Vision Helpdesk now supports Google Apps (Gmail POP3, SMTP, IMAP with SSL)

What is Google Apps ?

Google Apps

Google Apps is a service from Google for using custom domain names with several Google products. It features several Web applications with similar functionality to traditional office suites, including: Gmail, Google Calendar, Talk, Docs and Sites.

How to Configure your Domain Name with Google Hosted Email Account?

Sign up to the Google Hosted Account, Verify your domain ownership by doing one of these steps :

• Put a HTML file in the root directory of your webserver or
• Edit your CName record in your domain control panel

Simple way is by putting the HTML verification file in your root / public_html directory.

After Google has verified it, the next step is setting up MX records — One needs to setup following MX records –

aspmx.l.google.com. [10]
alt1.aspmx.l.google.com. [20]
alt2.aspmx.l.google.com. [30]
aspmx2.googlemail.com. [40]
aspmx3.googlemail.com. [50]
aspmx4.googlemail.com. [60]
aspmx5.googlemail.com. [70]

Here 10, 20, 30 etc represents MX record priority.

Next is setup SPF record for your domain –

“v=spf1 include:aspmx.googlemail.com ~all”

Once this is done you can add users emails in your google apps — example you can simply create email accounts like anything@yourdomain.com

How to use Google Hosted emails with Vision Helpdesk ?

Now that you have created google hosted emails - In Vision Helpdesk you can use it just like your normal emails.

In Vision Helpdesk Admin Section Admin Mail Parser Insert Queue

Add your google hosted email with Pop3 SSL or IMAP  SSL option.

In Incoming Mail Server Settings you have to set — pop.gmail.com or pop.googlemail.com

Setting up cron to fetch emails while using pop or imap

Set up a cron for every 5 mins to fetch emails –

*/5 * * * * /usr/bin/GET http://www.domainname.com/support/manage/cron.php >/dev/null 2>/dev/null

That’s it

Benefits of Using Google Hosted Emails over normal emails.

GMail

1. It is free.
2. It boasts incredible spam detection and filtering
3. It provides great ways of organizing and labeling incoming messages.
4. Conversation threads are automatically grouped, making each request easy to follow until resolution.
5. much more…

What is SLA ?

SLA is an abbreviation for “Service Level Agreement“.  (SLA’s) are fundamental to both providers and recipients of services. It means to have guaranteed response or resolution time for incidents ( trouble tickets).

SLAs normally are part of a contract between a customer and a service provider.

For example, A SLA between Webhosting Company and its customers could be –15 mins response time & 1hour resolution time.

How SLA is implemented in Vision Helpdesk?

Vision helpdesk manages to implement SLA in a comprehensive manner, It offer methods to add working Schedules, SLA Plan and SLA Application to tickets, ticket status (open, hold etc ) ticket priority wise etc.. Additionally Vision offers SLA report generation tool that help the service provider to gain a complete insight of each ticket/client to find out if the SLA was maintained.

Three steps to setup SLA with Vision Helpdesk

1. Create Schedule
2. Add SLA Plan
3. Apply SLA Plan

Creating Schedule is defining the working hours for each day in a week (This hours are when SLA will be considered)

Adding SLA Plan is mainly setting up Overdue Time -This time decides SLA Plan.

Applying SLA Plan is nothing but defining which queue tickets will fall under SLA Plan.

How to check if SLA was maintained?

Vision offers SLA Report tool — which allows you to generate reports on fly and it gives you SLA per ticket status.

English has always been the dominant language on the Web but we cannot ignore the fact that a significant number of Internet users either don’t speak English or prefer to use their native language for Web transactions.

You bet, the ratio of English to non-English users should be almost 50-50? or even if it is 60-40 — Is it worth loosing a client just because they are non-English user? I’m sure your answer will be “No - its not worth loosing clients!!” So my question is what actions are you taking to prevent your non-English speaking clients? some will say they need tools that will allow non-English users to communicate with them,. Agreed!! - This is what we are trying to help you with our Multi-language feature..

Vision - “Multi-language” feature now empowers organizations to extend their business all over the globe by breaking the language barriers. Now you can provide support to your clients in their own language.

This feature mainly includes –

• Clients can change client panel language to one that they understand.
• Clients can send tickets / emails in their own language.

• Your staff has option to select language while replying tickets.

We hope this feature will enhance your business and you stop saying NO to non-English users

Please find technical help on how to use this feature — click here

WHMCS Billing System — WHMCS is the complete all-in-one client management, billing & support solution for Web Hosts & Other Online Businesses. Packed with features but with a core focus on remaining easy to use and customise, WHMCS enables you to easily and effectively manage your business. It also automates many routine tasks including invoicing, order provisioning, suspensions, and more.

Vision Helpdesk — Vision is a powerful web-based helpdesk software that integrates various support channels (emails, web based helpdesk, phone or fax) at one central point and allows maximum control over them.

WHMCS & Vision Integration

We support three modules under this integration -

a) Login Share

Login Share plug-in allows your users to bypass the login registration process for their support area. If enabled your users can use one common login details for login to WHMCS billing system and Vision Helpdesk.

b) Auto Custom Fields

This allows Vision to pull client information (Package type, Server Ip, Domain name, Control Panel User & Password and more) from WHMCS enabling support staff to view client information in helpdesk whenever client post a ticket.

c) Overriding WHMCS Support Module.

Vision not only supports login share and auto custom fields but goes one step ahead - It overrides whmcs inbuilt support module, view tickets, submit tickets, knowledge base articles, downloads, announcements and search options.

Submit Ticket

View Ticket

Ticket List

The integration is simple and does not require any technical expertise or coding knowledge - click here to check detailed steps for integration.

Worried about the difficulties of switching to new helpdesk system? Vision Helpdesk provides an innovative data migration tool. The migration tool automates the entire migration process and easily imports data from major helpdesk’s like:

• Kayako Support Suite
• Kayako eSupport
  
• Cerberus
• WHMCS
• Support Trio (under development)

Migration of users, tickets/emails, ticket queue’s, ticket status and much more are seamlessly done that save time and efforts.

The migration tool is robust, user-friendly, and extensible migration process ensuring reliability and data integrity.

It takes just two simple steps to transfer your data from your old helpdesk to vision helpdesk.

Step 1 : You need to provide your old helpdesk database login details.

Step 2 : Decide which department tickets from old helpdesk should go to respective departments on Vision.

Benefits of switching to Vision Helpdesk:

• Feature rich and easy to use helpdesk.
• Platform Independent.
• Increased Productivity — Appropriate use of PHP-Ajax reduces page loads drastically and overall ticket solving speed goes high - Don’t believe? then you must check our online demo.
• Fast & Reliable Support.
• Scheduled development based on feature requests and changing technology.
• And much more..

We are always looking for comments and feedback’s to make Vision more and more better — If you think you have some new ideas that can enhance Vision Helpdesk further please post feature requests here.

What do you say about Vision Helpdesk? Feature-rich, Easy to use interface, Fast and Colorful - this time we have added more color css themes to Vision client panel that suits your website color and integrates well.

Along with default blue color we are now supporting Vision helpdesk client panel with red, green, orange and purple themes — this gives you choice to select theme as per your website color.

Good thing is you don’t have to pay single penny for this themes - they are absolutely free packed with setup.

Don’t take this colorful themes as just design rich, The Vision client panel comes with additional features like client side search facility — It enables your clients to search their email / ticket using single word or phrase that appears in message subject or content.

Additionally Vision will support multi-language feature for client panel with upcoming versions.

We have some more exiting feature’s cooking at our Vision kitchen — click here for more information..