Web self service

[john]

What do your customers need in a web self service portal?

[ruchida]

The most required function will be FAQ management one.

[alex1000]

1. Ability to open new tickets
2. See all open and resolved tickets (all correspondance with techs and customers should be recorded)
3. Having an FAQ would be nice, as mentioned in the post above.
4. Allow users to change their password
5. Username/password protected portal site (only want our customer logged in).
6. Ability for us to define custom fields in the ask-a-question area.
7. Ability for customers to modify their contact information assoiciated with their Account. For instance, the original contact assoiciated with "account1", can add/modify contacts associated with "account1". For example, an account can have two techs... If tech 1 logs in, he should be able to see open and resolved issues that Tech 2 sent to our support team.

DeskPro is a very nice helpdesk solution, See the user interface here:
http://demo.deskpro.com/
login/password: user/user

[Eiken]

Hi,
First I have to say that your choice of self service portal based on Mambo CMS is a great choice becouse of all core features, components and modules thats already are made for it. It is too much to list here, but at www.mamboforge.com one get a pretty good overview of what can be implemented in the web self service portal. ;-)

As for the specific Sugar Sales components, (as I mentioned before), it is critically for me to have an updated information on my customers (accounts) and their contact(s) at all time. Too keep customers details, prospective customers details, and potential customers details always updated is a time consuming task. Therefore (in my case) the best solution would be to have the "accounts" update their information themself and/or add/edit/delete contacts information trought the web self service portal.

If I get an inquiry from a potential customer, which is not registered yet in the Sugar sales, the best thing would be to require them to go to the register form at self service portal and register their new account. The registration requirement could be sent by email to the new customer so they easily can get registered. (this way I do not have to go step by step by phone,or send several emails to collect the neccecerly information I need to register them.)

The new information updates, weither it's newly added/edited/deleted, should be handled by Sugar Sales admin or assigned Sugar user to approve the new information with an database sync of some kind. Other way it could work that the new information is approved/disapproved/copied and the system is scheduled to do a sync every 24 h, with a little cron script.

Occasially I also would like to have the option to send reminders (newsletters) to "accounts" for reminding them to update their company and/or contact information. (togheter with other news etc. or have it by default in the footer of all newsletter messages :-) This is itself is a good alibi to get in contact again with old potential customers to present new products or services.

In addition to these features above, I would like to have an option for the accounts to upload their logo, and contacts to upload their picture. Great to see who you dealing with isn't it? Always great to see the person behind the correspondense.
This two features would be easy to add in sugar sales and it would be easy to add this trought the self service portal.

I also want to autogenerate for every old "accounts" to have a password login by default in the "customer self service portal" whenever a new account is created.... autogenerate password... and use their company email as default login. If they wish to login and do not have the password, they simply use the "forgot password" and they would receive it to their "acount" email address. (This could be done with some kind of sync... between the databases... "mambo and sugar sales")

I also would like to categorise the "accounts" more than they are now. Since I working with companies listed at alibaba.com and EC21.com, I would like to have the accounts listed in several categories, and possible subcategories...
(ctrl + select) to select categories the company would be listed in. This task could also easily be done by themself thought self service portal, and should be a small task to implement in Sugar Sales :-)

I really hope too see these above features in the future.

Best regards,

Eirik

[tekweeny]

My definition of a portal is: A portal should allow access to installed components based on their login credentials.

This means I want portal users to be able to do anything via my groups processes and work-flows when access is authorized based on their login credentials. The slightly more extended version than the original definition.

Any type of login where some modules work via the portal while others only work using the Sugar login defeats the purpose of single sign-on and causes more planning/risk/resources to properly admin and maintain. It also limits how the application can be used and deployed.

In my environment typical usage scenario will be:

* Sale Team Intranet:
Sales teams request resources from my group and we provide advanced technical sales support during the pre-sales cycle for identified opportunities

* Customer Extranet (future plans):
Although my groups customer is the internal sales team, we still represent and work directly with the sales teams during technical verification and solutions testing. We also end up working directly with the customer, sometimes for months, based on the size of their simulation and number of test cases they require.

If/when Sugar integrates into CMSs far better than it does now and gets support (or I trust a hack) then testing will start for Extranet deployment but until then, it will be intranet only.


* User login to primary CMS Portal:
Users should only have to login via Mambo.

When they use Sugar resources, login is required to be transparent if they have logged into Mambo. i.e.: Mambo is my groups face to the intranet (since ITs solutions is learning dreamweaver and updating static pages).

I use the LDAP hack for login. In my scenario, LDAP is mandatory, critical and required. This is one reason I have not yet deployed SugarCRM since I can't get Mambo/Sugar to work correctly in this scenario, so, I just do beta testing within my group for now.


* User accesses SugarCRM portal modules via Mambo interface:
Once user is authorized through Mambo LDAP login they can access Sugar resources based on the Mambo group that maps to the Sugar group settings.

There needs to be a mapping of user/group settings between CMS/Portals for Sugar to work well in this environment.


* User resources that will be used in planned deployment (I know Sugar can't do everything listed):
- Request new Project
- Tentative until the availability of date, heacount, equipment resources checked.

- Modify Projects that belong to their sales team, which is the customer account
- They can only view projects they create or the sales team grou they belong to

- Create/modify contacts
- Create/modify accounts

- Create/modify tasks within a project which will be assigned to the project
- Create/modify activities within a project which will be assigned to the project

- Create/modify custom reports. Data they can access should only be what they create or their sales team group creates
+ Can compare to an aggregate of all data.

- Create/modify dashboard output. Data they can access should only be what they create or their sales team group creates.
+ Can compare to an aggregate of all data.

- Upload/download/modify/delete files in projects. Need a complete revision control system (preferably SVN over CVS).

- Sync/modify/create calendar and activities between Sugar/Exchange. User should not have to set this up since that means my group has to set it up since sales teams are not going to do it.


My group will actually own the module activities.
- We own and steer projects.
+ Portal user should NOT be able to delete or modify anything the Project owner creaetes or takes ownership of, unless project owner sets permission up to allow this.

- Can create/modify and attach/delete from projects
+ All modules that are enabled in SugarCRM
+ no restrictions to any data (reports/dashboard/etc)


I think the current lack of LDAP and CMS/Portal integration into SugarCRM mainline will limit adoption in most companies that have an IT group that engineers and plans application deployment.

Sugar really needs to integrate LDAP authentication based on individual and organizational paramaters as well as import information automatically to be adopted by any company that uses LDAP/AD, which is most companies. This is another critical feature I am surprised is not at the top of the priority list.


Keep things as simple and intuitive as possible and leverage existing work where possible.


Just my, not worth as much as 4 years ago, 0.02 cents.


Thanks,

Julian

[Neonz]

I'm 1.5 days into SugarCRM, so the software may be able to do some of this. Forgive me if it's newbeeish! Doh!

1. Users should be able to view their own trouble tickets and those of the departments they belong to. They don't need to see other people's tickets. Administrators should have the ability to assign appropriate levels of user access to trouble tickets to deny users or groups from seeing certain ones. IT Departments should be able to see all trouble tickets, as they are the ones usually asked to fix them.

2. Users should get an email when a particular trouble ticket is updated.

3. Users should not be allowed to delete trouble tickets. Administrators and managers should have this ability with administrators being allowed to designate permissions for this feature.

3. While it is good that users can update their own passwords, it would be nice to have administrative level of password control to turn this feature off if necessary.

4. Integration with Active Directory, as mentioned in another post, would greatly reduce administrative overhead for larger organizations.

Just my initial thoughts after getting into the program!

[hellmutt]

The most commonly overlooked feature that is missing from everywhere I look, is advanced reporting / query features. Self Service features always seem to miss these. Once a customer opens 50 tickets and want to sort based on severity, status, etc, or run a report that tells them how long each case was opened before it was closed, etc, all the existing tools I've looked at fall flat on their faces. It would be nice to offer customers these advanced report features.