FITS Compliant Web Based Helpdesk - ** RELEASED **

[mant01]

has the new update been released yet ??

[ICTNUT]

Ah i didn't have "" set

 

That solves the "address" error, and i now know that the "to" error is because the user has no email address, problem is they get the option to create an incident before ever entering their email! (i am using LDAP authentication) so i need the login box to go to perfs.aspx automatically so it shows they need to put an email address in, rather than going to default.aspx.

 

I opened a support ticket with you yesterday if that's more useful than here

 

We have seen the support ticket and will update that also, we are aware of the issue surrounding staff being able to add incidents before adding an email address. This issue is being addressed in the next release where they will be forced to add an email address before they can do anything else. We did look into pulling this from LDAP but that is only of any use if you have MS Exchange in place or if you have the email attribute populated in Active Directory, so the only sure fire way to do this is within the software itself.

[ICTNUT]

has the new update been released yet ??

 

Should be next couple of days, just finishing putting the release together.

[mrbios]

We have seen the support ticket and will update that also, we are aware of the issue surrounding staff being able to add incidents before adding an email address. This issue is being addressed in the next release where they will be forced to add an email address before they can do anything else. We did look into pulling this from LDAP but that is only of any use if you have MS Exchange in place or if you have the email attribute populated in Active Directory, so the only sure fire way to do this is within the software itself.

 

that's excellent news, for now i have emailed all staff to enter their email address themselves, but it appears when they do that and i check their user profile after them entering it manually it hasn't saved the setting, is this a permissions thing or another issue?

 

Possibly being a bit hopeful, but would you be able to add an option for people with an exchange server to enable so that it could be pulled from active directory? Maybe as a future feature?

[ICTNUT]

Possibly being a bit hopeful, but would you be able to add an option for people with an exchange server to enable so that it could be pulled from active directory? Maybe as a future feature?

 

I don't see why not, it's a reasonable request.

[Tricks]

Should be next couple of days, just finishing putting the release together.

 

Is the new release available? Can only see v2.0.3780 at the moment.

 

Possibly being a bit hopeful, but would you be able to add an option for people with an exchange server to enable so that it could be pulled from active directory? Maybe as a future feature?

 

Yes this would be a big plus for us to. I'd be surprised if fair portion of secondary schools didn't run Exchange and would like this feature.

[Crispin]

Any news on the release yet? If I have to set another job to 'meduim' priority, the pedant in me is going to have a crisis...

[iScripter64]

Wow amazing nice script release mate

 

Kind Regards,

Nick.

[Edu-IT]

Any news on the release yet? If I have to set another job to 'meduim' priority, the pedant in me is going to have a crisis...

What's wrong with medium priority?

[Crispin]

What's wrong with medium priority?

 

Nothing. But 'meduim' is embarassing.

[farquea]

We have been waiting to get this working now for nearly 2 months, first we were waiting for a license file and now after being told the licensing side has been scrapped we are also waiting for the update that we have been promised for 3 different days, on all 3 days nothing appeared and we are still waiting. Infuriating is not even the word to use when you've paid for something that you can't use!

 

The support is extremely poor that i'm starting to suspect there is something fishy going on as email after email just appear to be ignored and no one answering the phones there. Anyone else experiencing this kind of service or has someone actually had contact with them recently?

[Soulfish]

We have been waiting to get this working now for nearly 2 months, first we were waiting for a license file and now after being told the licensing side has been scrapped we are also waiting for the update that we have been promised for 3 different days, on all 3 days nothing appeared and we are still waiting. Infuriating is not even the word to use when you've paid for something that you can't use!

 

The support is extremely poor that i'm starting to suspect there is something fishy going on as email after email just appear to be ignored and no one answering the phones there. Anyone else experiencing this kind of service or has someone actually had contact with them recently?

 

We've moved over to using Spiceworks now because of problems getting things working.

[mant01]

We have been waiting to get this working now for nearly 2 months, first we were waiting for a license file and now after being told the licensing side has been scrapped we are also waiting for the update that we have been promised for 3 different days, on all 3 days nothing appeared and we are still waiting. Infuriating is not even the word to use when you've paid for something that you can't use!

 

The support is extremely poor that i'm starting to suspect there is something fishy going on as email after email just appear to be ignored and no one answering the phones there. Anyone else experiencing this kind of service or has someone actually had contact with them recently?

 

I have to say in recent months I have had little or no joy in getting hold of OZ either with email, raising a support ticket anything. I am desperate for this new update, mainly for the asset management bit which my boss is ripping my head for (I promised her that we would have an asset management system in place by end of august which she wasnt happy about then).

 

I would like to hear from someone or maybe even Oz regarding updates, keeping paying customers in the loop etc.

[mant01]

We've moved over to using Spiceworks now because of problems getting things working.

 

Tempted to move over to spiceworks as well

[farquea]

i'm more tempted to look into where we stand in reclaiming some money back as we paid for 1 years support and updates and have had no updates and no support and dont even have a working program to use!

[dfergusson]

I have to say in recent months I have had little or no joy in getting hold of OZ either with email, raising a support ticket anything. I am desperate for this new update, mainly for the asset management bit which my boss is ripping my head for (I promised her that we would have an asset management system in place by end of august which she wasnt happy about then).

 

I would like to hear from someone or maybe even Oz regarding updates, keeping paying customers in the loop etc.

 

Asset management was meant to be out a year ago, lack of support and update is frustrating, been waiting for our renewal quote for over 2 months now.

[Fonz_Valo]

So are there any updates on when the next version is to be released? It was meant to be released early September and we are now nearly in October!

I'm getting very concerned about the lack of communication from Ozan as of late.

 

On another note has anyone else noticed that you can no longer purchase smartdesk as a self installed option? Instead you have to take the hosted option . I don't want to jump to conclusions but I'm starting to feel that we may (to put it bluntly) get shafted in regards to updates because of this new direction that has been taken with the software

[plexer]

I would like to hear from someone or maybe even Oz regarding updates, keeping paying customers in the loop etc.

 

The only person that can answer your queries is Ozan himself I'm afraid.

 

Thanks.

 

Ben

[Fonz_Valo]

Has anyone heard off Ozan since? I'm still getting no responses from phone calls and emails

[Jonny]

After waiting 6 months to start organising our workload with a reliable version of this, I purchased an alternative product for twice the price and had it installed and working the same day. When you consider the amount of time you save, don't skimp on paying for your helpdesk software.

[Fonz_Valo]

I purchased an alternative product for twice the price and had it installed and working the same day.

 

Purchasing another product is out of the question for us unfortunately but out of curiousity what product are you running now?

 

I'm in the process of reinstalling MyLittleHelpdesk just so we have some form of helpdesk in place temporarily whilst "waiting" for the new version of smartdesk to be released. I won't hold my breath though.........

 

It sounds to me that a lot of places are suffering from the lack of support as of late

I understand if Ozan has important real world commitments out of work to attend to but an email off him or at least a post on here would be nice so we at least know we are not being ignored....

[Jonny]

We are using Richmond supportdesk. Pricy, but I wanted something that could handle web access, outlook integration, emailed requests, transparent authentication for staff and external accounts for students that use their personal email accounts. Hoping to extend it beyond the IT department later this year, as it is flexible enough to be used by most support staff that are directly supporting teachers/students.

 

It is a bit of a pig to configure initially but I think it was worthwhile.

[joe90bass]

We switched to Spiceworks back in June/July. When I realised how much time I was spending trying to get OPSD working, rather than on the job tickets in it, a switch of software was inevitable!

[Crispin]

I've had exactly the same issue. I felt like an idiot because it was me who pushed for OPSD in the first place. Seemed like a fairly safe bet, being affiliated with Edugeek n all, but have had endless trouble during setup, upgrades, the huge number of bugs and awful communication. Now I'm stuck as we were using that free Liberum software so we are starting to look at alternatives such as spiceworks. Real shame.

[ICTNUT]

Hi All,

 

I feel that I need to respond to some of our critics here, all of which are well founded criticisms / complaints.

 

The past 6-8 months have been hard as a company which saw us reduced to just 2 people through loss of funding and income, we have had to deal with this as well as provide on-going support and continue to develop the software.

 

Yes this has meant that support has been poor and taken a hit and for that we apologise and was the catalyst for moving to a hosted only service, based on our platform already setup knowing it would be up and running in 5 mins and fully automated, this is now the case. We found that 95% of support calls that were coming in where down to the differing setups on servers, which meant us spending more and more time remoting onto sites or even visiting sites which put a strain on support further.

 

Providing a fully automated setup and billing process has taken time to implement and get right which is why some renewals have been missed and some emails not answered as all the focus was towards this goal.

 

There are also times when you have to deal with personal issues ( i won't go into on a public forum ) which has meant that I have had to step back for a few months in order to deal with this, this has affected the way that emails have been responded to and support requests answered.

 

In short yeah we dropped the ball big time and I can only apologise to each person who we have let down, however, reading some of the posts here leads me to wonder how we recover the trust that we spent a lot of time earning, if at all, we have provided an on-going service for many years to many loyal and supporting schools.

 

OPSD is a damn good product and at a damn good price too, if we decided to charge 1000's of pounds for the software like some other suppliers then maybe we would be in a position to hire more staff and deal with the level of support that we have had too and turn development around faster but that would go against everything we have stood for as a fair software supplier to schools.

 

OPSD is still very much in development and is still very much available and I hope that you will continue to support us.

 

If anyone wishes to contact me they can do so either via PM on the forum, on our forum, or directly on email. I would appreciate those of you that have had issues (posted above) and have not had the support or a response to a support request to please contact me directly so that we can discuss a way forward however I fully understand if you don’t.

 

Thank you for reading; I think I’ll leave it there.