PhaseWare Tracker/Self Service Center 4.0.0.0 Release

Major New Features.  The 4.0.0.0 release has many new features and fixes.  Highlights are:

• - Self Service Center Live Chat. You can now offer live chat to your customers through Self Service Center.
• - Incident Chat. Agents viewing the same incident can now chat with each other right on the Incident screen.
• - Event Engine Appointment E-Mails. You can now send e-mails from the Event Engine which are appointment e-mails which go on recipients' calendars.
• - Startup Forms. Users can now indicate what forms they want to open when Tracker starts. A user can choose any major form and can indicate as many startup forms as desired. For example, a user might open two incident managers (running different favorite searches) and the Chat Monitor form on Tracker startup.
• - Contact Secondary E-Mail Addresses. You can now associate multiple e-mail addresses with a single contact. When the mail checker picks up an e-mail from the contact, it will recognize the contact regardless of what e-mail address is used.

 

Features that could potentially impact screen designer changes.  The following screens have changes that could potentially impact changes you have made in screen designer.  If you have made changes to the affected screens, you should review your changes after the update is applied.  In some cases you may need to move either your custom controls or the new controls placed on the screen.  You can read about these screen changes in detail later in this document.

• - Customer Entry Screen - Contacts Tab. There is a new button next to the E-Mail field through which you can enter secondary e-mail addresses for the contact.
• - Quick Contact Entry & Edit. As with the contacts tab of the customer entry screen, there is a new button next to the E-Mail field for secondary e-mail addresses.
• - Incident Screen. A new drop down was added between the "Full Description" label and the "Reply to Full Description" E-Mail button.
• - Solution/FAQ screen. A new control was added to the right of the Subscription Fulfillment button and the Featured checkbox was moved above the Resolution Classification control.

 

Contents

Contact Secondary E-Mail Addresses. 2

Event Engine Appointment E-Mails. 2

Self Service Center Activity Info Enhancements. 3

Product Mover. 3

Incident Merge. 4

New Reports. 5

Incident Chat. 6

Self Service Center Live Chat. 7

Startup Forms. 18

Self Service Center View Information. 18

Self Service Center Miscellaneous Enhancements/Fixes. 19

Tracker Miscellaneous Enhancements. 21

Bug/Issue Fixes. 22

Contact Secondary E-Mail Addresses.

• - Overview. You can now enter secondary e-mail addresses for your contacts. When the mail checker picks up an e-mail (or you drag and drop an e-mail from Outlook), it will now check secondary addresses in determining who the e-mail is from. This feature will be useful for contacts who send e-mails from different addresses (such as from a home address and a business address). Previously e-mails from a secondary address would either create a new contact or be ignored (depending on your mail checker settings).
• - Customer Entry. On the Contacts tab of the Customer Entry Screen there is a new button next to the e-mail address. When you click on the button a grid opens up where you can add, edit and delete secondary addresses.
• o To add an e-mail address, click the Add button and type the address in.
• o To edit an e-mail address, select the address and make the changes.
• o To delete an e-mail address, select the address and click Delete.
• o If you enter an e-mail address that has already been entered as a secondary address (for any contact), you will get an error message and the entry will be removed. Note that the check is only against secondary addresses - Tracker does not prevent you from entering an e-mail address that has already been entered as a primary address.
• o You can enter as many secondary addresses as necessary for a contact. There is no restriction other than the prohibition against entering duplicates.
• o The button image will be different depending on whether the contact does or does not have any secondary addresses. These differences will serve as a visual clue that a contact has one or more secondary addresses. (There is also a different image that appears momentarily while the determination is being made as to whether secondary addresses exist).
• - Quick Contact Entry/Edit. The same button as described above is available on the Quick Contact Entry and Edit screens and works the same way.
• - Mail Checker. When the mail checker picks up an e-mail it will now use the secondary addresses in addition to the primary addresses to determine who sent the e-mail. If there is a duplicate e-mail address (either duplicate primary addresses which is currently allowed or a duplicate between secondary and primary addresses), then the mail checker will randomly pick one of the contacts matching that address (although it will chose among non-archived contacts first).
• - When dragging and dropping an e-mail from Outlook to the Incident Manager, and a new incident is created, the same logic as the mail checker uses will be used to select the contact for the incident.
• - Customer and Contact Searches. If you use the Screen Designer to add e-mail address as a search parameter to either the Customer Search screen or the Contact Search screen, the search will consider the secondary addresses.
• o If the user enters a partial e-mail address, the search will match all e-mails starting with that partial string. For example, if the user puts in "joe" as the search condition, the search would return hits for any contact having an e-mail address starting with "joe" such as joe@abc.com and joe@xyz.com.
• o If the user includes a percent sign in the search condition, then that percent will be considered a wild card. So if the user enters "%joe" as the search condition, the search would return hits for any contact having "joe" anywhere in the e-mail such as bobbyjoe@abc.com and fred@joesplace.com.

 

Event Engine Appointment E-Mails.

• - Overview. You can now setup an event engine e-mail action which sends recipients appointment messages rather than standard e-mail addresses. This feature could be useful for tasks such as automating appointments based upon a date such as a Response, Follow Up or Due Date.
• - E-Mail Setup. The second tab of the e-mail setup screen is now labeled "Template/From/Appt". This tab has a new checkbox near the bottom labeled "Send as Appointment". If you check this checkbox, several other controls appear:
• o Appointment Start Date/Time. This entry is required (if you check "Send as Appointment"). It represents the start date and time of the appointment. Most likely you will choose the "From Data" option and select a date/time field from the Event Query or Secondary Query - for example, you might choose the due date from an incident.
• o Appointment Duration - Hours & Appointment Duration - Minutes. You must fill out one or both of these controls to indicate how long the appointment is. Most likely you would fill in a hard coded number of hours and or minutes (although you could add duration fields to the Incident screen through screen designer - and use "From Data" in that case).
• o Location. This entry is optional - it indicates the location of the appointment. Location is a string entry and could be the address of a customer or a hard coded location.
• o All other aspects of setting up the e-mail are the same as for a standard e-mail message such as setting up the recipients and the subject and body of the appointment.
• o The body of the appointment E-Mail does not seem to display rich HTML like a normal e-mail does (when the appointment arrives in your in box). If you use E-Mail templates with rich HTML, you may wish to review the appearance of the appointment e-mails and either use a more plain template or none at all.

 

Self Service Center Activity Info Enhancements. 

• - The Self Service Center Activity buttons that appear in numerous places throughout Tracker now contain additional information. When you view the SSC Activity for a contact or a customer, there are now three tabs of information.
• o The first tab is the SSC activity information which shows the contact or customer's activity on SSC such as logins, Incident Views, knowledgebase searches, etc. (The information on this tab has always been available with the SSC Activity buttons).
• o The second tab shows the contact's or the customer's Self Service Center subscriptions.
• o The third tab shows the contact's or the customer's subscription fulfillments. When a new knowledgebase article or notice is posted which matches a subscription a notice and/or RSS record is sent to the contact - this tab shows what notifications he/she has received.
• - Notes:
• o The subscriptions tab shows all subscriptions for the customer or the contact.
• o The subscription fulfillments tab shows fulfillments based upon the date range drop down (Last 7 days, Last 30 days, All).
• o You can launch the related screen from the subscription fulfillments tab (if you have the rights to open the related screen). So if a contact receives a notice of a new solution posting, you can click the "Launch Related Screen" to view that solution.

 

Product Mover.

• - Overview. You can now add a control to the Customer Entry Screen, Products Tab which will allow you to move a product from one customer to another. You might use this control if you track products as they move from one site to another. This is an optional add-on control.
• - Setup. To enable this control, you will need to use the screen designer to set it up. Open the Customer Entry Screen in the Screen Designer. Click on the Products tab, then:
• o Drop a TrackerUserControlHost somewhere on the products tab. If you don't have any other customizations on this tab, just below the notes is a good place.
• o Size the control to:
• § 164 - width
• § 23 - height
• o Set the following Properties:
• § AssemblyName: PhaseWare.Tracker.Forms.AddOns.dll
• § ClassName: PhaseWare.Tracker.Forms.AddOns.ProductMover
• o Click the Bind button and bind the CustomerProductID field of the CustomerProducts table.
• - Operation
• o Move. The control has a Move button. When clicked, you'll be put in a customer lookup to select the customer you are moving the product to. Select the customer.
• § Once the customer is selected, the customer product will be archived in the current customer and created in the target customer (or if that product/serial number combination already exists in the target customer, that record will be un-archived).
• § Records will be placed in the Purchase History grid for both the source and target customers indicating. The source customer's record will say "Sent To: Customer". The Target customer's record will say: "Arrived From: Customer".
• o History. Next to the "Move" button is a history drop down. When clicked, it will display the history of moves for the selected product, serial number combination.
• o Notes: This control can be used in the following scenarios:
• § You set your products up so that multiple customers use the same product. For example, if you sell "Product ABC", then those customers who have this product all use the same product record. In this case, you must also use the serial number field to distinguish the particular item that is being moved. Without the serial number, the product history won't be meaningful (as there is no way to distinguish the particular item from other customers who have the same product with no serial number).
• § You set your products up so that each product record (setup in the admin program) is unique (you might include a serial number in the product key, for example). In this case, you don't need to worry about filling out the serial number field on the customer products tab as each product would be unique.

 

Incident Merge.

• - Overview. You can now merge one incident into another. This feature is useful for the case where a customer sends in several e-mails on the same issue without the incident number in the subject line so that several incidents get created. This feature would allow you to keep all the information from these e-mails in one incident (you can also create a parent incident and make the additional incidents child incidents of the parent, but this feature lets you combine incidents without creating a parent). When you merge one incident into another, it copies the full description and all journal entries into the other incident and deletes the incident.
• - Detail.
• o There is a new "Merge Incident" button on the incident screen - it is between the "Clone" button and the "Create Solution" button. It is disabled if the user has read only access to the selected incident (or if the user's security settings do not allow the user access to this feature - see below). It is only visible on posted incidents of the following types:
• § Regular
• § Quick Incidents
• § Parent Incidents
• § Child Incidents
• o User Security. There is a new user security setting under the Incident category called "Incident Merge". If checked, the user can perform incident merges. It is unchecked by default, so if you want your non-administrative users to take advantage of this feature, you'll either need to check it for the "System Defaults" group or for the security groups of your choice.
• o When you click the merge button, it will prompt you for the incident number of the incident you want to merge the current incident into. Once you enter an incident number, Tracker will next attempt to open that incident. If the incident doesn't exist, or you don't have read/write access to that incident, the merge process will stop. Otherwise, Tracker will prompt you to confirm you want to proceed with the merge. If you proceed, the full description and journal entries will be moved to the incident you selected and the original incident will be deleted.
• o When merging, the full description of the original incident will become a journal entry on the receiving incident. If the full description of the Incident you are merging is blank, a journal will not be created for the full description. If you merge an incident with a blank full description and no journal entries, the receiving incident will not gain any new journal entries, but the original incident will be deleted.

 

• o The incident system log will track incident merges. Whenever you merge one incident into another, the receiving incident will record that merge in the system log with the original incident number.
• o Access to the Deleted Incidents.
• § If you click "Open Incident By Number" and enter the number of an incident that was merged into another, the target incident will open. In other words, if you merged Incident #100 into Incident #200 and you attempt to open Incident #100, Incident #200 will actually open. This is also true of the Open Incident by Number in Self Service Center.
• § If an e-mail is picked up by the mail checker which has as an incident number in the subject line of an incident that was merged into another, the e-mail will attach itself to the target incident. So in the example above, if a customer sent an e-mail with "Incident #100" in the subject line, the e-mail will be copied into Incident #200.
• § Similarly, if you drag and drop an e-mail onto the incident manager with a merged incident number in the subject line, the e-mail will attach to the target incident.
• § Chains of Incident Merges are not supported. For example, if you merge Incident #100 into Incident #200, then later merge Incident #200 into Incident #300, Tracker will not be able to track Incident #100 to #300. So if you click "Open Incident by Number" and enter 100, it will report that the incident does not exist (although the full description and journals will be in Incident #300).

New Reports.

• - Agent Time Reports.
• o Two new Agent Time reports are included with this release: "Time Spent by Agent by Department" and "Time Spent by Agent Detail by Department".
• o These reports are installed under the PhaseWare Administrative folder. These reports are similar to the "Time Spent By Agent" and "Time Spent by Agent Detail" reports. The difference is that the new reports show time for an agent regardless of what department the incident he/she works on is assigned to.
• o If you run the "Time Spent By Agent" report (the older existing report) for the Support Department, the result will be a listing of time for all agents who worked on incidents assigned to the support department. It will show the time for agents not assigned to the support department, but who worked on an incident assigned to the support department or where the incident was reassigned back to the support department. It will not show you the time that the agents in the support department spentworking on incidents assigned to other departments (except for where they worked on incidents that are assigned to the support department at the time the report is run).
• o If you run thenew "Time Spent By Agent By Department Report" it will list all members of the support department and the total time they have spent on incidents for the given time period regardless of where those incidents are assigned. The "Time Spent by Agent Detail by Department" shows the same data, but includes a listing of all the related journal entries.
• o The reason why the new reports are added to the PhaseWare Administrative folder is that these reports do not take into consideration a user's department restrictions. So a user would be able to see the journal detail for an incident assigned to a department he/she might otherwise be unable to see. (However, Region Restrictions are still respected). The PhaseWare Administrative Folder is set for access only by administrators (unless you have updated the folder's permissions). If you would liketo make this report available to non-administrative users, we recommend you copy the report to another folder. If department security is important to you, you may want to set other permissions (such as allowing only a managers security group access to the report).

 

Incident Chat.

• - Overview. You can now chat with other Tracker users when those other users are looking at the same incident as you are. This feature could be beneficial in the following situations:
• o If two users open a new incident at the same time, those users could coordinate who will take the incident.
• o If a user needs help on an incident that user can page another who can then chat while the two are looking at the same incident.
• - Details.
• o When more than one user is viewing an incident (and the "Others viewing this Incident" is visible at the top of the incident), the full description area of the incident screen displays two tabs - one for Full Description and one for Chat. Click on the Chat tab to send and receive chat messages.
• o If you open an incident where a chat is taking place, the chat tab will automatically be the selected tab, and you will see the chat that has taken place up to that time.
• o If have an incident open that another user also has open and that other user sends you a chat message, you will be notified as described below under Self Service Center Live Chat - New Message Alerts. Additionally, if the Chat tab was not the selected tab, it will become the selected tab.
• o Chat Tab.
• § The top portion of the chat tab displays the messages going back and forth including whom each message is from and to whom the message is directed.
• § The bottom portion of the chat tab has an area to enter a message into. Initially, this area contains the text "[Type Message Here]". When you click into this area, that text goes away.
• § At the bottom of the chat tab are several controls:
• Send To. This drop down lets you select to whom you want to direct your message. The default is "[All]" meaning that anyone who has that incident open would receive the message. The drop down contains the All selection along with all other Tracker users who are viewing the incident at that time. If you want to direct your message to specific user, you can select that user from the drop down and send your message. No other users will see that message. The names in the drop down will change as users drop in and out of the incident. If you have selected a particular user, and that user drops out of the incident before you can send your message, the "Send To" drop down will go back to "[All]".
• (Enter) = HRT Checkbox. When this checkbox is not checked, pressing the enter key when typing a message will cause the message to be sent. If this checkbox is checked, then pressing the enter key will cause a hard return in your message. With the checkbox checked, you will need to click the "Send" button to send the message. Tracker will remember your selection - so if you check or uncheck this box, the next time you use chat, the checkbox will be checked accordingly.
• Send Button. The send button is necessary if "(Enter) = HRT" is checked. It is optional if "(Enter) = HRT" is not checked as the enter key will send the message.
• o Chat Page. If a user needs help on an Incident, that user can page another. Between the "Full Description" label and the "E-Mail Reply to Full Description" button is a new drop down called "Chat Page". When you click this drop down, you will see a "User to Page" drop down of Tracker users. Select the user you wish to page and click "Send Page". That user will immediately receive a Critical Tracker Alert. The alert will say "Incident Chat Request. John Doe is requesting you open Incident #123". The user can click on the Incident button to pull open the related incident. Once that user opens the incident the two users can begin chatting. The page will be ineffective in the following situations:
• § The receiving user is not running the alerts program.
• § The receiving user has one or more other critical alerts which have not been dismissed (a new critical alert will not display until the user takes action on the other critical alerts).
• § And of course if the user is not at his/her desk.
• o When all users have closed the incident, the chat logs will be automatically cleaned up. So that if you open the same incident later, you will not see the old chat messages. But so long as one user still has the incident open, the chat logs will remain. So if the second user closes the incident, and a third one later opens it (while the first user has had the incident open the entire time), that third user can read the chat logs.
• o The "Show Others Viewing Incident" System Setting is required to be checked for the chat feature to work. If this setting is unchecked, the chat tab will never appear, and the Chat Page drop down will not be visible. The chat feature relies on knowing when other users are accessing the incident.

 

Self Service Center Live Chat.

• - Overview. You can now offer live chat to your customers through Self Service Center.
• - Chat Channels.
• o Overview. You can set up one or more "Chat Channels". For example you might have one channel for Support and another for Training. On the support channel, your contacts could ask support related questions; and on the training channel, your contacts could arrange for training sessions (or possibly receive training or ask training follow-up questions). You can assign web security to each chat channel so that different users could have access to different channels.
• o Chat Channel Manager. From the Self Service menu item in Tracker, select "Chat Channel Manager".
• § From this screen you can setup channels as well as monitor the activity on each of the channels. The top part of the Chat Channel Manager screen allows you to search for chat channels. It is likely that you will only have a small handful of channels, but you can search by a number of criteria:
• Description
• Create Date (by single date or date range).
• Who created the channel.
• By web security template.
• By application user security group.
• View as Contact. (You can use this criteria to validate your web security settings - by seeing what channels as specific contact would be able to see).
• View as Anonymous. (Also to validate web security settings).
• Include Archived.
• Archived Only.
• § When you open the Chat Channel Manager, it automatically displays all active (non-archived) chat channels.
• § From the grid displaying the chat channels, you can perform the following actions:
• Add a new channel.
• Edit the selected channels.
• Apply web security to the selected channels.
• Apply application user security to the selected channels.
• Archive the selected channels.
• Stop/Disallow or Allow Monitoring of the selected channels (to be discussed later).
• Monitor the selected channels.
• § Channel Display. Channels are displayed with one of the following colors:
• Red: Channel does not allow monitoring.
• White: Channel allows monitoring, but is not being monitored.
• Green: Channel is being monitored.
• o Chat Channel Setup. When creating a new channel or editing an existing channel, the following are options for setup:
• § Description. This is a description of the channel. We recommend that it be something short like "Support" or "Sales". This name will be displayed on Self Service Center in a relatively small amount of space.
• § Add Sessions to Knowledgebase. If checked, the chat sessions for this channel will become part of the knowledgebase available to Tracker users (but not available to Self Service Center users). By adding sessions to the knowledgebase, Tracker users will be able to research issues resolved through live chat.
• § Required E-Mail for Anonymous. This checkbox is only applicable if you allow anonymous access to your SSC, and you allow anonymous users access to the channel (through web item security). When an anonymous user requests a live chat session, he/she will be required to enter a name. With this option checked, that user would also have to enter an e-mail address. You may want to have the e-mail if you intend to send a post session follow-up e-mail (through an event engine event).
• § Automatically Apply Hours of Operation. With this option checked Tracker will automatically control when the channel can be "On Air" (available for SSC users to request chat sessions). For example, you might want to make live chat available from 8:00 AM to 5:00 PM. This option would prevent users from monitoring the channel outside of these hours. After hours, the "Live Chat" link on SSC would show that it is not available (or off air). Notes:
• You can still manually take a channel "Off Air" if you check this option (and put a channel back "On Air" manually as well).
• If you check this option, then the "Hours of Operation" selection become applicable (discussed below).
• § Allow Uploads from SSC. With this option checked, your contacts will be able to send files to your agents through live chat.
• § Require Resolution Classification. If checked, the agent participating in the chat session will be required to enter a resolution classification before ending the chat session. If the contact ends the chat session, then the agent will need to enter the resolution classification before exiting out of the chat session. You may want to track resolution classifications (as can be done for incidents) so you can measure what kinds of issues are being handled through live chat.
• § Hours of Operation. This selection is only applicable if "Automatically Apply Hours of Operation" is checked. If not modified, the system default days/hours will be used (under System Settings, Billing-SLA, Working Days). In this case "System Default" will display. You can also override the system default working days/hours by clicking the first button next to the Hours of Operation display. This will take you to a display where you can indicate the working hours for each day of the week as well as holidays. If you enter days/hours, but later want to go back to the system default days/hours, you can clear what you've entered by clicking the second button next to the Hours of Operation display. Note that you must enter the hours in the same time zone as the time zone of the server (so if you are in the Eastern time zone, and the Tracker server is in the Central time zone and you want your hours to be 8:00 AM to 5:00 PM you would actually enter 7:00 AM to 4:00 PM).
• § Item Security. This control is the standard web items security control (found on other Self Service Center items such as Solutions/FAQs, Downloads, etc). By setting item security you can control who can see the channel. Notes:
• If you do not allow anonymous access to SSC, then you cannot allow anonymous access to a chat channel.
• If a user does not have access to the chat channel, that user will simply not see the channel on SSC.
• § Application User Security. You can limit the chat channels that your users have access to through application user security. If you add no security groups, then any user (who has access to chat) will have access to this channel. By adding one or more security groups you are restricting who can see the channel to members of those security groups.
• § Session Time Out. This setting controls how long a chat session can stay open without any activity (activity is a message from either the agent or the contact). The value is in minutes - the default is 30 minutes. If you envision long chat sessions then you may want to increase this value. Anytime a message is sent by either party, the timeout countdown starts over. Note that by default Self Service Center itself is set for no timeout (once logged in a contact can stay logged in for as long as they keep the browser open). But if you change this setting so that there is an SSC timeout, the chat session timeout should be less than the SSC timeout.
• § Welcome Message. You can optionally create a welcome message that is displayed after the contact requests a chat session and enters basic information (such as short description of issue and name/email if anonymous). The welcome message is in HTML format.
• § Suggest Knowledgebase Articles. Check this option if you would like to present suggested knowledgebase articles that the contact can look at while waiting for an agent to join the chat session. The knowledgebase search will be done based on the short problem description the contact enters when requesting the chat session. If you check this option, you must fill out the Knowledgebase Search Options control which appears below it:
• # Articles. This indicates the maximum number of articles which will be suggested to the contact. The default is five.
• Article Types to Search. There are checkboxes for each article type to search. They are all checked by default:
• o Search Solutions
• o Search Downloads
• o Search FAQs
• o Search Forums
• - Monitoring Channels.
• o On Air. In order for a channel to be live or "On Air", two conditions must be met:
• § The channel must allow monitoring. If you have setup the channel to automatically apply hours of operation, then the time must be within those hours. You can also manually disallow monitoring on a channel in the Chat Channel Manager by selecting the channel, then selecting the "Stop Monitoring" button (and if the channel does not automatically apply hours of operation entering a date/time when monitoring can resume). If the channel already disallows monitoring, this button will not be enabled. If a channel does not allow monitoring, it will appear in a red color in the Chat Channel Manager.
• Note that even if you have setup the channel to automatically apply hours of operation, you can manually override and disallow monitoring for a period of time. Select the channel from the Chat Channel Manager and select "Stop Monitoring". If you enter a date/time to resume, then that date/time will be chosen for the time that monitoring will be allowed. If you leave the "Allow Monitoring to Resume" blank, then it will calculate the beginning of the next working day as the time when monitoring can resume. For example, if the office is closing early one day, you could click "Stop Monitoring" to take the channel "Off Air". If you leave the "Allow Monitoring to Resume" blank, then the start time on the next business day will be calculated as the date/time that monitoring can resume.
• § Tracker users must be monitoring the channel (see below). A channel may allow monitoring, but if there are no users actually monitoring the channel, then it will appear "Off Air".
• o Monitoring a Channel. There are two entry points for monitoring a chat channel. The first is from the Chat Channel Manager. Click on the channel you would like to monitor and click "Monitor". The second is from the main menu/main toolbar. If there is only one channel, then there will be a single button on the tool bar (next to the Forum Topic Manager button) as well as a single menu choice under "Self Service". If there are multiple channels that the user has access to monitor, then the button on the tool bar will be a drop down button under which the user can select the desired channel. Similarly, the menu choice under "Self Service" will lead to a listing of the channels available to monitor.
• o Chat Channel Monitor Screen.
• § On Air/Off Air. In the upper left of the screen is a control which indicates whether the channel is On Air or Off Air. The control will be a green color if the channel is being monitored and a red color if the channel is not being monitored.
• § I Am Monitoring/I Am Not Monitoring/Waiting to Monitor. The next control indicates whether you (the user opening the screen) is monitoring the channel or not. There are three conditions:
• I Am Monitoring. The channel allows monitoring, is on air and you are monitoring it.
• I Am Not Monitoring. Next to this status control is a button which allows you to stop monitoring a channel. If the channel allows monitoring and you open the monitoring screen, by default you will be monitoring the channel. But if you click "Stop Monitoring", you will be taken out of the list of Tracker users monitoring the channel. If you were the only person monitoring the channel, then the channel will go "Off Air". If there are other users monitoring the channel, then the channel will stay on air, but you will not be one of the users listed in the "Agents Monitoring Channel" list. You may want to remove your name if you are a manager and you want to supervise the channel (from the monitoring screen you can see who is monitoring the channel, active chat sessions and whether anyone is responding to them, etc). Once you stop monitoring a channel, Tracker will remember your preference for that channel. The next time you open the monitoring screen for that channel, you will not automatically monitor the channel (the Stop Monitoring button becomes a Start Monitoring button).
• Waiting to Monitor. If the channel is off air because it is outside of the hours (or someone has manually disallowed monitoring), then this control will say "Waiting to Monitor". When the channel becomes available for monitoring then you will be monitoring it (for example, if monitoring hours are 8:00 AM to 5:00 PM and you open the monitoring screen at 7:58 AM, it will say "Waiting to Monitor", then at 8:00 AM, the channel will automatically go on air with you monitoring). The button next to the control will say "Stop Waiting". If you click this, then the control will say "I Am Not Monitoring". Clicking the "Stop Waiting" button is the same as clicking the "Stop Monitoring" button when the channel is on air. Tracker will remember your selection. If you open the monitoring screen when the channel can be monitored, you will not be monitoring. And if you open the screen when the channel cannot be monitored, then you will not be waiting to monitor.
• § Going Off Air. If the channel goes off air because it is the end of the day (or someone manually takes the channel off air), you can still answer the chat requests that are in the queue - but no new requests will be allowed in through SSC. So if you go off air at 5:00 PM and you have three open chat sessions, you can continue to work those three sessions (whether they have been responded to or not). The concept is similar to a store closing where the customers in the store can complete their purchases but no new customers are let in.
• § Agents Monitoring Channel. This grid on the upper right hand side of the screen shows the agents monitoring the channel.
• § Active Chat Sessions Grid. The grid at the bottom of the screen shows the active chat sessions. The grid includes many pieces of information about the session such as who requested the session and the description of the issue. One of the key fields is "Agents in Chat". This field indicates whether an agent or agents are currently in the chat session. So your agents monitoring the queue can grab the next chat session which has no "Agents in Chat" listed. This field is kept up to date continuously so when an agent opens a chat session, this field is immediately updated with that information.
• - Live Chat - Chat Session Screen. From the Chat Channel Monitoring screen, you can select an individual live chat session and open it (by clicking the Open button or double clicking the grid). The next screen that opens is the Chat Session screen which lets you participate in the chat.
• o Others viewing this Chat. If another agent or agents have this same session open, you will see their names listed at the top of the screen.
• o Description. This is the description of the issue that the contact entered when requesting the chat session. You can change the description if you'd like to better describe the issue for historical purposes (such as to assist in more accurate knowledgebase searching).
• o Knowledgebase Search Button. Next to the description is a button which launches a knowledgebase search based upon the short description of the chat session. The Knowledgebase search screen will conduct the search based upon your latest preferences for what article types to search on (in other words, the knowledgebase search screen remembers whether you have checked "Search Solutions", "Search FAQs" etc from the last search you did). You may want to copy the links of related articles and send them to the contact you are assisting.
• o Channel. This indicates the channel that the request came in under. If you believe the request would be better served by another channel, you can change the channel and either click "Save" or exit the session. (You would hit the save button in the scenario where you want to wait for a user monitoring the other channel to join the session before you leave).
• o Chat Requested By. This control shows information on the contact who requested the chat. If the chat was requested by a logged in user you will have information screens and tools normally available (such as on the incident screen and forum topic screen):
• § SSC Activity Info
• § Customer Contact Info
• § Edit Contact, Contact Incident History, Contact Chat History
• o Resolution. This is the standard resolution classification drop down. If the channel requires a resolution classification, the user will need to fill one out if the chat session ends while he/she has the session open.
• o Chat Page. If the user handling the chat session needs the help of another user, that user can page the other user. When you click the "Chat Page" drop down, you will see a "User to Page" drop down of other Tracker users. Select the user you wish to page and click "Send Page". That user will immediately receive a Critical Tracker Alert. The alert will say "Self Service Center Chat Request. John Doe is requesting you open Chat #123 and join the Chat." The user can click on the Chat button to pull open the related chat session. The page will be ineffective in the following situations:
• § The receiving user is not running the alerts program.
• § The receiving user has one or more other critical alerts which have not been dismissed (a new critical alert will not display until the user takes action on the other critical alerts).
• § And of course if the user is not at his/her desk.
• o Message Templates. Message Templates are designed for quickly sending standard messages to contacts (the setup of message templates is discussed below). You can select a message template from the Message Templates drop down. The template can be either setup to send immediately or to fill the "Send Message" area where you can edit the message before sending. Message templates might include standard instructions or resolutions for common issues.
• o Send Message Area. The HTML control is used for the area where you type your message. You can use HTML formatting if desired.
• § (Enter) = HRT Checkbox. When this checkbox is not checked, pressing the enter key when typing a message will cause the message to be sent. If this checkbox is checked, then pressing the enter key will cause a hard return in your message. With the checkbox checked, you will need to click the "Send" button to send the message. Tracker will remember your selection - so if you check or uncheck this box, the next time you use chat, the checkbox will be checked accordingly.
• § Send Button. The send button is necessary if "(Enter) = HRT" is checked. It is optional if "(Enter) = HRT" is not checked as the enter key will send the message.
• § File Attachments. You can send files to the contact you are chatting with. You can send one file per message. You can click the "Load File" button or you can drag and drop a file on the bottom area of the send message area (where the send button is). If you have not entered any message text when you load the file, the message area will say "See Attached File" (you must have message text in order to send a message). If you have entered message text before loading the file, then that text will be left as is. Once you have loaded the file and are satisfied with the message text, you can click "Send" to send the message and the file. After you have loaded a file, three additional buttons show up next to the "Load" button:
• Save attachment to file. You can use this if for some reason you want to save a copy of the file to another location.
• Open Attachment - you might want to open the file if you want to validate you have the correct file loaded.
• Clear Attachment (if you decide you don't really want to send a file).
• § Send To. If other agents have joined the chat session a "Send To" drop down will appear just above the "(Enter) = HRT" checkbox. The drop down has two selections: "All" and "Internal". You might want to send a message to the agent that the contact cannot see. For example if two agents open a new chat request at the same time, they might want to coordinate who will take the request. If there are no other agents in the chat session, you will not see this selection and all messages you send will be viewable by the contact.
• o System Log. Just above the area where you type the message text is a tab for the System Log. The system log automatically records the following activities (showing who initiated the activity, the date/time and notes):
• § Chat Requested. There will only be one of these entries showing who requested the chat session.
• § Agent Joined/Left Session. The system log will record when agents join and leave active chat sessions. Once the chat session ends, this information is no longer captured.
• § Chat Pages. The system log records who was paged.
• § Channel Changed. The system log records when the session is moved to another chat channel. Channel changes are recorded even on closed sessions.
• § Session Ended. This system log shows who ended/closed the session and the close status (see below).
• o Chat Log. The chat log shows all of the messages going back and forth during the chat session. As new messages come in, they will appear here. Notes:
• § If an agent joins a chat session after it has already had activity, the chat log will show all messages prior to his/her joining the session (including the date/time the messages were sent). Messages received while the chat session is open do not include date/time.
• § Names of the senders are underlined. Contacts names are colored blue.
• § If a chat message includes a file attachment, the message will include the following information just below the name of the sender:

***** File Attachment: FileName.txt *****

• § If the chat message was directed to only internal users (in the case that more than one agent had the same chat session open and were sending each other messages), the message will include the following line just below the name of the sender:

***** Internal Message *****

• o Attachment Log. If any message contains a file attachment (whether sent by the contact or by the agent), an attachment log will appear at the bottom of the chat log. The attachment log will show all file attachments. From this log you can open or save any of the attached files.
• o New Incident. If while working with a contact in a chat session, you determine that you need to create an incident for the issue, simply click the "New Incident" button at the top of the Chat Session screen. When you do a new incident will be created in an unposted state. Notes:
• § The Customer and Contact will be filled in if the chat was requested by a logged in contact.
• § The source of the incident will be "Chat". We have added a new source type with this release and have seeded the communication sources lookup table with a chat entry.
• § The short description will be the description of the chat session.
• § The department and assigned agent will be filled according to the same rules that apply when you normally create a new incident (in most cases this means looking at your personal settings for default new incident department and assigned agent).
• § Severity, Priority and Status will be the system defaults for these fields.
• § The full description will say "Created from Chat Session #100". If the chat was requested by an anonymous user, the full description will include the name given, the IP Address and E-Mail (if provided).
• § The journal will be filled with the chat log (including attachments) with the original date/times of the messages. Journal entries originated by messages created by anonymous users will show as being created by "System".
• § A response journal entry will be created with the date/time that the incident was created to fulfill any SLA response requirements.
• o New Message Alerts.
• § If a new message comes in while Tracker is the active application and while the chat session is the active window within Tracker, there will be no alert. There will be an alert in the following situations:
• Tracker is the active application, but the chat session is not the active window within Tracker.
• Tracker is not the active application (even if the chat session is the active window within Tracker).
• § The alert will consist of the following:
• A blinking icon will appear in the system tray. If you double click the icon, Tracker and the chat session window which caused the alert will become active.
• A "Notify" sound. This sound will occur when the message comes in and every 15 seconds thereafter until you make Tracker and that chat session window the active window.
• The caption for the Chat window will start with "** New Chat Message **". If you have many windows open in Tracker and you click on the "Window" menu item, you'll be able to easily find the chat session which caused the alert.
• § If you have multiple chat sessions open and more than one issue an alert, the alert icon in the system tray will remain until you have made each of those chat session windows the active window within Tracker (ie until you have visited each of those chat sessions).
• o End Session.
• § A session can end in one of three ways:
• The contact ends the session through the Self Service Center interface.
• The agent ends the session by clicking the "End Session" button in the Chat Session screen.
• The session times out (no messages within the timeout setting for the chat channel).
• § When the session ends/closes, there are six possible "Close Status" conditions:
• Contact Closed (after chatting with an agent)
• Agent Closed (after chatting with a contact)
• No Agent Response. No agent joined the chat session and responded to the chat request. This can occur on a session time out or if the contact ends the session after not getting a response from an agent.
• No Contact Response. An agent joined the chat session, but the contact did not respond (possibly because the contact left after requesting the chat session). This can occur on a session timeout or if the agent ends the session.
• Session Timeout. Back and forth has occurred between the agent and the contact, but the session times out after inactivity.
• Contact Closed - Knowledgebase Article Solved Issue. If the contact clicks on a link sent to him/her in the chat session (either through the automatically suggested knowledgebase articles or an article sent to the contact by the agent doing the chat) and the contact clicks the "Solved Issue" link for that article, he/she will be asked if the chat session should be closed. If the contact responds "Yes", then this condition will be set as the Close Status for the chat session.
• - Message Template Setup. The Chat Message Templates screen allows you to add, edit and remove chat message templates. Open the screen by clicking on "Self Service" and "Chat Message Templates" in Tracker.
• o The Chat Message Template screen will show all chat message templates. From here you can edit selected templates, delete selected templates and add new templates. You can also apply a channel filter if you have multiple channels (so you can see what message templates would be available for particular channels).
• o Chat Message Template Setup. When you add or edit a message template a new screen will open with the following fields/options:
• § Description. This description is what agents will see when selecting from message templates. It must be unique across all message templates.
• § Send When Selected. If checked then when the agent selects this template, the message will be immediately sent. If not checked then the message template will be copied into the message area where the agent can edit the message before sending.
• § Channel Restrictions. If no restrictions are added then the message template will be available to all channels. If restrictions are added then only those channels indicated will be able to see the template. The restriction is based on the template, and not on the security of the user. Even an administrator would not be able to see a template due to channel restrictions.
• § Message Text. This is the message itself. The HTML editor is used for the message text so you can apply formatting as desired.
• o If you no longer want a particular template, then simply delete it. There is not an archive for message templates.
• - Chat history.
• o Through the Chat History screen you can view historical chat sessions. From the main menu in Tracker select "Self Service" and "Chat History". The Chat History screen is similar to other manager screens where you add search criteria and do searches. Search Options:
• § Channel
• § Received Date (date range).
• § Short description
• § Customer
• § Contact
• § Requestor's Name. If you're looking for an anonymous user by name, then you must use this search condition. But it does look across both the names of logged in users as well as the names of anonymous users (though if you're looking for a specific logged in contact, the contact search is better). It is a partial match search. If you enter "Bob" it will find "Joe Bob Smith" as well as "Bob Smith".
• § Responding Agent. This is the name of the first agent to respond to the chat session (other agents may have participated, but this would be the first one).
• § Including Words. This selection works like the incident text search. It searches short descriptions and chat messages for the words entered (however, there must be at least one message in order for the routine to search short descriptions).
• § All, Open, Closed. The default is closed since the purpose of this screen is to review historical chats, but you can search across open chats as well.
• § Anonymous. If checked, then only those chat sessions requested by anonymous users will be found.
• § No Responses. If checked, then only those chat sessions that an agent failed to respond to will be found.
• § Response Minutes. You can search for chat sessions that were responded to in the number of minutes given. You must enter a number higher than 0 in order for the condition to be considered. If you enter 5 in the "Resp. Minutes" control and leave "Minutes (thru)" at zero, then the search will bring back only those chat sessions that were responded to in five minutes. If you put 10 in the "Minutes (thru)" then the search will bring back chat sessions that were responded to in between five and ten minutes (inclusive).
• § Close Reason. This drop down lets you chose from the six different Chat Session Ended/Closed situations described above.
• § Resolution. Searches for matching resolution classifications. You can put in a parent node and it will find all matching child nodes as well.
• o Chat Session Screen. When you open a closed chat session, the same chat session screen used for live chats is used to display the closed chat sessions with these differences:
• § The message send area is not visible. The system log displays where the message send area is normally.
• § The Chat Page control is not visible.
• § The Message Templates control is not visible.
• § A control detailing when the closing information is displayed.
• § The only items that a user can edit (if that user has the rights to edit a closed chat session) are:
• Description
• Channel
• Resolution Classification
• o Chat History selections have been added throughout the application.
• § In most places where you see an Incident History selection you will now see a Chat History selection. Examples:
• On the customer entry screen at the bottom button bar, there is an Incident history button - now there is also a Chat history button in the same area.
• On the incident screen next to both the customer and the contact controls is a drop down which include Incident history - both these drop downs now include a Chat history button.
• § When you view the chat history from one of these buttons, the chat history screen will display without the search conditions showing. However, if you want to refine the search conditions, click the "Show Search" button.
• - User Security Settings. The following new user security settings have been added (in the Admin program under "Settings", "User Security Settings" and the "Self Service Center" node:
• o Chat Channel Manager Access. The options on this setting are Full, Read Only and No Access. With full access a user can add, edit or remove chat channels. With read only access a user can view chat channels and their settings. With no access the user cannot access this screen. The default is "No Access".
• o Chat Message Template Setup. If checked the user can setup Chat Message Templates. If the user has channel restrictions he/she will be constrained to seeing only those templates that have no restrictions or those templates which have restrictions for the channels he/she is authorized. The default is unchecked.
• o Chat Reassign Any Channel. If a user has channel restrictions and this setting is checked, that user can reassign to any channel. Otherwise the user would only be able to reassign to channels he/she is authorized. The default is unchecked.
• o Chat Session Unauthorized Access. The options are Full, ReadOnly and None. When viewing chat history, the user with Full and ReadOnly permissions would be able to see chat sessions that fall outside of their channel restrictions. With full access the user would be able to pull open a chat session (that is outside his/her channel restrictions) and be able to edit that session. In the Chat History screen the channel drop down would include all channels if the setting for the user is Full or ReadOnly. This option is similar to the "Unauthorized Incident Access" under the Incident node. The default is "None".
• o Chat Sessions Edit Closed. If checked, the user can edit a closed chat session. The user can change the short description, the channel and the resolution classification. The default is unchecked.
• o Chat View Entire History. If checked, the user can view all chat sessions for a given customer or contact even if some chat sessions fall outside his/her channel restrictions. This right is granted when selecting "Chat History" from a customer or contact control or if in the Chat History screen the search conditions include a customer and/or a contact. The default is unchecked.
• - System Setting - Default Chat Channel Security. A new system setting has been added to the SSC node of system settings - "Default Chat Channel Security". This setting is like the other default security settings. If you don't modify this setting then the default web security setting for a chat channel is "All Logged In". You can change this or you can override individually at each chat channel as desired.
• - New Event. A new event type has been added to the Event Engine called "Chat Session Close". This event fires when a chat session ends.
• o Examples of how you could use this event:
• § A follow-up e-mail to the contact.
• § An alert to a manager if a session ends with no agent response
• o If you serve anonymous users and you want to send follow up e-mails to them, you need to setup your E-Mail action as follows: in the "Single Hard Coded" selection on the first tab of the E-Mail action setup screen select "From Data" and EventQuery.CreatedByEMail. This will be the e-mail whether it is an anonymous user or a logged in user. You may also want to put a constraint of "CreatedByEmail is not null" on the event to prevent event engine errors when the chat requestor does not have an e-mail. If you serve only logged-in users, then you should use "EventQuery.CreatedByContact" in the "Contact" control.
• o The Alert Log action now has a new optional alert tag for Chat Session ID (similar to the Incident ID alert tag). If the alert contains the Chat ID, then the alerted user can click on a "Chat" button on the alert to open up the related chat session. If you are alerting a user about a chat session, then on the Chat Session ID alert tag, select "From Data" and "EventQuery.ChatID".
• - Incident Deflection Reports/Dashboards Updated. The "Return on Investment" report and the "Incident Deflections" dashboard have been updated so that if a contact requests a chat session, but would otherwise qualify as an incident deflection for the day, then that contact would no longer count as an incident deflection (as your support personnel would have to work on the support request).
• - Self Service Center Activity. "Requested Chat Session" as been added as new Self Service Center activity type. When viewing a contact's or a customer's SSC activity (from one of the SSC Activity Info buttons), you can open the related chat session when selecting a "Requested Chat Session" item.
• - Knowledgebase Search. A "Search Chat" checkbox has been added to the Knowledgebase Search Screen. Also, on the "Related Solutions" tab on the Incident Screen, "Search Chat" has been added to the "Search Tables" under "Search Options". Notes:
• o When checking or unchecking "Add Sessions to Knowledgebase" in the Chat Channel setup, the option will only take place for chat sessions created after changing the setting. In other words, if you start out the channel with the option checked, sessions will be added to the added to the knowledgebase until you uncheck this option later. But those original sessions added to the knowledgebase will stay there - only those sessions entered after the change will not be added to the knowledgebase.
• o On the Knowledgebase Search screen, the "Copy Links" button will be disabled when you are focused on a search result that is from a chat session. You cannot send links of closed chat sessions to contacts.
• o Chat is not an option for Self Service Center knowledgebase searches.
• - Licensing. PhaseWare is licensing the ability to participate in a live chat session. Each license authorizes a user to participate in live chat sessions. The license is not tied to a particular user or a user type (concurrent or named). If you have five chat licenses, then any five of your users (who you have authorized to monitor chat channels via security) can participate in live chat sessions simultaneously. Each of those five users can open as many live chat sessions as they wish, but the sixth user who attempts to open a live chat session will be denied. When any of those five users close out all live chat sessions they have open, then the chat license will be freed up for that sixth user. There are no license restrictions for users to view chat history or to open closed chat sessions. Contact PhaseWare to purchase chat licenses.
• - Self Service Center Notes.
• o A menu of chat channels that the user has access to can be displayed at the top of the navigation menu and/or in the top title bar of SSC. The placement of the menu is configurable from the Application.xml customization file.
• o Chat channels will appear as offline or online, depending on whether they are being monitored. The status (offline vs. online) is updated every minute behind the scenes. So if a channel comes on line after a user starts SSC, the menu item will change to online within one minute.
• o When a user clicks a chat channel that is online, an SSC chat window will appear that will prompt them to enter a reason for the chat. If the user is not logged in (if they are anonymous) then they will also be prompted for a username and an email address. The username is always required when anonymous, and the email address can be configured to be required from the Chat Channel Setup in Tracker.
• o Once the user enters the required information and hits Start Chat, a new chat session will be started and the agents monitoring the chat channel will be notified of the new session.
• o The user will first be displayed the welcome message defined for the chat channel and will also be displayed a list of knowledge base articles related to their reason for chat if the Suggest Knowledgebase Articles option is turned on for the channel.
• o The user can then send text messages to the agent they are chatting with and view the entire chat conversation in a scrolling window.
• o Along with text messages, the user can also send files to the agent if allowed in the Chat Channel setup.
• o The user can receive files and also receive HTML messages from the agent. Note that there are some limitations as to the HTML that can be sent by the agent. Certain HTML, such as the <form> tag, are not supported. If the agent attempts to send HTML that is not supported, a System Notification message will automatically be added to the chat session notifying the agent and the user that the message could not be received.
• o The user can receive links to SSC pages from the agent that when clicked will be opened in the main SSC window, behind the SSC chat window. All other links that the agent sends will automatically be opened in a new browser window.
• o The user can minimize and move the chat window around the SSC screen.
• o A user can only have one chat session (one chat window) open at a time.
• o If an agent closes the chat session or if the chat session times out, the user will be notified that the chat session has been closed and will not be able to send any new messages in the chat window.
• o If a chat session is opened when a user logs out of SSC, the chat session will be automatically closed and the agent will be notified.
• o If a user starts a chat session and then closes SSC with the chat window still open, or even reboots their machine with SSC and the chat window still open, the chat window will be automatically restored when the user returns to SSC. Similarly, if a user starts a chat session when not logged in yet (as an anonymous user), after logging in, the chat window will be automatically restored after the screen refresh that occurs due to logging in. Note that if a user starts a chat session after logging in to SSC, the chat window will only be restored when they login again as the same user on the same machine.
• o If a user opens a knowledge base article from a link they received from an agent in a chat session and they click Issue Solved on the article, then they will be prompted with the option to automatically close the chat window.
• o The following lists the chat settings that are configurable from Application.xml. More details will be provided in the 4.0 SSC Customization Guide.
• § KBSearchMessage - the message that appears to the user when there are related knowledge base articles to show them (when the chat session starts up).
• § ShowChatMenuInNavBar - whether to show the chat menu items in the left navigation menu.
• § ShowChatMenuInTitleBar - whether to show the chat menu items in the top SSC title bar.
• § OnAirDescription - the description for chat menu items that are currently being monitored.
• § OnAirLargeIcon - the icon to use for a channel that is being monitored when showing the chat menu items in the title bar.
• § OnAirSmallIcon - the icon to use for a channel that is being monitored when showing the chat menu items in the navigation menu.
• § OffAirDescription - the description for chat menu items that are currently not being monitored.
• § OffAirLargeIcon - the icon to use for a channel that is not being monitored when showing the chat menu items in the title bar.
• § OffAirSmallIcon - the icon to use for a channel that is not being monitored when showing the chat menu items in the navigation menu.
• o Using the home.xml customization file, the menu of chat channels can also be displayed on the SSC home page if desired.

 

Startup Forms.

• - Overview. Each user can now specify what forms Tracker should open when starting the application.
• - Notes:
• o To manage what forms open on Startup, click Settings, Startup Forms (In Tracker).
• o To add a new startup form, click "Add". A dialog will appear that will allow you to select any one of 25 forms (such as Incident Manager, Customer Explorer, Chat Channel Monitor, etc).
• o Some forms have additional selections:
• § Incident Manager. You can optionally select a favorite search. If you do not select a favorite search, then the default search will be used.
• § Customer Explorer. You can optionally select a favorite search. If you do not select a favorite search, then the form will open with no search conducted.
• § Forum Topic Manager. You can optionally select a favorite search. If you do not select a favorite search, then the default search will be used.
• § Dashboard. You can optionally select a specific Dashboard. If you do not, then the last viewed Dashboard will be brought up when Tracker opens the Dashboard form.
• § Chat Channel Monitor. You must select which channel you want to monitor.
• § Add-In Screen. If you have additional screens added to Tracker through the Add-In Screen Manager, then you can select one of these forms to open on startup. You must select an Add-In Screen.
• o Security.
• § If a user is not authorized to open a particular screen, then that screen will not open on startup.
• § If a user selects the Chat Channel Monitor screen and selects a channel that he/she later loses authorization to, then that chat monitor screen will not open on startup.
• § If a user selects Add-In screen, then later loses authorization for that screen, then that screen will not open on startup. If that Add-In screen is removed through the admin program, that form will automatically be removed from the startup forms.
• § If a user selects a form with a favorite search then deletes that favorite, that form will automatically be removed from the startup forms.
• § If a user selects a particular dashboard that is later deleted, that form will automatically be removed from the startup forms.
• o You can establish the order that the selected forms startup by using the "Move Up" and "Move Down" buttons on the Startup Forms setup screen.
• o Some forms allow only one instance in Tracker. For example, you can only open one Report Launcher screen. If you add such as screen to the startup forms multiple times, that screen will only open one time. Other forms, such as the Incident Manager, allow for multiple openings. So if you add multiple Incident Manager forms to the Startup Forms setup, then they will all open on Tracker startup.
• o If you add no forms to the Startup Forms setup screen, then the Incident Manager will open on Tracker startup and will open the default search.
• o No Forms on Startup.
• § There is a special selection in the list of available forms called "No Forms on Startup". If this item is selected and is the first or only item in the list of startup forms, then no forms will open on startup of Tracker. If there are multiple forms in the list of startup forms and the "No Forms on Startup" is not the first item, then all forms above this item will open, but the forms below it will not.
• § You can put -NF as a command line parameter on the Tracker shortcut to suppress any forms from opening on startup. This option is not available for Click-Once deployments.

 

Self Service Center View Information.

• - Notice Views. Self Service Center now records in the activity log Notice views (when a Self Service Center users looks at a notice). The activity record will show the short description of the notice that was viewed.
• o If the user drills down to the Notices home page, the default for that page now shows just the notice short descriptions (previously the default was to show the entire notice). You can change this default by modifying the NoticeList.xml configuration file (see the SSC Customizations Guide for details). However, if you change the layout of the Notices home page so that the entire notice displays, the activity log will not record a view for each notice - the activity is only recorded when the user drills down to an individual notice or hovers over the notice header on the SSC home page and the notice pop-up appears.
• - Self Service Center view information is now available on a number of screens (such as the Solution screen) so that you can quickly see how many times users have viewed the item. You can also drill down to see a list of the individual views.
• o Information Displayed.
• § The control shows the total number of views as well as the unique number of views. If five different people view the item five times each, the total views would be 25 and the unique views would be 5. If the view is from an anonymous user, the user's IP address is used to determine unique views. So if several anonymous users from the same IP address view an item, SSC would treat them all as the same user to determine the unique view count.
• § Drill Down. When you drill down on this control, there are two tabs. The "All Views" tab shows all views of the item and displays the contact's name, the customer name and the date/time of the view (for anonymous users it shows the IP in the "Viewed By" column and blank for the customer name). The "Unique Views" tab shows each individual contact who has viewed the item along with the first time they viewed it, the latest view and the number of views. From the drill down you can open a selected contact's info screen (not available for anonymous viewers).
• o Screens. The following screens now show SSC View Information:
• § Forum Topic.
• § Form Posts (when you click on an individual post in the Forum Topic Screen). The Forum Posts screen shows you views that have occurred after the post was made. So if you have a forum topic with five posts, many of the views may have occurred when the topic was first created. If you pull up the last post, the number of views would be less than the number of views for the first post. Also, instead of the label on the control being "SSC Views" it displays "Possible Views" because the activity knows that the view occurred after the post was made but not whether the post was actually viewed by the contact.
• § Published Reports. Note that prior to 4.0 the activity log did not store published report views in a way that statistics could be kept - so the control will only display the report views made after the upgrade to 4.0.
• § Solutions & FAQs.
• § Notices. The Notice view activity is new to 4.0 so the control will only show notice views made after the upgrade to 4.0.
• § Incidents. You have the option of placing this statistics control on the incident screen through the screen designer (we did not place it there for 4.0 as we did the other screens listed). If you want to see the SSC views for an incident, follow these steps:
• Open the Screen Designer in the Admin program and design the Incident Screen.
• Place a TrackerUserControlHost at the location of your choosing on the incident screen. Under the size property, you should set the width to no less than 150 and the height to 20.
• Set the following two properties:
• o AssemblyName: PhaseWare.CustomerWebAdmin.Forms.dll
• o ClassName: PhaseWare.CustomerWebAdmin.Forms.ItemViewCounts

 

Self Service Center Miscellaneous Enhancements/Fixes.

• - When Notices are viewed from SSC, the "Notice View" activity is now recorded in the WebContactLog table.
• o Related to this, the Notices page no longer shows the details of each notice by default. This can be changed back to show the details by default using the NoticeList.xml customization file. Refer to the SSC Customization Guide for details on changing this setting. Please note that if this setting is changed so that the details are shown by default, the "Notice View" activity will not be recorded for every notice when the Notices page appears, even though the user is viewing the details of each notice.
• o Also to note, when a user hovers over a notice to view the notice details on the Home page, the "Notice View" activity will only be recorded once per notice as long as the page is loaded, even if the user hovers over the same notice multiple times.
• - When a user views a report from SSC, the PublishReportID for the report is now stored in the "Report View" entry added to the WebContactLog table.
• - Tracker 4.0 introduces support for multiple email addresses per contact. SSC supports these multiple email addresses in the following ways:
• o Users can now login to SSC using a secondary email address.
• o A user's secondary email address can be used in the URL for accessing SSC to perform automatic UserID authentication.
• o When requesting password from SSC, the user can input a secondary email address. Please note that their password will always be emailed to their primary email address though.
• o When a user attempts to register, secondary email addresses will be checked when determining whether the user already exists.
• - Incident Merge Support: on the My Incidents screen, if a user enters the incident number of an incident that was merged into another incident from Tracker the user will be automatically taken to the incident that the original incident was merged into, provided that user has access to the incident.
• - The list of forum topics that appear on the Forum screen and the My Forum Topics screen have been enhanced as follows:
• o Pinned topics will now always appear at the top of the list and will appear with a small pin icon in front of the topic description.
• o An icon now appears in the front of every forum topic that identifies whether the topic is open or closed. This icon is configurable. Please refer to the SSC Customization Guide for details.
• o The screen name for the user who started the topic is now shown in the topic description field below the description.
• o The screen name for the user who made the last post for the topic is now displayed in the Last Post column, under the date.
• - When viewing a forum topic, postings made by Tracker application users are now formatted differently from topics posted by SSC users as follows...
• o The user's screen name is bold.
• o The E-Mail Display Name defined for the department the topic is assigned to is displayed under the user's name. If the assigned department does not have a specified E-Mail Display Name, the System E-Mail Display system setting is used.
• o The background color for the post is different. The background color is configurable from ForumTopic.xml. Please refer to the SSC customization guide for more details.
• - On the Knowledge Base Search screen, if you uncheck the Forums checkbox the forum lookup control is hidden. If you hit Clear, the Forums checkbox would be checked again by default but the forum lookup control would not be redisplayed automatically. This has been fixed.
• - We've addressed an issue in SSC causing unexpected behavior when the ASP.Net cache timed out.
• - In FireFox, on the My Incidents screen, when the search panel was displayed it would overlap the menu bar that has the Hide Search option and Incident ID textbox for opening an incident by id. This has been fixed.
• - When viewing forum posts in the SSC RSS feed, the screen name of the person that made the post is now displayed in the feed. When viewing the RSS feed from Outlook for example, this means that the person that made the post will appear in the From column. For all other article types, the SSC title defined in Application.xml will be displayed in the From column.
• - When viewing a Download from SSC with a long description that did not fit entirely on the page, the page would not always show scrollbars properly. This has been fixed.
• - Error handling related to uploading files when creating a new incident or adding a new journal entry has been improved to display an error message to the user if the upload fails because of a timeout when saving the file to the database.
• - When menu.xml was used to customize existing menu groups and items that appear in the left navigation menu, the existing items utilized in menu.xml would no longer respect the built-in SSC security. This meant that, for example, if you customized the Submit Incident menu item using menu.xml, such as to change the text or the icon, then this menu item would no longer be hidden automatically if the user did not have permissions to submit an Incident. This has been fixed.
• - If a contact logs in to SSC and then the "Allow Web Access" setting for the contact is turned off through Tracker, the user was still able to login again for a period of time in some cases. This has been fixed.
• - Added support for IE8. SSC should now function the same in IE8 as it does in IE7.
• - The LoginFailureErrorMessage setting under the Authentication section in Application.xml now lets you control the error message displayed to users when their login fails from the login screen. Previously, this setting only applied to the error message displayed to users when some method other than the login screen was used for authentication, such as UserID or Email authentication.
• - Two new settings have been added under the Authentication section in Application.xml called ForgotPasswordMessage and ForgotPasswordTitle that control the Forgot Password message displayed on the login screen and the title of the Forgot Password page.
• - A new setting has been added under the Header section in Application.xml called ToolbarDisplayFullName that controls whether the user's login name or full name is shown in the toolbar.

 

Tracker Miscellaneous Enhancements.

• - Incident Parts Quantity now allows for decimal entries. When entering parts and components in the Parts/Components tab on the Incident screen, previously the quantity (Qty) field allowed only integers. You can now enter decimal amounts. This enhancement allows you to track items that can be delivered in fractional quantities.
• - Mail Checker now handles PNG screenshots. Previously the mail checker only supported embedded BMP and JPEG files - if a customer sent an e-mail with an embedded screen shot that was in PNG format, it was ignored. Those PNG screen shots are now recognized and added as attachment journal entries to the incident.
• - PNG Attachments to Incident journal entries now show as a preview - like BMP and JPEG files currently do.
• - Unpublished Incident E-Mails. When you send an e-mail from the Incident screen and you uncheck the Publish checkbox, the string "[INTERNAL]" will be appended on the end of the subject line. When the mail checker picks up any replies from that e-mail and it finds the "[INTERNAL]" string in the subject line, the resulting journal entries will not be published. So if you click the "Forward" on the journal detail for the purpose of communicating off line with someone, when that someone replies to the e-mail, now his/her answer will also be not published. This way the entire off-line conversation can be not published.
• - 2009 Holidays. The 2009 Holiday schedule is included with this update. If you have already downloaded or entered the 2009 holiday schedule, the upgrade will not install the same date twice. We recommend you review the holidays (in System Settings under Billing-SLA) and modify as necessary. Note that we are not including Columbus Day as most businesses do not seem to take that day as a holiday. The holidays are important in calculating SLA dates and in determining when "business days only" events should be run.
• - Add-In Screens Security. User security has been added to the Add-In Screens setup. You can now apply user security groups to an add-in screen so that only certain users will have access to an add-in screen. Notes:
• o On the button bar of the Add-In Screen Manager, we have added a "Security" button. Click this to add user security groups to the add-in screen. If a screen has no security groups, then it will be available to all users. Once you add the first security group the screen becomes locked down to only those users who are members of the indicated security groups. You can add multiple security groups to a screen.
• o Adding security groups to an add-in screen only has an effect if the hosting application is "Main" (Tracker) and not the Admin program. Only administrators can get into the admin program, and administrative privileges override user security settings.
• o Beyond setting security on custom add-in screens, another use for this new feature is to put administrative screens in Tracker. You might want certain users to be able to do tasks normally only an administrator can do (such as using Screen Designer, setting up Template Incidents, setting up Quick Incidents, etc). Now you can add these screens to Tracker and make them available to members of the security groups you specify without making those users full administrators (contact PhaseWare to get assembly and class information on the screens).
• - Incident Manager Alerts, Forum Topic Manager Alerts Enhancement. When a new Incident matches the search criteria on the Incident Manager (such as a new incident arriving), the Incident ID is colored in black and an alert icon appears in the system tray. Previously, if you opened that incident that incident would continue to display a black color (and the alert in the system tray remained active). Also, previously if that incident no longer matched your search criteria, it would fall off the search results, but the alert icon in the system tray would remain. The alert behavior has been changed as follows:
• o If you open the record that is marked (with black), it clears that flag (so that black indicator is no longer visible).
• o If at any point there are no more flagged records in the grid, the alert icon in the system tray goes away - and the color indicator at the top of the grid returns to normal.
• o The Forum Topic Manager has been altered similarly.
• o The Chat Channel Monitor screen also works the same way.
• - SQL Server 2008 Compatibility. We have tested Tracker 4.0 with SQL Server 2008. We have discovered one issue with versions of Tracker before 4.0 running with SQL 2008 - the knowledgebase search errors.
• - Mail Checker - Check Application User E-mails. There is a new system setting under the Email grouping called "Check AppUser EMail". If checked, when the mail checker picks up a new e-mail, it will check the sender's e-mail address against the Application Users list first before checking Contact E-Mail addresses. If found the new incident or the new journal entry will show as being created by the application user. Previously the Mail Checker only recognized contact e-mail addresses; an e-mail sent by an application user would be recognized if that user also had a corresponding contact record - or the entry would be marked as "System" if unknown e-mails were allowed through. This system setting is unchecked by default. Remember that if you change system settings that affect the Mail Checker you must restart the Mail Checker service.
• - Pin Forum Topic. You can now pin a forum topic so that it appears at the top of the list of topics for a Forum in Self Service Center. You might want to pin a topic, for example, if that topic outlines standards for the forum or other general information that needs to be readily visible to users. Notes:
• o To pin or un-pin a topic, open the topic from the Forum Topic Manager. On the Forum Topic screen there is a new "Pin Topic" checkbox.
• o On the Forum Topic Manager, there is a new checkbox search criteria called "Pinned Topics". When checked the Topic Manger will return only those topics which are pinned.
• o Pinned topics are bolded in the Forum Topic Manager.
• o There is a new user security setting under the "Self Service Center" category called "Topics: Can Pin". If checked the user can pin or unpin topics. It is unchecked by default, so if you want any of your non-administrative users to have this privilege, you'll need to either check it for the System Defaults group or the security group(s) of your choice. If a user is not granted this right, he/she won't be able to see the "Pin Topic" checkbox on the Forum Topic screen.
• - Event Setup Screen - Event Log. The Event Log on the Event Setup Screen can now be exported to Excel and the layout can now be saved.
• - Edit Journal Screen. The following optimizations have been added to the Edit Journal Entry Screen (which is accessed from either the Incident Screen or the Journal Review Screen):
• o A new "Save Only" option has been added. Previously, the Save button saved and closed the journal entry. Now there is a "Close" (shortcut Ctrl+F4) button which saves and closes and a "Save" button (shortcut Ctrl+S) which saves the journal entry but leaves the screen open.
• o The following shortcuts have been added to duplicate the shortcuts on the Incident screen (when editing journal entries) - these are all toggles which change the value back and forth:
• § Publish/Unpublish Journal Entry - Ctrl+U
• § Make Billable/Unbillable - Ctrl+B
• § Make Resolution/Standard Entry - Ctrl+R
• § Make Response/Standard Entry - Ctrl+Y

 

Bug/Issue Fixes.

• - Error with SQL Function dbo.ForumListingForUser. If a user was in multiple security groups and a forum also had those same security groups assigned to it, then the user would get an error when starting Tracker: "Violation of PRIMARY KEY constraint PK__ForumListingForU__4663D4DF'. Cannot insert duplicate key in object 'dbo.@Forums'." This issue has been resolved.
• - Forum Subscriptions. Subscriptions were sent out for forum posts marked as not published - now they are not.
• - Updating Parent/Problem/Known Error Incidents. Previously when changes propagated to child incidents, if it was a change that was logged in the system log, those system log changes would reflect whoever modified the child incident last (before the current update). This was an issue with setting the ModifiedBy in the wrong order.
• - The Event Engine determination of whether a follow up is needed (for the system event to notify of a follow up) has been modified to match the Incident Manager's logic. It no longer tries to account for multiple follow ups. If there is a follow up journal entry, then it does not alert (regardless of when the follow up and follow up journal entry is).
• - E-Mail Links - support for https, mailto and ftp. Previously if you changed the SSC/Web URL System setting to a web site starting with https, the knowledgebase links sent out from Tracker E-Mails (the Copy Link button on articles) would arrive incorrectly and the receiving person would not have working links in the e-mail. Additionally, if you put a mailto link (such as mailto:someone@somedomain.com), or an ftp link (like ftp://ftp.somedomain.com/), those links would not work for the person receiving the e-mail - these various link types now work.
• - Classification Setup Fixes.
• o Full Description. The Classification table maintains a "Full Description" field which is the classification's description along with all of the parent nodes. This Full Description field is used throughout the application to display the selected classification. Previously if you moved a node from one parent node to another, this full description was not updating.
• o Setup Screen. Previously the restriction filter did not work correctly when setting the filter to "Initial Classification" or "Resolution" - child nodes would end up at the root level in some cases.
• - You can no longer use archived solutions on incidents.
• - Archive Fixes
• o Archived locations are no longer shown on the Customer Information tree of the Customer Information screen. Also if a customer has child customers, archived child customers are no longer shown.
• o Contacts which are used by multiple customers are shown with a "Uses" count to show how many other customers that contact is used in. This count no longer includes uses where either the customer is archived or that contact within the customer is archived.
• o Archived customers are no longer shown on the Contact by Name Info screen. Archived customers are also no longer shown when you drill down to the contacts under a customer (and other customers are shown under a contact).
• o If a customer has child customers, the "Child Customers" control on the main tab of the customer entry screen will now show only the count of active child customers. If all child customers are archived, then the "Child Customers" control will not display.
• - Incident Manager. If the "Billing Type" or "Billable Type" drop downs were part of a saved favorite search, they would not populate consistently when selecting the favorite search (and when they didn't populate with the saved value, the search would not include that constraint). This issue has been resolved.
• - Expiration Dates for Downloads and Notices. Previously the time of the expiration date for a download or a notice was not always being respected. Some parts of SSC respected the time and other parts did not (and the item would actually expire at midnight). This inconsistency has been resolved.
• - Web Item Security. If you select "By Profile" and check "Customers with Products which Match Item's Products", the other options, such as Customer Category and Customer Status, are hidden because if the "Customers with Products" is selected, those other items are not figured into the contact's authorizations (they have not been previously either, but the user interface may have led users to believe they were).
• - Alerts Screen Fixes. Several issues have been addressed with the Alerts screen in Tracker:
• o When setting the filter to "Unread" messages and marking multiple messages as read, not all selected alerts would actually get marked as read.
• o In some cases alerts older than 30 days would be displayed when the "Last 30 Days" filter was selected.
• o When deleting multiple alerts one-by-one, the focused record would not be deleted (after the first delete) unless the user specifically selected the record.
• - Download and Forum Item - Product Sort Order. Previously if you added products when setting up a download or a forum, the products would not be sorted. They now are.
• - Forum Reply Cancel. If you click the "x" button to close the forum reply window, you will be asked if you are sure you want to cancel your reply. Previously your reply would be posted (when you may have intended to close without posting a reply). If you answer "No" and you want to post the reply, then you must hit the "Post" button (as clicking then "x" button will no longer post).
• - Event Engine - SMS Action - Length of Message. The maximum length for entry of a message in the SMS Action setup has been increased from 160 to 1000.
• - Incident Projects.
• o Previously, when moving a folder from one folder to another folder (in other words moving a sub-folder to another parent folder), you would get an unhandled exception. This has been resolved.
• o Previously you could drag a project or folder to another project and that project or folder would appear to become subordinate to that project (though the change did not actually happen in the database). However, a project is not designed to have subordinate projects or folders. You can no longer drag a project or a folder to a project.
• - Incident Journal Attachments View. Previously if two journal entries in a row had attachments that were previewable (such as screen shots) which had the same name, when you navigated through these journal entries, the second attachment would not load into the preview window (it would still show the first attachment). This situation commonly occurred where multiple screen shots were attached to the incident and those screen shots were stored with the same file name. This issue has been resolved.
• - Incident Journal Insert/Update - the timeout for the journal insert and update has been increased from 30 seconds to 90 seconds to accommodate larger attachments.
• - Tracker Alerts. If you have set Tracker to prompt you with the login screen, previously if you clicked on a button on the pop-up alerts intended to open a screen (such as the Incident button to open the incident related to the alert) and Tracker was not already open, Tracker would open, but the related screen would not (but if Tracker was already open, the related screen would open). Now, the related screen will open regardless of whether Tracker is already open.