ideally .NET / SQL Server Backend

I have lost track of how many poor programs i have trialed / demoed and am somewhat appalled at how few "good" applications I have come across.

Now from all of my demoing the following products seem to me that they are outstanding:

- microsoft dynamics crm
- sugar crm
- kayako

Does anybody have any others that they feel could be added to this list?

Does anybody know of any fully functional help desk applications that are microsoft centric?

Your input is greatly appreciated!

If you need a simple helpdesk system with knowledgebase and built on .NET, you can have a look at 'SmarterTicket'. However, I must admit that kayako is having more functionalities compared to SmarterTicket.

I would have to agree with you. I demo'd smarterticket and I wasn't overly impressed. They have a new product in beta which looks significantly better "Smartertrack" or something like but i guess only time will tell.

I'm really considering migrating to SmarterTrack.

What do you currently use bmorejon?

http://crm.saeven.net.

Fantastic application. Even does time-tracking.



Regards,

wow..a help desk that I actually want to demo after a very brief overview..thanks for the reply utropicmedia.

wow..a help desk that I actually want to demo after a very brief overview..thanks for the reply utropicmedia.

No problem. Their dev team is highly responsive and they are constantly packing new features in it. Support is world-class, almost as good as ours... ;)



Kind Regards,

PerlDesk?

If you are looking for email management / kb for end users, did you try Cerberus (http://www.cerberusweb.com)?

SupportTrio (http://activecampaign.com/supporttrio/)?

But as I know them to be, they all run on PHP / MySQL / Perl

I haven't given PerlDesk a full review however Cerberus and SupportTrio didnt feel quite robust enough for our use.

Thanks for the reply.

You may like to have a look at RT: Request Tracker
http://bestpractical.com
http://bestpractical.com/rt/

Saeven:

Don't bother with it, it's 'feature packed', but like most 'feature packed' applications is impossible to configure. It takes hours to work with and try to get working, and the "windows app" couldn't be more confusing. Of course, it's been a year + since I tried it, but , from that experience, not really worth the time.

Kayako:
History repeats itself, quite frequently. Kayako is quite good with this. Rather than learn from mistakes (slow development, slow support, addressing client issues), they take the same road on and on and on again. For the past 5 years, they've had so many complaints about support, slow development, etc. Of course, Jamie would have you believe otherwise, but that's his job, to spin things.

Cerberus:
The admin side of things is ugly, has been ugly for years. I just don't see how they keep things going, especially with the lack of response to sales and support tickets out there.

Personally, I'm using kayako, but that's only until I can get my own solution built into whmcs.

We like auracle/saeven - not that bad and our new engineers are comfortable with it in a few minutes.



Regards,

I think Kayako support suite would be a good decision. It has Live Chat, Tickets, and stuff.

PerlDesk?

If you are looking for email management / kb for end users, did you try Cerberus (http://www.cerberusweb.com)?

SupportTrio (http://activecampaign.com/supporttrio/)?

But as I know them to be, they all run on PHP / MySQL / Perl

Kayako is the best one out there.

Cerberus the Admin section is little tough to go on.

SupportTrio yet to use it.

I'm using koyako support suite, and rather happy with it

What do you currently use bmorejon?

Im currently using Help Desk Pilot.

Thanks for the replies!

While I have reviewed even more software now I am still somewhat stuck. I have one more requirement that needs to be filled and finding a solution that does this is proving to be annoying...

Our current support desk (developed in house) allows a user to submit a support issue to essentially a "sub department". For example a user selecting Technical Support would then select the area of the product they are having trouble with.

Does anybody know of a solution that supports a "sub deparment". I know many that I have reviewed allow you to create custom fields and the like however they all seem to ignore the fact that you would like to use custom fields for sorting and display of information....

I'm almost starting to think that we are going to have to throw some resources at refactoring our current help system...

Anyway, if any of you have any suggestions it would be very much appreciated.