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  1. #1

    Post Inverseflow Software Review

    The following is an unsolicited review of Inverse Flow Help Desk. Due to the lack of criticism on many of the help desks on the market, we believe that by making an unbiased review of this program, we can offer insight as to what help desk will best suit your company. The review is separated in a few sections sections, with pros and cons, followed by a 10 scale rating system. We hope you find this useful.

    Ease of Installation

    - Help Desk was emailed. There was no members area. We’re not sure how updates are going to be sent out. Maybe mass email?

    - The first bump in installing this program was that it was packaged in a zip file. Although our servers have zip/unzip on them, some servers may not. This didn’t pose a challenge to us but to others, it may. We hope in the future, an option of a tarball will be available.

    - After the decompression, just a simple modification of the settings.php file and we were all good to go. Creating an administrator account took less than 3 seconds and with that account, editing all configuration options were a click away.

    - Since the program is entirely based in PHP/MySQL, we didn’t have to install extra modules to make it function correctly. This made setup a breeze.

    Pros: Edit one file and everything was set up. No need to import any .sql files.
    Cons: File packaged in a .zip file. Needs a tarball package as well. A members area would be nice so future releases can be streamlined.

    Rating: 8.5/10


    Site Customization

    - The one everyone asks… This could not have been made easier. Although the customization is sort of hidden, meaning it was somewhere we didn’t expect it, it was very easy to customize how the help desk looked. With a simple cut and paste of your custom header/footer, the user interface is changed completely to the way you want it to look. The hardest part would probably be actually copying and pasting the HTML code into the boxes into the Help Desk. Colors are also changed on the fly with the online CSS editing box. Simply put, it could not have been made easier.

    - Customizing the generated emails the help desk sends out is also online. Just type in exactly what you want it to say when a new ticket is created, a ticket has been replied to… and everything will update once you save it. It could not have been easier.

    - What we didn’t like about it is the customization of the administrators interface. We couldn’t find a way to easily modify how the administrator interface looked. We’re stuck looking at Inverse Flow’s “style.” Maybe it’s just not online, and we would have to modify it within the code. Not a problem, but very time consuming, considering how easy it was to modify the end user’s interface.

    Pros: Very easily customizable to fit your sites’ needs. Simple cut and paste and you’re good to go. Everything done online.
    Cons: No simple way to modify the look of the administrators interface.

    Rating: 9/10


    Admin Interface

    - What can I say; it was very easy to navigate, as well as the creation of the help desk. Adding departments took just a few key strokes of typing and it was all setup. There was nothing major to edit to get everything working. It simply worked right out of the box.

    - Adding extra techs and administrators were just as easy as creating departments.

    - Viewing tickets is very easy to do. It tells you just about everything you need to know. One thing we did not like was ow the reply to the ticket is arranged in a reverse order. Meaning, the latest reply is first on the page, and the oldest reply is towards the bottom. This option was not configurable on the administrators interface. Maybe the future versions will make this an option.

    - There is an existing knowledgebase but we do not use it currently and we are unable to critique it at this time.

    - Backups are available for download online. This makes it painless and makes no excuse as to why someone cannot backup their site daily, or multiple times a day. The link is there, so if you’re using this program, use it. We do.

    - One thing this help desk lacks is an in depth statistics counter. It’s very minimal now and this is vital if you have many techs and need to check on their stats.

    - We would like to see an optional interface for users to log in and keep track of their information. It gets tedious if a customer has to type their info in constantly. We know that some people may not like this but if Inverse Flow wants to create a help desk to cater to the mass, having this option, even if it can be turned on or off, would be an asset. We would certainly use it.

    - There are many functions left un-described but are self explanatory (surveys, message center…). If you go to www.inverseflow.com and try out their demo, you can see what other features this help desk offers.

    Pros: Very easy to navigate and use. Many functions are self explanatory and easy to customize. There was nothing that stumped us.
    Cons: Statistics were bare to minimum. Hopefully this will be improved in the future. Same with customization section, this interface was not able to be customized to our needs. No user login interface. Customer has to type in their info constantly.

    Rating: 7.5/10


    User Interface

    - As described above, without an optional log in box, it makes it tedious for customers to constantly enter their account information. We know this is a “selling point” of the help desk as described on the Inverse Flow website, but an option to enable it would be great.

    - Creating a ticket could not be simpler. You select which dept. you want the ticket to go to, type in all your info and the ticket is created. Keeping track of the ticket requires the user to authenticate online with their Ticket ID (randomized) and email. If the Ticket ID is lost, a retrieval option is available. One thing we did not see was an option to have the customer reply back to the email to update the ticket. Although this suits our needs, it may not be for others. There was a way to pipe new emails to generate a new one, but not update an existing one.

    Pros: Very easy to open a ticket. Keeping track of your tickets is easy as well. Random Ticket ID’s are generated to prevent seeing other tickets.
    Cons: No user login box. Tedious to retype information constantly. No email piping to update tickets.

    Rating: 8/10


    All in all, after comparing this help desk to numerous other ones, we love it. It totally suits us well, with a few exceptions but we see no reason why it will not suit your company if you’re looking for a new ticket system solution. We’ve outlined what we liked, and what we disliked. Some options are more critical to have but we will see what happens with newer builds. Our final rating is one and three quarter thumbs up or a rating of 8/10 (Obviously no help desk is perfect so a 10 is out of the question .

    We hope you’ve enjoyed our review of Inverse Flow’s Help Desk. If anyone has any questions, please feel free to reply back or PM me with anything.

    Thank you.

  2. #2
    Good to hear, that what I think also, I love this program!

    They did a great job!
    Royi Sher
    CatchyHost
    "We Catch Your Way Of Thinking"
    May Special @ CatchyHost

  3. #3
    Join Date
    Jun 2002
    Location
    Australia & The Pacific
    Posts
    75
    - After the decompression, just a simple modification of the settings.php file and we were all good to go. Creating an administrator account took less than 3 seconds and with that account, editing all configuration options were a click away.


    It took me a while (well 1-2 minutes) to figure this out since there's no readme file, and I normally expect config.php instead

    - The one everyone asks… This could not have been made easier. Although the customization is sort of hidden, meaning it was somewhere we didn’t expect it, it was very easy to customize how the help desk looked. With a simple cut and paste of your custom header/footer, the user interface is changed completely to the way you want it to look. The hardest part would probably be actually copying and pasting the HTML code into the boxes into the Help Desk. Colors are also changed on the fly with the online CSS editing box. Simply put, it could not have been made easier.


    I wouldn't have even realized this without looking into the code. Once I realized it, I can paste my php header code and it worked fine. Neded fine funing here and there no big deal.


    - Customizing the generated emails the help desk sends out is also online. Just type in exactly what you want it to say when a new ticket is created, a ticket has been replied to… and everything will update once you save it. It could not have been easier.


    I couldn't find a list of what's valid variables to be inserted. Would love to see this.



    - What we didn’t like about it is the customization of the administrators interface. We couldn’t find a way to easily modify how the administrator interface looked. We’re stuck looking at Inverse Flow’s “style.” Maybe it’s just not online, and we would have to modify it within the code. Not a problem, but very time consuming, considering how easy it was to modify the end user’s interface.


    I modified the code - no big deal our admin area is also "customized" in terms of using our own site header.


    admin interface

    One problem I have with it is:

    - Cookies time out. I hate having to re-enter my password everytime.


    ====

    - As described above, without an optional log in box, it makes it tedious for customers to constantly enter their account information. We know this is a “selling point” of the help desk as described on the Inverse Flow website, but an option to enable it would be great.


    I couldn't agree more. Imagine a user with no access to his email... not sure if it is possible for him to keep track of his responses - in various scenarios (e.g. posting on the web helpodesk, sending email from an address that we can't reply to, etc).


    - Creating a ticket could not be simpler. You select which dept. you want the ticket to go to, type in all your info and the ticket is created. Keeping track of the ticket requires the user to authenticate online with their Ticket ID (randomized) and email. If the Ticket ID is lost, a retrieval option is available. One thing we did not see was an option to have the customer reply back to the email to update the ticket. Although this suits our needs, it may not be for others. There was a way to pipe new emails to generate a new one, but not update an existing one.



    What do you mean update the ticket? I think the user can reply to the email.


    One thing I'd like to see is the ability for the replies to have the "From" address set to the corresponding departmental emails.

    Also like cerberus that can have multiple emails set to one department (might be able to do it on IF too?)


    All in all for me, I'd love to recode the whole thing and use a templating engine so that the php is not intermingled inside the html. But this is just me since I am a coder.
    Last edited by FHJim; 04-30-2003 at 06:36 PM.

  4. #4
    Morph,

    Thanks for the honest review, I'm glad we scored well!

    I just thought I'd make one small note that email piping does in fact work with the help desk. Users can reply to emails and this will update the tickets as of version 2.0
    Help Desk Software
    http://www.h2desk.com

    Used by Web Hosting Companies, Universities, Charities and Fortune 500s worldwide.

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