While we're proud of DeskPRO's web interface, we think it's also important to give your agents the flexibility to help users by email alone.

Currently, agents can reply to any email notification from DeskPRO to create a new ticket message and sent it to the user. Some of our customers have told us that this doesn't fit how they work.

In our latest update, we've added a new setting for admins, plus more guidance for agents.

Admins can now choose whether an agent reply by email becomes a reply to the user, or an internal agent note.

We've also made it much clearer in the notification text what will happen when the agent replies:

If your agents ever need to override the default setting you've chosen, you can train them to use email action codes.

Simply adding #note or #reply at the very top of an email reply lets them specify if they want it to be a reply to the user or an internal note.

This article has full details of how agent replies by email will now work (your agents can also find it using the Help link next to REPLY ABOVE in any email notification).

We'll be rolling this out to Cloud helpdesks over the next few days. If you're a DeskPRO On-Premise admin, you can update your helpdesk to the latest version get this feature right now.

Great helpdesk software is essential if you’re in the business of solving people’s problems (and obviously, here at DeskPRO, we have strong feelings about which helpdesk software is the greatest).

But whether you’re using your helpdesk for customer service or IT support, great software can’t solve problems on its own. Poorly planned deployment or bad policies can make life miserable for users and agents alike.

For this post, we've interviewed agents and end-users from several organizations (none of which are DeskPRO customers, incidentally) about their experience of badly managed helpdesks.

Here are some pitfalls to avoid if you’re contemplating a new helpdesk rollout. And if you’re already running a helpdesk, make sure you’re not doing any of these things.

1. Fail to understand helpdesk capabilities

Modern helpdesk platforms are sophisticated pieces of software. Before making your agents do something the hard way, it’s worth spending some time exploring what your helpdesk can do for you automatically.

Here’s a spectacular example of an organization’s failure to understand what a helpdesk can do:

Jane* works for a professional accreditation body.

When we switched to using a Cloud helpdesk platform, nobody knew we could email back by replying to a ticket from the helpdesk interface.

So we kept on replying to clients in our email clients, but then we’d have to go to the helpdesk and type in that we’d received an email, enter all the user’s details and describe the email we’d written.

Installing the helpdesk was supposed to track how much time we spent helping clients. Instead, it ended up increasing our workload.

It took months before some senior staff went on a training course and found out that we could make the helpdesk convert user emails directly to tickets.

Not only is this a terrible way to use any helpdesk platform, but the organization failed to train the front-line agents in the software, so they didn’t realize the problem.

Make sure that it’s easy for your agents to access manuals and help guides.

2. Ask users for way too much irrelevant information

It can sometimes be a struggle to get users to give you all the information you need to resolve an issue - but some helpdesks have the opposite problem.

Patricia* works for a large government department.

When a printer breaks down, the IT helpdesk always insists on taking all of my details, including my PC tracking number. Even if it’s a shared network printer, and it isn’t working from any PC.

Calling to report something simple like ‘the printer on the 4th floor isn’t working’ can take upwards of ten minutes.

The helpdesk even insists on taking down instructions on how to access my building - even though they’re in the same building.

The result is that printers stay broken for weeks before somebody bites the bullet and reports the problem.

This isn’t a problem that’s confined to big government. We’ve heard of companies asking for all sorts of irrelevant information before they’ll answer the simplest questions.

Maybe some of this data-gathering is because helpdesks are under pressure to prove they’re helping real users rather than making them up. Maybe it’s sometimes a cynical way to manage demand, by making the process of asking for help so onerous that users avoid it unless they’re desperate.

DeskPRO lets you add custom fields to store useful information about a ticket, but crucially, you can always make a field optional. Think carefully about how much compulsory information you demand from users before you help them.

3. Let users bypass the helpdesk

There's no point investing in helpdesk software to manage your customer communications if you don't communicate through the helpdesk.

Tom* worked in a company that provided IT services for finance professionals, some of them very demanding.

Customers would try to get around our helpdesk ticketing system constantly. They’d find our direct email addresses from the website, or email staff members they’d dealt with previously, even if their query wasn’t something that member of staff could help with.

They thought that going outside the helpdesk would get them quicker service. It actually didn’t, because we were told to deal with everything in strict chronological order. It just wasted our time going back and forth between the helpdesk and emails.

Management wouldn’t let us make it clear that support requests had to go to the official help address, for fear of angering customers.

This is a tricky situation. The key is to make clear to users that it’s in their own best interests to go through your standard support process, without offending them.

DeskPRO can help resolve this issue using its inbound ticket forwarding feature. This means that your agents can just forward emails from users to the helpdesk email address; DeskPRO is smart enough to create a ticket as if the user had emailed the correct address in the first place.

Once customers see that their emails always end up as tickets that can be dealt with by any agent, they will be less likely to try to jump the queue.

4. Stick with inflexible processes

Even after taking 10 minutes to file a report, Patricia’s printer troubles weren’t over:

When you phone up to report a problem, you become the “owner” of that problem whether you like it or not. So you could be about to move a new team member into a vacant desk, but notice that the phone at that desk has stopped working. So you contact the helpdesk and provide all your details - and boom, you are in charge of the broken phone problem.

In the case of the printer, I had raised the issue right before going on holiday for two weeks. Even though they’d taken the number for my Blackberry, they never called it. Apparently, talking about a broken network printer was too sensitive for anything but a landline.

So because they couldn’t reach me, they closed the ticket.

There’s a number of things that have gone wrong here: the reliance on phone calls when an email would do, for one. And while it makes sense that a ticket should have an owner, why couldn’t this helpdesk change the owner when necessary? Was it an inflexible policy, or badly-designed software?

5. Keep default values that don’t make sense to your users

Jane’s helpdesk ran into trouble with the wording of an automated email.

Our helpdesk sends out an automatic message to our clients which says: ‘This ticket has been allocated to <currently assigned>’.

Our clients are older professionals, not web natives, and they find this completely confusing. Many of them don’t realize the email is generated by software, or think it means they need to do something to assign a ticket.

The wording should make clear that you don’t have to do anything.

Put yourself in the user’s shoes and check that all your emails, forms and other user-facing copy make sense to them. Don’t refer to your internal terminology or processes unless it’s something the user needs to know about. (Plus, make sure you pick a helpdesk with a flexible template system so you can customize all user-facing text).

* All names have been changed.

We are pleased to announce a new release of the DeskPRO helpdesk platform, build #409.

The following is an automatically generated list of changes in this release:

• FIX Possible cron crash once a day caused during a sync routine
• FIX Possible infinite loop if working hours are set with no days selected
• FIX Possible 'no helper AgentPermissions is registered' message on some servers
• FIX Admin: Flag displayed in phone number field was incorrect
• FIX User sources: Phone number from remote user sources was not saved as a phone number properly
• FIX Admin: Default working hours would save properly but would appear incorrect when the form was reloaded

This update has been rolled out to all Cloud customers.

If you are using DeskPRO On-Premise, you can update your installation from the admin interface.

We are pleased to announce a new release of the DeskPRO helpdesk platform, build #408.

The following is an automatically generated list of changes in this release:

• FIX Admin: Status escalations set from the 'awaiting user' page would actually apply to 'awaiting agent'
• FIX Admin: Viewing escalations list had incorrect count
• FIX Admin: Using 'between' date criteria failed

This update has been rolled out to all Cloud customers.

If you are using DeskPRO On-Premise, you can update your installation from the admin interface.

While helpdesk agents should have the writing skills to clearly explain solutions, nothing beats showing the customer what to do.

Customer service experts emphasize the importance of resolving problems with the first message (so-called first contact resolution). Every time one of your agents types out a description of a software interface, or tries to describe how to assemble a physical product, there's a chance of miscommunication.

It's much clearer to use an image to show an answer, and once you have the right processes set up, adding a screenshot can be accomplished in seconds.

In this post, we'll explore some of the best practices for using images to help your customers.

Taking screen captures

You shouldn't necessarily use the built-in screen capture method for your operating system:

• most OSes have limited options for the screen area that gets captured.
• when you've taken the screenshot, most OSes provide very limited annotation tools.
• older versions of Windows will save screen grabs in the antiquated BMP format.

It's best to find software which minimizes the overhead involved in taking a screenshot.

You don't need to buy screen capture software for all your agents. There are several free and high quality screen capture utilities available.

Pick software that:

• can be readied to take a screenshot with a keyboard shortcut.
• enables you to select a custom capture area instead of a whole screen or window; this saves time as agents don't have to crop the image afterwards.
• saves images in PNG format; JPEG compression tends to produce a blurring effect on text.

For Windows, a good option is Greenshot.

Editing screen captures

Your agents don't have to be Photoshop wizards, but they do need to bear in mind the following points:

• crop the image to display the most relevant information from the user's point of view; don't show the whole screen, only the relevant area and enough of the surroundings to give context
• use simple annotations to highlight actions the user needs to take; add bold arrows or circles for clarity.
• taking a minute to "proof-read" an image is as important as it is with text; if the user has to change four settings and you only highlight three of them, they will miss the fourth, even if it shows the correct value.

Don't forget that showing an image isn't enough on its own if the user doesn't understand the context or purpose of what you're showing them. Make sure images are supported by text.

Pick a helpdesk platform that supports visual communication

Once your agents have captured a screenshot, or taken a picture of a physical product, make sure it's easy for them to share it with customers.

DeskPRO is designed to make this process easy. For example, you can paste a screengrab right into a ticket reply with the usual 'paste' keyboard shortcut.

You can also drag and drop images from the agent's desktop to the helpdesk.

Receiving images from customers

Ensure that your helpdesk platform makes it easy for customers to send you images. Does the ticket form support sending an image attachment? Can users send an image during live chat? When a customer emails you an image, is it included in the resulting ticket? (In case you're wondering, DeskPRO does all of these).

You should encourage your customers to send images whenever it helps you to solve their problem. Even if you're supporting a physical product, most users will be able to use their smartphone to snap a picture and email it to your support address.

On the part of your website where your user can look up your support email or submit a ticket, consider including text to encourage taking a screenshot. If your helpdesk platform supports custom forms for different ticket types, you could display this suggestion only for problems/products where an image is likely to help.

Emphasise that sending an image will make it faster for you to diagnose the problem - the prospect of a quick solution will motivate customers to overcome the hassle of taking the screenshot or photo.

If your user base is less technically inclined, you should add a Knowledgebase article explaining how to take a screenshot on whichever platforms you support.

Build up an image library

No matter how much you streamline the process, producing a good image to illustrate a particular solution can take time.

Promote image re-use among agents by training them to use your helpdesk software's 'snippet' or 'canned answer' functionality to build up a shared library of images that are easy to browse and insert.

If you have a frequently asked question with a complicated answer that is best answered with text and a series of images, write it up as a Knowledgebase article, and link to that instead.

GIFs aren't just for funny cats

Some issues can be hard to explain with a single image, or even a series of stills. For example:

• how to use certain software interface elements, such as controls activated by mousing over them
• a physical product that requires a specific movement to use or assemble - "there's a knack to it"

Embedded video is one way to provide a solution to these sort of issues. However, playing a video can cause technical issues for users, and producing a professional video with a good voiceover is time-consuming and expensive.

Animated GIFs are ideal for getting the point across quickly where a still image won't cut it. 

Making a GIF requires a slightly more elaborate production process than taking a screenshot. You'll need to capture a video of the process first, then convert it to GIF.

If you want to streamline the process of making GIFs as much as possible, consider investing in commercial software that can capture video and export to GIF, like TechSmith Camtasia. However, there's plenty of free software to capture video of your desktop, and you can make GIFs with the free Windows/Mac software Instagiffer.

• Don't send GIFs in user replies, since most email clients will not play them. Instead, link to a Knowledgebase article that contains the GIF.
• The GIF format is very widely supported, but inefficient, so watch the file size; crop the source video or the GIF to make sure you only include the most relevant screen area.
• Long, complicated procedures are best left for an embedded video, where you can also add a voiceover.

We are pleased to announce a new release of the DeskPRO helpdesk platform, build #407.

The following is an automatically generated list of changes in this release:

• NEW Ability to start a new ticket with an internal agent note instead of a message to the user
• NEW Syncing of usersource data for supported sources (LDAP/ActiveDirectory, MySQL)
• NEW Admin: New triggers that test if an email is a bounce or if it is an auto-reply/robot
• NEW JIRA: added mapping for "Components" and "Affected Versions"
• IMPROVED Admin: Deleting custom choice fields is handled better with confirmations and ability to move existing values
• FIX Agent: Pasting images into chat would not send properly
• FIX Portal: Numbered lists did not appear properly in KB articles
• FIX If query logging is enabled, sometimes a PHP notice might occur
• FIX Admin: UI for defining filters with date criteria was broken
• FIX Admin: Missing delete button on feedback categories
• FIX Possible PHP errors to do with password resets
• FIX Improper criteria of work days on SLAs in some cases for Monday or Sunday
• FIX The 'minute' option on default working hours was not being persisted properly
• FIX Admin: Missing autocomplete on label triggers
• FIX Agent: Searching for the ID of a deleted ticket did not list it in search results
• FIX Portal: Chat transcripts being sent in the wrong language
• FIX Admin: 'Test' for Office365 accounts always failed
• FIX Agent: Double-clicking a ticket row would open then immediately close a ticket due to toggle behaviour
• FIX API: 404 status code being returned in auth/permission error cases. 403 is now returned.
• FIX Agent: Links inserted through replies are now opened in new windows
• FIX Admin: Possible flood of console messages in admin interface due to bug in code editor
• FIX Admin: Some sections may fail to load if using non-English with missing translated phrases
• FIX Agent: 'Change user' action used to require merge permission, now requires CC management
• FIX Portal: KB suggestions on newticket now take into account search words
• FIX Admin: UI of org trigger criteria for is set/is not set
• FIX Agent: Very long lines of text did not wrap and would go off the page
• FIX Admin: Pre-defined icons for teams and agents did not work
• FIX Agent: Edge-case where an agent might not have permission to reply to their own ticket
• FIX Agent: You could not edit/delete newly added billing/time rows
• FIX Agent: Multiple issues to do with setting phone numbers on profiles
• FIX Gateway: Bounce replies from mailers would cause the mailers to be added as CCs
• FIX Gateway: Bounce replies from mailers would be added as replies instead of hidden notes
• FIX Admin: Saving an agent could produce error about the email already being in use
• FIX API: /tickets/{ticket_id}/logs would error
• FIX Usersources: Possible issues with LDAP/AD on some servers

This update has been rolled out to all Cloud customers.

If you are using DeskPRO On-Premise, you can update your installation from the admin interface.

Sometimes when you're creating a ticket on behalf of a user, based on a phone call or live chat or a watercooler conversation, you don't want to send them a message telling them that you know what they just told you. You just want to write down the problem and assign it to the best agent or team to fix it, and then message the user when you actually have something new to say.

We've now updated DeskPRO with the option to create a ticket and start with an internal agent note, instead of a message to the user.

You'll soon see a new TICKET NOTE tab when you're making a new ticket:

You'll notice that the default when you start with a note is to make the new ticket Awaiting Agent - which is what you'll want in this situation 99% of the time.

Of course, you can switch back to the ticket message tab if you realise you do want to send a message after all.

We're going to be rolling this out to your Cloud helpdesk soon. (DeskPRO On-Premise admins: you can update your helpdesk to version #407 or greater to get this right now).

Getting all your support email into a modern helpdesk platform is definitely the way to go (yes, we have a vested interest in saying that, but if you're already using DeskPRO then you'll have seen the benefits for yourself - and if you're not, the free trial page is this way).

But the downside is that it's all your support email. The bounces from the newsletter you just sent out; the misdirected LinkedIn invites; the out-of-office autoreplies, and the incomprehensible automated messages from misconfigured mailservers on the other side of the world.

Not every incoming email is a real user inquiry that should be turned into a ticket.

The solution is to use Deskpro's flexible triggers system to automatically sort incoming tickets and get rid of these non-ticket tickets. Previously, you had to create triggers that matched common subjects, or the most persistent junk senders.

We've now added new, smart trigger critera that detect bounce notifications and automated responses.

Because these are new criteria within DeskPRO's existing trigger system, you have full control over what happens to these potentially annoying tickets. You can label them, decrease their urgency, assign them to a specific agent team for triage, or just delete them.

We'll be rolling out smarter triggers to Cloud accounts soon. (DeskPRO On-Premise admins: update your helpdesk to version #407 or greater to get the new criteria now).

Managing separate account details for each app your organization uses can be a huge drain on your time. If you ask each of your staff to juggle 37 different passwords, the chances are that most of them will end up being '123456', or, at the very best, 'letmein'.

That's why Deskpro supports external authentication sources, so your agents and users can log in with their existing credentials from another system. It's one less password to remember.

If you're reading this, you're probably already aware that Deskpro can fetch account details from Active Directory, LDAP and 6 leading databases. That's not the news.

The news is that we've now added Auto Sync for those sources.

Your helpdesk can automatically update user or agent records, regularly syncing to make sure your account credentials are all up to date (you can sync manually at any time, too).

Enabling Auto Sync for sources you've already installed is as easy as ticking a box and clicking Save.

If want to set this up from scratch, see our documentation for Active Directory or LDAP.

We'll be rolling out Auto Sync to Cloud accounts soon. (Deskpro On-Premise admins: update your helpdesk to version #407 or greater to begin auto syncing straight away).

We are pleased to announce a new release of the DeskPRO helpdesk platform, build #406.

The following is an automatically generated list of changes in this release:

• NEW New trigger criteria for testing for bounced emails or automated emails (based on DeskPRO's detection algorithms)
• FIX Agent: Editing custom fields might save choice fields even if the field isn't enabled on a layout (only if the choice field is set to required)
• FIX CSV user import errors in some cases when attempting to save blank custom field value
• FIX The 'minute' option on default SLA hours was not being saved properly
• FIX SLA working days option may be invalid if Sunday or Monday are selected due to difference in storage format
• FIX Bounced emails from mailer daemons would result in the mailer being added as a user CC to the ticket
• FIX Agent: Edit link from newly added billing/timelog rows
• FIX Admin: Pre-defined icons for teams/departments did not work
• FIX Agent: Change user action needed merge permissions. It now uses the "change user owner/ccs" permission.

This update has been rolled out to all Cloud customers.

If you are using DeskPRO On-Premise, you can update your installation from the admin interface.

We've revamped the DeskPRO website, with a fresh design to reflect the fact that DeskPRO is the cutting-edge helpdesk platform for 21st century organizations.

There's now a lot more detailed information about DeskPRO's features, and how our platform helps deliver excellent customer service for organizations of all sizes. If you're trying to convince your workplace to adopt a modern helpdesk, or you just want to spread the word about us, be sure to take a look, and send a link to the new site to anyone who could benefit from DeskPRO.

We've updated our customer testimonials page to include more of the big names who rely on DeskPRO every day. If you've been happy with your DeskPRO experience and you'd like to help us out by writing a brief recommendation, please drop us a line at hello@deskpro.com.

We'd also like to hear from you if you notice any teething troubles with the new site, like broken links or missing images, or if it doesn't display well in your browser.

We are pleased to announce a new release of the DeskPRO helpdesk platform, build #405.

The following is an automatically generated list of changes in this release:

• NEW 'via_agent' flag on people API call to send byagent welcome email instead of normal welcome email
• FIX Agent: New tickets could be created with default values on fields that are not visible for a given layout
• FIX Agent: Custom choice fields were broken on advanced search form
• FIX Agent: Some select fields might not be rendered as select2s depending on their order in the layout
• FIX Agent: Possible validation errors when applying macros
• FIX WebHook call when using GET/DELETE would attempt to send body

This update has been rolled out to all Cloud customers.

If you are using DeskPRO On-Premise, you can update your installation from the admin interface.

We are pleased to announce a new release of the DeskPRO helpdesk platform, build #404.

The following is an automatically generated list of changes in this release:

• NEW Added sanity-checks checks to ensure that config.php is not world readable
• FIX Choice options on newticket form would not save proper value
• FIX Assign select box on tasks did not close

This update is being rolled out to Cloud customers now.

If you are using DeskPRO Download, you can update your installation from the admin interface.

We are pleased to announce a new release of the DeskPRO helpdesk platform, build #403.

The following is an automatically generated list of changes in this release:

• FIX Agent: Regression caused bad sorting and display of multi-select choice fields
• FIX Resolve some display oddities with new multi-level selects
• FIX Agent: Auto-start timer did not work on newticket
• FIX Permission 'Can modify billing and time log records' was broken
• FIX Agent forwarding a message with a reply would send user notification without that reply text
• FIX Agent: Using some media tags (e.g., video) would not work in articles even if you had permission to use full HTML
• FIX Agent: Merging ticket did not set ticket organization properly
• FIX Passwords being logged in error log in some cases

This update is being rolled out to all Cloud customers.

If you are using DeskPRO Download, you can update your installation from the admin interface.

Do you ever need a user to give you information about their organization before you can help?

You might need to know a site license code, or whether they work for a charity, or maybe you're trying to collect information about the size of each organization you support.

You can store all this information by adding fields to each organization's record in DeskPRO - but on a busy helpdesk, sometimes this important data ends up in ticket messages, or spread across the records of several users from the same organization.

Now you can make it easier to put information in the right place by adding organization fields to your ticket forms.

That means that when you're updating a ticket, you don't need to click away to the org record to add extra information. You just enter the information and it's added to the relevant org's record.

Even better, when users submit a ticket from the portal, they can add or update an org field (if they're logged in).

This feature is available in the latest DeskPRO update. If you're a Cloud customer, we'll be rolling it out to you over the next few days. Download administrators, you can get it now by updating your helpdesk as usual.

We're excited to announce a much-requested improvement for our customers who use Deskpro's round robin feature.

(If you're not using round robins yet, they're an automatic way to assign incoming tickets evenly to a list of agents. That way, each ticket is assigned to an agent as soon as it comes in, and there's no temptation to 'cherrypick' the easy tickets.)

As a lot of you have pointed out, round robins would be better if they only assigned tickets to agents on the list who are logged in. So that's exactly what we've done:

Of course, if you want round robins to work as they did before, you don't have to enable this option. You can even set it independently for each round robin list you have.

You'll find this option in Tickets > Round Robin once your helpdesk has been updated to the latest version. On Deskpro Download, you'll need to update from the admin interface as usual. Cloud customers, we'll roll this out to you soon.

DeskPRO can already track user satisfaction by asking users to rate agent replies. We've now added some powerful new features to help you get the most out of satisfaction surveys.

Now you can improve the user response rate with a custom survey request email, and act on those responses instantly with special triggers.

Survey request email

Your users are prompted to fill in the survey when they receive an agent reply by email or view it on the portal; but they may be more focused on getting their problem fixed than on rating your support. We've created a new option to send out a final survey after the ticket has been resolved for a while.

You can change the wording of the email to encourage your users to fill in the survey by letting them know their rating is important to you.

Survey response triggers

Of course, to deliver great support, it's not enough to collect ratings: you have to act on them too. Now you can use special satisfaction triggers to carry out automatic actions in response to user ratings. 

Label positive ratings for your marketing team to use, or follow up on negative ratings before you lose a customer.

These features are available in the latest DeskPRO update. If you're a Cloud customer, we'll be rolling them out to you over the next few days. Download administrators, you can get them now by updating your helpdesk as usual.

If you're asking your users to pick from a large number of possible values for a ticket field, a good way to make it easier for them to find the right option is to use nested choices.

Deskpro already supports one level of nesting on some fields. Now we've added multi-level nesting for custom choice fields, so you can nest options as deep as you like.

Let's see how that looks on the user portal:

Just as before, you have to select a bottom-level option that doesn't have any suboptions below it before you submit the ticket form. So in this example, you can't select 'Refrigerator' - you have to select one of the subchoices under Refrigerator.

Of course, your agents can view and edit these multi-level fields as well. You can nest options as deep as you like to organize any of your custom fields with predefined choices (select-box, multiple select-box, radio button or checkbox).

To use these new fields, just create a custom choice field as usual, or edit your existing choice fields.

Convert built-in fields to custom

Let's say you'd love to switch to multi-level custom fields, but you already have the same information stored in the built-in Category or Product field for thousands of existing tickets.

We've got you covered. You'll find a new option to convert any of the built-in fields into a custom field.

Deskpro will explain the conversion process before you confirm, but in brief, you'll keep the values of the field for all your existing tickets, and all your triggers and filters that used the old Category will keep working.

We'll be rolling out this powerful new feature to Cloud users over the next couple of days. If you're a Deskpro Download admin, you can get it by updating your helpdesk now.

We are pleased to announce a new release of the DeskPRO helpdesk platform, build #402.

The following is an automatically generated list of changes in this release:

• NEW Admin: New advanced email settings to disable subject matching, or only match on emails sent to the same account
• NEW Admin: You can now disable rate limiting completely, or whitelist specific IP ranges
• NEW Demos can now 'reset' the helpdesk (automatically purges test data)
• NEW Triggers based on ticket satisfaction
• NEW SendGrid email tracking app
• NEW You can now create round robins that only select online agents
• NEW Ability to 'undo' a CSV import
• NEW Organization fields can be added to ticket layouts
• NEW Bitium app
• NEW Custom choice fields are no longer limited to two levels
• IMPROVEMENT Improve handling of cases where a user sends an email to the helpdesk that contain agent TAC codes (e.g., an agent forwards their notifications to an end-user and the user later replies to the helpdesk)
• CHANGE Email templates can use {{ticketdisplay.getFirstMessage().message_html}} to get the very first message in a ticket
• FIX Agent notes would count as 'last activity' on ticket list in portal
• FIX API browser showed wrong URL for editing tasks
• FIX Using RTE to add font-color to text would delete the text node
• FIX Possible error with merging people
• FIX Fix some URL redirection issues and add setting to control URL auto-redirection
• FIX Ticket read from a disabled email account would continue to queue outgoing messages from that account (which would fail, because it would be disabled)
• FIX Gateway subject matching was run on agent messages, resulting in the possibility an agent message being attached to the wrong ticket if multiple tickets with the same subject exist and the agent sent a message without tracking codes
• FIX Security captcha could prevent login on intranets
• FIX Workaround for PHP bug where gzopen wolud be replaced by gzopen64
• FIX Prevent memory errors when sending email notifications on very very long tickets
• FIX fix possible URL generating bug in non-rewrite installs
• FIX A deleted ticket that is later restored will be deleted anyway when the recycle bin is cleaned
• FIX Usersources: LDAP custom filter did not save properly
• FIX Admin: Tickets > Billing > Missing option for setting to add time charge in reply box
• FIX Admin: csv import sent welcome email in incorrect language
• FIX Agent: Registered user count would be inaccurate if there are deleted agents
• FIX Agent: Saving snippets with non-trivial HTML might result in mangled or cut strings
• FIX Admin: Round robin might fail to load if a RR had a disabled agent in it
• FIX Agent: Possibility of counters becoming out-of-sync in some rare cases
• FIX Agent RTE: Sometimes multiple newlines might appear
• FIX Agent replies via email could bypass permission checks on the ticket
• FIX Admin: Adding members based on a agent group was not working
• FIX Agent: Permission error when trying to view a ticket your team was assigned to when you would otherwise not be able to view it
• FIX Portal: Google+ button was broken
• FIX Admin: Invalid UI state when deleting/restoring an agent, lists became stale
• FIX Admin: Website name/url was marked as being required when it isn't
• FIX Admin: CSV now uses commas instead of semi-colons for field delimitation
• FIX Agent: Fields/labels in UI that were set with triggers or macros might not show until the ticket was reloaded
• FIX Admin: Missing controls to re-set the logo displayed on agent login screen (now under Admin > Agents > Settings)
• FIX Agent: Misc inconsistencies with merging and splitting, especially around dates and times
• FIX Agent: When linking tickets, attachments were not sent properly in email notifications
• FIX Admin: Creating new agents might silently fail due to phone validation error (even if you didn't enter a phone number)
• FIX Admin: Using the 'copy' feature in agent management did not properly copy department permissions or teams
• FIX Share widgets would show even when app is not installed
• FIX Admin: Login log was showing times in UTC instead of your timezone
• FIX Triggers: Setting a flag was not working
• FIX Portal: Counts in multi-level hierarchies might be incorrect depending on permission scheme
• FIX Portal: User chat was not playing audio notification when new agent message arrived
• FIX Apps: Google+ authentication did not work in some cases
• FIX Password inputs were being passed through input sanitizing filters which could result in unexpected passwords being saved
• FIX Some user lookups were using case-sensitive email comparisons, resulting in duplicate errors or other unexpected behaviour
• FIX Admin: Fixed ability to delete yourself from agents
• FIX Admin: CSV import: Sending welcome email did not send in the language of the user
• FIX Support for schemas.xmlsoap.org style SAML assertions (e.g., Azure AD)
• FIX Agent: Delete attachments window only had 'x' for first attachment
• FIX Agent: Table view 'jiggling' in some cases
• FIX Agent: Table view causing high CPU usage

This update is being rolled out to Cloud customers now.

If you are using DeskPRO Download, you can update your installation from the admin interface.

We are pleased to announce a new release of the DeskPRO helpdesk platform, build #401.

The following is an automatically generated list of changes in this release:

• FIX Malformed HTML in replies sent from agent interface with some agent signatures
• FIX Possible 'Call to a member function toApiData() on a non-object' error when using webhook trigger action

This update is being rolled out to Cloud customers now.

If you are using DeskPRO Download, you can update your installation from the admin interface.

We are pleased to announce a new release of the DeskPRO helpdesk platform, build #400.

The following is an automatically generated list of changes in this release:

• IMPROVEMENT Text versions of email notifications have been improved
• IMPROVEMENT Add summary/rendered views to outgoing email log
• FIX Fix cases where text email cut patterns might not apply if the matched text did not include an email address
• FIX Add text email cut pattern for the Claws email client
• FIX Ticket thread detection when no codes exist in body (e.g. out of office messages)
• FIX Replies made from the user portal might be mangled if they contained script or HTML characters
• FIX Pictures from user sources would always overwrite manually-uploaded pictures whenever a user logged in
• FIX Fix stripping whitespace in plaintext email
• FIX Admin: 'Download' button on email source did not work
• FIX Agent: Fixes and improvements to text editor in agent interface, including: add HTML button, add table button, add format button, add support for code, better formatting of quotes, better handling of pasted text
• FIX Agent: Drafts would lose formatting when you returned to a ticket
• FIX Enabling email validation on new accounts via email would not work
• FIX Admin: Testing SMTP server would just show 'server error' if the connection could not be established (e.g. bad host, firewall, etc).
• FIX If agent created ticket on behalf of user via fwd and marked the message as a note, the user would still get an email
• FIX Fix outgoing emails when using PHP mail() or Exchange when the user's name has a comma in it
• FIX Agent: Pasting into reply box would mangle whitespace (e.g. in code snippets)
• FIX Attachments were missing from emails when using PHP mail()
• FIX Inline email attachments were hotlinked instead of being attached to the email

This update has been rolled out to Cloud customers.

If you are using DeskPRO Download, you can update your installation from the admin interface.

We are pleased to announce a new release of the DeskPRO helpdesk platform, build #399.

This release contains minor bug fixes.

This build has been rolled out to all Cloud customers.

If you are using DeskPRO Download, you can update your installation from the admin interface.

We are pleased to announce a new release of the DeskPRO helpdesk platform, build #398.

The following is an automatically generated list of changes in this release:

• IMPROVEMENT Portal: Improved KB suggestions on new ticket form, especially with non-English languages
• FIX Ticketlog rendered "Organization changed from None to None"
• FIX Agent: Resetting a user password would send email to user in agent language instead of user language
• FIX Portal: HTML entities in download listings with non-ascii characters
• FIX Admin: Custom email templates not showing in 'send email' trigger actions
• FIX Errors to do with "Argument 1 passed to CustomDataPerson::setField() ..."
• FIX Agent: Delete attachments window would not show 'x' button on attachments with very long filenames
• FIX Admin: Language IDs listed in languages section were names, not IDs
• FIX Agent: Pagination on organizations was broken

This update has been rolled out to all Cloud customers.

If you are using DeskPRO Download, you can update your installation from the admin interface.

We are pleased to announce a new release of the DeskPRO helpdesk platform, build #397.

The following is an automatically generated list of changes in this release:

• FIX Problems with outgoing email when using PHP mail and messages have inline attachments
• FIX Agent: Delete macro action
• FIX Fix typo causing PHP error (no function called arary)
• FIX API: tickets endpoing did not have is_hold option

This update has been rolled out to all Cloud customers.

If you are using DeskPRO Download, you can update your installation from the admin interface.

We want to make sure that you can get the best out of DeskPRO, so we've improved the way we publish our manuals and other guides.

From now on, your new destination for DeskPRO documentation is manuals.deskpro.com.

You'll find greatly improved online versions of all the manuals. They're now fully searchable, and you'll find it easier to link to specific sections or bookmark them for future reference.

(And if you prefer PDFs, don't worry - you'll find PDF versions of the manuals there too).

Of course, we'll still be updating our Knowledgebase with useful articles that fall outside the scope of the manuals, like FAQs, troubleshooting help, and configuration examples.

Where did the Install Manual, Importer Manual and Update Manual go?

We've moved the content of those manuals into the Admin manual.

Where did the PDFs go?

We used to host the old PDF manuals on the Download section of our portal. Now they'll be available on manuals.deskpro.com. 

I've found a mistake, formatting error or something missing!

Email support@deskpro.com to report any problems.

We are pleased to announce a new release of the DeskPRO helpdesk platform, build #396.

The following is an automatically generated list of changes in this release:

• FIX Error message when procesing emails to resolved tickets but permission to reopen is off
• FIX Agent: Validating a new account might fail if user had multiple validating tickets in queue
• FIX Agent: In some cases, the new ticket form would complain of empty message even when a message was provded
• FIX adding multiple usersources was broken
• FIX adding multiple usersources was broken
• FIX Application of days in working hours using wrong format
• FIX saml usersource now reads response attributes correctly
• FIX saml usersource now reads response attributes correctly
• FIX Triggers on labels did not handle non-lowercase labels properly

This update has been rolled out to all Cloud customers.

If you are using DeskPRO Download, you can update your installation from the admin interface.

We are pleased to announce a new release of the DeskPRO helpdesk platform, build #395.

This update included various bug fixes.

This update has now been rolled out to all Cloud customers.

If you are using DeskPRO Download, you can update your installation from the admin interface.

We are pleased to announce a new release of the DeskPRO helpdesk platform, build #393.

This update included various bug fixes.

This update has now been rolled out to all Cloud customers.

If you are using DeskPRO Download, you can update your installation from the admin interface.

Our latest update adds a new app to tell you more about how your users connect to you.

You've always been able to see user IP addresses in DeskPRO, but a string of numbers like "192.38.119.79" doesn't tell you much at a glance. 

With the new Resolve User Hostnames app, your helpdesk shows you the hostname associated with each IP, giving you a clearer idea of where the user is connecting from. Just mouse over a user message where the age of the message is displayed:

You can also see hostnames on agent messages, so it's easy to find out if another agent is logged in down the hall, or working from home.

You can choose to add a Hostnames section to your tickets, showing details of user (and, optionally, agent) connections:

Hostname information is also accessible through DeskPRO's powerful Report Builder, so you'll be able to analyse where your users are connecting from in as much detail as you need. Just use tickets_messages.hostname in your query. Here's an example of a simple report which retrieves hostname information.

If you want these features, you can install Resolve User Hostnames from Admin > Apps in about a minute. See this article for details.

If you're a DeskPRO Download customer, you'll need to update to the latest build to see the app. If you're on DeskPRO Cloud, we've rolled out the update for you automatically.

We are pleased to announce a new release of the DeskPRO helpdesk platform, build #391.

The following is an automatically generated list of changes in this release:

• FIX Email duplicate checker would not always work if the email included inline images
• FIX Ticket auto-unlock would not work if the agent changed a department such that they no longer had permission to view the ticket anymore
• FIX Agent: Clicking image attachments would open preview in DeskPRO but also open a new browser window
• FIX Actions defined for SLAs of type 'time until first response' would not execute properly

This update has been rolled out to all Cloud customers.

If you are using DeskPRO Download, you can update your installation from the admin interface.

We are pleased to announce a new release of the DeskPRO helpdesk platform, build #390.

The following is an automatically generated list of changes in this release:

• FIX Agent: Paging controls might be hidden if you had grouping options enabled
• FIX Scrolling on CRM and Task panes
• FIX Some custom fields (choices) might appear blank when they have a value

This update has been rolled out to all Cloud customers.

If you are using DeskPRO download, you can update your installation from the admin interface.

We are pleased to announce a new release of the DeskPRO helpdesk platform, build #389.

The following is an automatically generated list of changes in this release:

• NEW New rate limiting options for emails
• NEW New app that will show hostnames for users on tickets/messages submitted from the web
• IMPROVEMENT Duplicate checking is extended to forwarded emails by agents as well
• FIX Agent: Merging two tickets could result in duplicate SLAs added to the remaining ticket
• FIX Agent: Editing email-submitted messages did not let you edit the entire message
• FIX Portal: Viewing a protected publish category while logged out would show a 404 rather than login box
• FIX Trigger criteria testing for toggle fields did not work properly for 'off' state
• FIX Agent: If you applied a macro that changed properties such that you were no longer able to view it due to new permissions, you would see a permission error box
• FIX Agent: Sometimes while chatting with a user, old agent chats might appear
• FIX Add request tokens to email manage links in user profile
• FIX '>' appearing in notification menu when a new comment is submitted
• FIX Fix error when using usergroup filter search criteria with no options
• FIX New tickets created as non-awaiting agent would not trigger emails to subscribed agents
• FIX Fix ability for 'window.opener.location' redirections from links opened in new windows
• FIX In some email phrases, variable substitution may be rendered un-escaped as HTML
• FIX Agent: Fix HTML (and potentially unsafe Javascript) from rendering within some tooltips, such as tooltips showing names when hovering over picture icons
• FIX Duplicate key errors when adding CC's for existing users when DeskPRO auth has been disabled
• FIX Agent: HTML (and potentially unsafe Javascript) in an agent author name is rendered as HTML when viewing KB articles, news and downloads
• FIX New users created via email were not inserted into correct organisations based on email domain

This update has been rolled out to all Cloud customers.

If you are using DeskPRO download, you can update your installation from the admin interface.

We are pleased to announce a new release of the DeskPRO helpdesk platform, build #388.

The following is an automatically generated list of changes in this release:

• FIX Agent: Realtime ticket list updates would sometimes be invalid when viewing pages >1.
• FIX Reports: Some built-in reports were referencing 'tickets_log' table instead of 'tickets_logs'
• FIX Admin: Creating a new department or email account will create a new enabled trigger automatically, which makes the UI look like all department/email triggers are enabled even though they might have been disabled in the past
• FIX Admin: Missing 'reset password' option on agents if registration on the helpdesk is disabled
• FIX Fix filtering on checkbox field being unchecked
• FIX Logged warning about 'Undefined index' or 'property of non-object' when processing agent forwards
• FIX Magento: SOAP calls would fail because PHP libxml_disable_entity_loader was enabled
• FIX Magento: 'Test' mangling API url
• FIX Agent: Submitting a new ticket with a snippet shortcode before the snippet was fully loaded would cause an infinite submit loop until the agent closed their browser

This update has been rolled out to all Cloud customers.

If you are using DeskPRO download, you can update your installation from the admin interface.

We are pleased to announce a new release of the DeskPRO helpdesk platform, build #387.

This is a very minor build to address a corrupted ZIP file and a problem to do with teams.

We are pleased to announce a new release of the DeskPRO helpdesk platform, build #386.

The following is an automatically generated list of changes in this release:

• NEW "Send welcome email" option when creating new user.
• NEW You can now specify permissions on apps that add UI widgets to the agent interface
• IMPROVEMENT Optimized filter checking logic.
• IMPROVEMENT You can now fine-tune who can create new labels by permissions (before it was just an on/off setting that affected all agents)
• IMPROVEMENT Render KB articles in Agent Interface even when Portal is disabled.
• IMPROVEMENT Added IMAP and SOAP server checks
• FIX When using ActiveDirectory, possible incorrect email address on login form when following ticket permalink from an email
• FIX Standard "friendly identity" names for LDAP/ActiveDirectory
• FIX LDAP: Logging in with an email address did not work (only username was accepted)
• FIX Admin: Saving an agent would remove any custom usergroups set on that agent
• FIX (API) Fix some duplicate key errors that could happen during newticket when multiple requests for a new user are executed concurrently
• FIX Server errors during API calls would not return a proper error result
• FIX Endpoints for News section
• FIX Email: Fix rare cases of quote markers not being detected properly if the marker line was mangled/encoded improperly
• FIX Admin: Adding a custom sidebar block would become uneditable if no content was visible (e.g., it is just a script tag, hidden by CSS, etc)
• FIX Agent: Sorting option for urgency was hidden in some cases depending on where/when a custom filter was saved
• FIX Resetting password did not clear existing sessions in some cases
• FIX If you disabled the helpdesk and then your admin session was lost, you could not log in again
• FIX 'touched' criteria for custom fields
• FIX Feedback rating in Ticket changelog email
• FIX Server checks for opcache
• FIX Show IDs for department triggers on ticket update
• FIX All layouts are on by default when creating a new field
• FIX "Only show when there is a value" option in Layout Editor
• FIX Admin: When using SLAs with custom work hours which defined custom work days, those days were not applied correctly
• FIX API: Searching people on contact fields such as address, phone or im would cause PHP notice if an array was supplied
• FIX Improve search results using MySQL searcher for non-English languages
• FIX ElasticSearch: Improve search results on publish content (especially with non-English languages)
• FIX bmp image files did not show inline
• FIX Agent: Agents might show up in 'online for chat' menu even if they dont have permission to use chat
• FIX In batch task, auto-unassign of a ticket assigned to a deleted agent did not update search index
• FIX When a ticket becomes awaiting agent and it is assigned to a deleted agent, it should be unassigned using usual update procedures so client messages are sent to connected agents
• FIX When viewing tickets in ticket list or ticket view and the ticket belongs to a deleted agent, it would appear as 'unassigned'
• FIX Checksum checker would complain about missing README file
• FIX Agent: Editing usergroups on an agent from the agent interface would remove any agent groups they were a member of
• FIX Agent: Long strings in messages would go off-screen instead of wrap
• FIX Agent: Inserting snippets via shortcode did not work on newticket
• FIX Admin: PHP warning when saving agent override perms
• FIX Admin: Description for default value on categories, priorities, workflows and products
• FIX Admin: "No default" value did not display correctly for categories, workflows, priorities and products.
• FIX Admin: When editing SLAs, clarify time option when using working hours
• FIX Agent: Forward overlay did not let you select user emails in the To field
• FIX Add last ticket message to JIRA new issue form description field

We will begin rolling out this update to the cloud soon. This post will be updated once all cloud sites have been updated.

If you are using DeskPRO download, you can update your installation from the admin interface.

We are pleased to announce a new release of the DeskPRO helpdesk platform, build #385.

The following is an automatically generated list of changes in this release:

• NEW New adv email option to disable duplicate checks
• NEW New adv email option to have subject matching on all emails (instead of just ones marked with a RE: prefix)
• IMPROVEMENT ElasticSearch: Searching on names has improved. Partial string matches is now possible and diacritic folding was enabled.
• IMPROVEMENT Agent: The time it takes for ticket lock status to appear has been greatly improved. It is now nearly instant.
• FIX Prevent rejection auto-replies being sent to robots (causes responder loops)
• FIX Agent: Chat reply area would be hidden if a chat in another tab ended
• FIX Scheduled task to auto-unlock tickets (not efficient and did not send proper client messages)
• FIX Fix delays/responsiveness of person search box
• FIX Agent: Dates in some tooltips had double day component
• FIX Agent: 'new task' button shows even if it is disbaled
• FIX Agent: A number of locations were missing translatable phrases
• FIX Agent: Position of app sidebar icons when lock/hold notice is displayed
• FIX Admin: Bulk add agents button did not work
• FIX Permission resolution in some cases was incorrect (e.g., if all other permissions are removed, could not view tickets assigned to your team)
• FIX Admin: Permissions: The half-selected state on 'modify' permissions would activate if *any* permission in section was on (it should only activate when a 'modify' permission is on)
• FIX Admin: Removing an agent from a group might leave behind permission overrides for permissions that used to be granted through the group
• FIX Admin: When changing the URL, the URL check would always fail if you were on HTTPS switching to a non-HTTPS URL
• FIX Reports: Report was incorrect: 'Number of tickets created [date] grouped by first agent response time'
• FIX Some old tickets may be missing 'date_resolved' record, making auto-archiving not work. - Also optimised auto-archive task.
• FIX URL to dev manual from 'new app' window
• FIX Portal: Potentially expensive query running for logged-in users to do with getting count of their tickets
• FIX API: Fix some meaningless error messages when trying to use some /people/ endpoints without sufficient permissions
• FIX Admin: Fix some trigger criteria (such as 'user email address') not allowing partial matches with operators like 'contains' or 'regex'
• FIX Agent: Error when reloading rows in org people list
• FIX Deleting a feedback category would not work if it had usergroups
• FIX json/jsonp result of calling user search was broken
• FIX Admin: In some usersource apps, 'Test' would not work
• FIX If a custom phrase exists in both English and another language, the English phrase would be used
• FIX Agent: Viewing dismissed alerts would not work if DeskPRO was installed into a sub-directory
• FIX PHP warnings when waiting for csv import to start
• FIX CSV importer: Fix delimeter
• FIX CSV importer: Fix invalid counts
• FIX CSV importer: Improve handling of invalid data rows (e.g., missing columns)
• FIX Portal: Reset password would not work if the user was not fully registered

We will begin rolling out this update to the cloud soon. This post will be updated once all cloud sites have been updated.

If you are using DeskPRO download, you can update your installation from the admin interface.

We are pleased to announce a new release of the DeskPRO helpdesk platform, build #384.

The following is an automatically generated list of changes in this release:

• NEW Reports: Date placeholders for %PAST_12_HOURS% and %PAST_HOUR%
• IMPROVEMENT Better agent quick-start guide
• FIX Cleanup of agent_alerts table
• FIX Portal: Some types of layout rules might cause infinite loops in JS, causing custom layouts to break
• FIX Agent: Display of multi-depth multiple-select custom fields was incorrect (no headings)
• FIX Agent: Display order of multi-depth custom fields was incorrect in some cases
• FIX http to https auto-redirect did not happen when navigating manually to the /login url
• FIX Agent: 'can assign me' permission did not apply properly when trying to assign from ticket view screen
• FIX Agent: Creating a ticket from a chat would unset the chat link if the new ticket tab lost focus
• FIX Admin: Custom fields: Saving some user validation options did not work
• FIX Agent: Ending a chat did not show the chat as ended in agent interface
• FIX Agent: Mass-actions box did not close sometimes (also, PHP notice on backend about undefined 'reply_text')
• FIX Agent: Saving multiple checkboxes on a custom checkbox field would only save the last checked option
• FIX Agent: Display of checkbox options was a bit messy
• FIX Admin: Saving children options in custom choice fields would not save proper hierarchy if the parent and child were created at the same time

This update has been rolled out to all Cloud accounts.

If you are using DeskPRO Download, you can update your installation from the admin interface.

At DeskPRO, we know it's important that your helpdesk works with the rest of your software. That's why we offer a wide range of apps to integrate with third-party services.

Atlassian JIRA is a powerful issue tracking system. DeskPRO has had JIRA integration for a while, but now we've completely overhauled our JIRA app with more functions and a completely new interface style.

Now you have more options to link JIRA issues and DeskPRO tickets: link one ticket to multiple issues, or create a new issue based on a ticket.

JIRA information is displayed in a collapsible pane; you can open it only when you need it, or if you use JIRA integration a lot, keep it locked open all the time.

The updated app enables you to:

• View details of a linked issue, including JIRA comments, from within DeskPRO.
• See linked DeskPRO tickets from within JIRA.
• Post comments to JIRA from DeskPRO.
• Open a linked issue in the JIRA interface with one click.
• Customize which JIRA fields are displayed in DeskPRO.

You can also create DeskPRO triggers which respond to JIRA events:

 and add JIRA comments from your triggers, SLAs and escalations.

If you're currently using the old JIRA integration, don't worry: when you install the new app, all the links to JIRA that you've already created will continue to work.

See this Knowledgebase article for more details about the JIRA app, including a full installation guide.

We are pleased to announce a new release of the DeskPRO helpdesk platform, build #383.

The following is an automatically generated list of changes in this release:

• IMPROVEMENT Triggers: Add 'ticket log' action to log arbitrary text to the ticket log
• IMPROVEMENT Triggers: Trigger criteria has 'exists' and 'does not exists' operators, better handling of 'is <blank>'
• FIX Admin: Fix button to apply user rules to existing users
• FIX Rare cases of DeskPRO to DeskPRO messages could result in bad cutting
• FIX Agent: Fix superfluous whitespace in replies added via mass actions
• FIX Agent: Backspace in the quick search box to clear the search would unfocus the input box
• FIX Agent: Create new person and add them to an org may create a duplicately named org
• FIX Admin: Removing all options of a field (e.g., categories or products) would not save properly
• FIX Agent: Message would be clipped in certain cases
• FIX Agent: Ticket log for custom fields
• FIX Agent: Quick actions would not work if 'clean URLs' was not enabled or if DeskPRO was not installed into the root path of the domain
• FIX Triggers: Triggers based on feedback would not run when feedback was set to neutral. This is a logical type equality fix. E.g., feedback turns from null to 0.
• FIX Agent: Sometimes interface might reload due to session renewal
• FIX Deleting a ticket via a trigger would not prevent other triggers from running anyway (e.g., email notifications)
• FIX Mobile app could potentially cause high memory usage due to inefficient query in activity stream
• FIX Agent: Saving a multi-select field without any selections would always give a validation error

This update has been rolled out to all Cloud accounts.

If you are using DeskPRO Download, you can update your installation from the admin interface.

We are pleased to announce a new release of the DeskPRO helpdesk platform, build #382.

The following is an automatically generated list of changes in this release:

• FIX Agent: Ticket log did not say how a ticket was created (e.g., via web, via email etc)
• FIX Agent: Creating a new person with an empty multi-select field would cause an error
• FIX Upgrade: Upgrade conflict from very old versions to 'new admin'
• FIX Admin: Creating triggers with criteria on org fields did not work
• FIX Agent/API: Updating an organisation to remove field data (or change a choice field) would not work
• FIX Portal: Avoid obvious spam bots in chat with simple spamtrap
• FIX Agent: Changing task titles
• FIX Agent: Creating new tasks would set due date
• FIX allow change password when disabled reg
• FIX adds the classmap back from composer
• FIX patch potentially infected usersources
• FIX JWT wouldn't work in "localhost" for devs

This update has now been rolled out to all Cloud accounts.

If you are using DeskPRO Download, you can update your installation from the admin interface.

We are pleased to announce a new release of the DeskPRO helpdesk platform, build #381.

The following is an automatically generated list of changes in this release:

• FIX only agent sources can auto_agent
• FIX API: API token exchange (can also affect new login attempts on mobile apps)
• FIX Agent: Merging tickets would not merge billing/time data
• FIX Admin: Drag+drop area on ticket layout editor was too small
• FIX Agnet: Per-department custom fields would not show properly on new ticket form unless an existing user was selected
• FIX Agent: Bad rendering of snippet options in macros editor
• FIX Agent: On ticket, switching to note back to to reply tab will show empty 'Actions' row

This update has now been rolled out to all Cloud accounts.

If you are using DeskPRO Download, you can update your installation from the admin interface.

You want to spend your time on customer service, not on managing passwords for your helpdesk. That's why DeskPRO provides authentication apps so your agents and users can log in with their details from other systems with our new Single Sign-On (SSO) helpdesk features.

Now we've greatly expanded your options for managing authentication.

Identity management services

You can now use the OneLogin and Okta services to manage account credentials for DeskPRO (along with thousands of other web apps).

We also support the widely-adopted SAML standard, which means you can use many other identity management solutions. 

SSO your way

We've added true, automatic Single Sign-On (SSO) helpdesk support. Your agents and users can log in once, on a third-party service or your intranet, and then be signed in automatically as soon as they reach your helpdesk.

Or if you prefer, you can have them confirm the service they want to use to log in:

Roll your own SSO Helpdesk with JWT

What if you need to integrate DeskPRO login with your own custom web service? For example, you might want your users to have a single, seamless login for your website and your DeskPRO portal.

Your developers can now implement that easily using the simple JSON Web Token (JWT) standard. We've got documentation and full example code explaining exactly what they'll need to do, and whatever web development language you use, there's probably already a JWT library.

For full details of managing authentication in DeskPRO, see the updated Authentication and SSO chapter in the admin manual.

If you're a coder who needs to integrate DeskPRO with other systems, the good news is that we have a comprehensive REST API. The new good news is that we've made it even easier to use by adding an interactive API browser.

Now you can easily explore the DeskPRO API and try out the available operations from a web interface. Just go to /api/api.html on your helpdesk and enter an API key.

You can enter parameters for any API operation and instantly see the result. So whether you're working out how to do something or troubleshooting existing code, development is quicker and easier.

For more information, see our guide to getting started with the DeskPRO API browser, and the API documentation.

DeskPRO already supports custom fields stored about your users. They work fine if you want to record information that can have the same range of values across all your users: their shoe size, or their birthday.

But what if you want a field that has different predefined values for each user?

Suppose you sell custom pet accessories, and you want to record which pet a ticket is about. The possible values for User A might be "Fido" and "Tigger", whereas those for User B could be "Shadow" and "Felix". A normal custom field won't work.

Now you can handle this sort of information with per-user custom fields. You can create a field that has different possible values for each user and edit them on the user profile.

When your users submit a ticket from the portal, they can select from their own, personalised values, or even update them.

And of course, we've added per-organization fields too. You could use them to record buildings in an organization, the server or domain a software problem relates to - whatever information you need to track with different values for each user organization you deal with.

Our admin manual has full details of how to use per-user and per-organization fields.

We are pleased to announce a new release of the DeskPRO helpdesk platform, build #380.

The following is an automatically generated list of changes in this release:

• FIX Agent: Some notifications would not dismiss properly
• FIX Agent: Billing/timelog on new ticket form
• FIX Chat widget: If using the onlyShowDepartments option with a single parent/child, the system would assign a default department instead of assigning the only selectable child that was specified
• FIX Agent: If ElasticSearch is enabled and if you entered a specific ticket ID in the search box, a result row would return even if you did not have permission to see the ticket (though attempting to open the ticket would still result in a permission error).
• FIX Portal: Validation on department was not enforced. This allowed new ticket form being submitted without a department (the system would assign the first defined department in such cases).
• FIX Agent: Enabling notifications from profile settings did not work

This update has now been rolled out to all Cloud customers.

If you are using DeskPRO Download, you can update your installation from the admin interface.

We are pleased to announce a new release of the DeskPRO helpdesk platform, build #379.

The following is an automatically generated list of changes in this release:

• FIX Agent: Chat menu was off by a few pixels
• FIX Admin: Editing escalations was unreliable. Sometimes the form might show blank upon reloading.
• FIX Agent: Chat results in search box did not open when clicked
• FIX Agent: Adding labels to feedback
• FIX Agent: Clicking the '...' button to load a full message would truncate the message if it was long
• FIX Agent: Inline images in replies might cause overflow without showing 'view full message' button
• FIX Add workaround to fix connections to ElasticSearch servers over https where the server had out of date certificates

This update has now been rolled out to all Cloud customers.

If you are using DeskPRO Download, you can update your installation from the admin interface.

We are pleased to announce a new release of the DeskPRO helpdesk platform, build #378.

The following is an automatically generated list of changes in this release:

• NEW Added filter input to IM.
• NEW 'All Agents' option for SendAgentEmail trigger action.
• NEW Ticket list quick actions.
• IMPROVEMENT Added "replay" button for Api Key log entry.
• IMPROVEMENT Templating vars in 'Call Web Hook' trigger.
• IMPROVEMENT Added 'No validation' option to IMAP accounts
• IMPROVEMENT Admin: Add link to edit email templates from triggers
• IMPROVEMENT API: New tikcet API has new overwrite_person_name param which will allow you to set person_name even if the person already exists.
• FIX Agent: In mass actions window, "Product" was called "Category"
• FIX Tickets which set a specific langauge (e.g., a trigger to override a users language choice) would not send replies to users in that language
• FIX Agent: Editing time log entries
• FIX Admin: Language for "Ticket Departments" did not show user titles, making it impossible to translate titles that users would see
• FIX Setting labels might fail in some cases
• FIX Admin: CSV user importer did not work
• FIX API: Trying to add user to a new org failed
• FIX fix the container:debug command
• FIX Admin Interface: Agent online status.
• FIX Reports Interface: "Save & Run" now works properly.
• FIX Auto publis/unpublish dates for KB Article and News Post.
• FIX Avatars for Agent Teams.
• FIX Popover will not close after clicking links on it.
• FIX Tasks issues
• FIX PHP warnings when using PHP <5.4 and password policy features are enabled
• FIX Portal: Improve double-submit detection that was causing error screen in some cases
• FIX Ticket messages with upper-plane UTF8 chars would cause the message to be 'cut off'
• FIX fix composer.json file - missing comma
• FIX was a call to non-existant method in AdminBundle -> AbstractController
• FIX bug that caused JS exceptions over API if a user didn't have a primary email set
• FIX event log wasn't working for NEW users (registration/usersource-login) without a person context
• FIX Admin logs dates in local timezone
• FIX Admin Interface form validations.
• FIX facebook app now works
• FIX Sort IM agents in alphabetical order.
• FIX User search builder.
• FIX Downloads permission for user search.
• FIX Agent: Some alerts would re-appear after reloading the interface
• FIX Fix bad download URL
• FIX Agent: Set min-width of tab history and notification menus to prevent wrapping
• FIX Possible query errors when filters are defined with criteria that define no choices
• FIX Admin: 'Can unresolve' permission was not on agent groups
• FIX Agent: Set min-width of tab history and notification menus to prevent wrapping
• FIX Possible query errors when filters are defined with criteria that define no choices
• FIX Admin: 'Can unresolve' permission was not on agent groups
• FIX Agent: Delete attachments window was malformed
• FIX Agent: Error while trying to remove custom field value on a chat
• FIX Agent: Unexpected behaviour when changing snippet category permissions
• FIX Agent: You could not delete a snippet category you just created (must refresh first)
• FIX Agent: @mention did not send agent an email even if the agent had the 'email' preference enabled
• FIX Some filters could fail with 'Unknown column tickets.hidden_status' if a filter was running against active table but had criteria checking for hidden tickets
• FIX Agent: HTML entities might show in some select2 boxes
• FIX Admin: Setting primary email on agent account
• FIX Agent: Searching in a select2 box will now search on optgroup's as well
• FIX Agent: Improve select2 filtering on options with diacritics
• FIX Agent: Label field in search forms for people and orgs would show labels from tickets
• FIX Agent: Files added to organisations would not appear when you returned to the organisation
• FIX Agent: Very long links in profile 'contact info' fields would cause column to expand
• FIX Email codes stripper in incoming email not running on plaintext messages
• FIX Admin: Expose setting which controls max attachment size on outgoing emails
• FIX Don't re-send attachments back to users in auto-replies
• FIX Agent: Macro selected from 'reply' section in reply box would still apply if you switched to 'note'
• FIX Agent: Creating tasks with no due time would create it with a due time set to '00:00'
• FIX Admin: Fixes around changing label cases
• FIX Admin: Setting translated titles on products, workflows, priorities and categories
• FIX Agent: Snippet variables did not insert translated title for products, workflows, priorities and categories
• FIX Prevent huge search queries from running (which could potentially be rejected due to length)

This update has now been rolled out to all Cloud customers.

If you are using DeskPRO Download, you can update your installation from the admin interface.

We're always looking for ways to make the agent interface faster and easier to use. Even though DeskPRO is web-based, we want working in your helpdesk to feel like you're using your favourite productivity software, not filling in a series of forms.

Our latest improvement is quick actions for tickets. Just hover your mouse over the title of a ticket in the list pane, and you'll see that the pop-up lets you carry out the most common ticket actions.

You can assign a ticket to yourself, or to any agent or team, or change its status.

As in previous versions, the pop-up shows you the last message on the ticket; now you can also see how old the message is, so you can see at a glance whether it's still relevant.

Web hook actions enable your automatic processes, like triggers, to call external services using the web's HTTP protocol. This means that with a little technical know-how, you can have DeskPRO talk to other web services: your helpdesk could post alerts on your intranet, or your web service could alert users when they have a ticket reply.

We've now added support for variables, so you can customize the HTTP headers and parameters with details of the ticket and provide more precise information to external services.

To use a web hook, just go to your admin interface and add a Call Web Hook action to a trigger, SLA or escalation.

See our admin manual for more details about web hooks.

We are pleased to announce a new release of the DeskPRO helpdesk platform, build #377.

The following is an automatically generated list of changes in this release:

• FIX Newer database schema changes broke an old upgrade step
• FIX Logic bugs in filter logic caused some kinds of custom filters to always be marked as 'changed', which resulted in email subscriptions on those filters always matching
• FIX Agent: "Assign to me" quick-links in mass actions did not work
• FIX Workaround for bad text processing in Outlook Web App that caused emails to appear blank
• FIX Creating chat and setting custom field values would fail
• FIX "Can use tickets" permission could be deleted in some cases when you wouldn't want it to. These old cleanup routines incorrectly assume that "can use tickets" shouldn't exist if there are no departments granted on the same usergroup. So this was assuming that if you didn't add a usergroup to ANY departments, that's the same as "can use tickets" being off. This isn't true though because permissions are additive. Departments may be granted through some other usergroup, but the "can use tickets" itself might just be granted through this one.
• FIX Portal: New feedback would fail when using feedback with categories
• FIX Invalid array types on some criteria builders when selecting the default initial selection
• FIX ElasticSearch: Query errors to do with empty filters when an agent had full permissions

This update has now been rolled out to all Cloud customers.

If you are using DeskPRO Download, you can update your installation from the admin interface.