On Tuesday 18th March, it’s my intention to pre-launch my help desk software Ticket Desk Pro.
There have been various changes to it made along the way. I’ve been using it to handle support this last three weeks, and it’s now at a point where it can be released.
David (the developer) has been working on it for 2+ years on and off, and has recently added all the new features I’ve requested – he’s been working on the new bits since November 2007. After the first release, there will be other releases every so often as we add requested features.
But right now, it’s really nice.
In fact it’s better than nice, it’s excellent.
The features are:-
- Multiple departments and multiple users.
- Multiple departments (CTRL-click selectable) per user.
- Multiple users per department.
- Moderators, Super Moderators and Administrators.
- Allowed attachments which you can specify e.g. .jpg|.gif|.doc|.txt.
- Auto zip attachments.
- Open tickets which can be filtered in real time.
- Filters for department, priority and awaiting response by.
- Search tickets by key word, department, priority, status and date.
- Multiple standard responses which can be selected, added and edited.
- Merge similar tickets.
- Frequently Asked Questions by department.
- System tools function to purge old tickets and attachments.
- Ability to contact other help desk staff by email.
- Ban filters by email address, IP address and key words plus wild card support.
- Email notifications to both customers and support staff.
- Choice of PHP mail or SMTP to send emails.
- Signatures for staff replies to customers.
- Captcha codes.
- Auto close tickets.
- Time offset where the server is not in your time zone.
- Multiple languages via language files (only English initially).
- Last but not least, LIVE SUPPORT (operator – customer chat) with optional captcha codes.
I’ll be launching it as a nickel sale because I want as many people to start using it as possible in as short a time as possible. And most importantly, I’ll be looking for affiliates.
The nickel sale will start at $5, increase by 5 cents with each sale, run for a week or two and then be removed and the real site will go live.
After the nickel sale is over, the initial price will be $47 and it will be promoted via ClickBank with a restricted free version on the front end, and the purchase of the full script offered to those that take the free version. After a month the price will go up to $97, which reflects its true worth.
When we set it up through ClickBank, the affiliate commission will be 50%.
Like all scripts you can expect to be released by me, this is premium quality software.
So you’ll be getting 5 star software for under ten dollars if you’re quick.
THIS IS A PRE-LAUNCH. Maybe not everything in the sales process will be perfect, but it will be good enough. The software is complete and fully functioning.
When the nickel sale starts, the first people to be notified will be those that bought resale rights to SmartDD LITE. They’ll get an hours start.
The next group that will be notified will be subscribers to this blog. You can subscribe on the home page at the top right by entering your name and email address. Blog subscribers will get 3 hours start on everyone else.
Finally, 4 hours from launch I’ll send out an email to my remaining lists.
So I’m rewarding buyers first, then subscribers to this blog, then everyone else gets told afterwards.
The start time will be at some point on Tuesday 18th March. I can’t give you an exact time yet due to circumstances beyond my control, but Tuesday will definitely be the pre-launch day.
I’ll be doing the pre-launch using the newly updated nickel script, which is also developed by David.
In fact, he’s just making some changes now as I type this, to finish an admin panel to search orders, re-send links and ban customers who you don’t want to deal with, such as serial refunders.
More on that software when we’ve battle tested it next week, but you can be sure we’ll be releasing that too, likely in a nickel sale, and likely within a month.
Again, it’s premium quality 5 star software.
-Frank Haywood
Hi Frank,
What time zone are you in? I want to work out how many hours adjustment for my zone (Australian Eastern Standard Time).
thanks, Brendan
Brendan:
I’m in the UK and currently on GMT. We go to BST (British Summer Time) on the 30th March at 1.00am, and that’s GMT+1 so it will immediately become 2.00am.
Cheers,
-Frank Haywood
Hello Frank,
Can the ticket desk generate support tickets through inbound email either via CPANEL pipes or pop3 access to a support email address? This would definately be a killer feature as it would appear to be email support to customer.
Jamie:
David, the guy who developed Ticket Desk Pro, told me three months ago that pipes were just an incredible security risk and that he wouldn’t touch them with a barge pole.
It seems they can be used to gain access to all sorts of things you wouldn’t want them to have access to.
Interestingly, I remember several Kayako support desks in service had email piping disabled on them all at the same time, about September or October last year, including a company I have part of my hosting with.
That company had experienced an assault via their support desks, and the hackers had used email pipes to do it.
So the answer is, yes it can be done, but the current state of technology says not to.
I’m not going to argue with David over this. I asked him about pipes and he told me no, so I’ll go with that. It would be a tremendous blow to the credibility of Ticket Desk Pro if a hack was disclosed soon after release.
We’ll keep it in mind though, and if pipes become secure enough, we’ll implement it, I guarantee you.
-Frank Haywood
[…] http://www.frankhaywood.com/nickel-sale-warning-ticket-desk-pro/ […]
Frank,
I have been trying to order since it went live at 10:15est but my sales page has no link.
I don’t know about this nickel sale launch I thinking this one is a little Scammie, I like you Frank,
But, I been trying to purhcase this Ticket Turbo for over 30min now and I haven’t been able to see the buy link, and I every time I load the page the price is going up, and I still can’t see a buy now link..
I,m not understand this one, Smartddlite was nice and smooth transaction, no problems..
But, the Ticket Desk Pro Launch is mystery. Is anyone in the US is purchase this product, because I can’t.
Off to work, I’ll check back this evening
Hi Frank,
Your sales talk is fine!
Where is the Payment Button? You lose Sales cause we couldn’t find where is the payment section? Looking high and low!
I cannot order Ticket Desk Pro. I have been trying since it was available for $%.77, however the page that I am going to does not have an active link available to order. Now the product is over $10.00 and rising fast, however I will not be back to my home system for another 4 hours.
What a waste. I really wanted this program… 🙁
I am on all the email lists and have DD lite butt sitll looking for a link to BUY
thanks
Henry Hilley DD
001-803-238-9406
1-888-TOO-MANY