Net Data Design, LLC Blog

A few weeks back I started testing and evaluating SmarterTrack 5 and I’ve been pleased with what I’ve found. And not just with the software, but SmarterTools themselves. First my finding with the newest (soon to be released) SmarterTrack 5 (ST5).

ST5 has, as I’ve mentioned previously, some welcomed new features. SmarterTools says they’re moving toward making ST a CRM application. The new set of features certainly put it on that path. The Call Log feature is a great addition allowing for other forms of communication besides email. Although the Call Log feature is a great asset to the application, the big one for me is the Follow-Up feature.

The Follow-Up as implemented in ST5 allows for agents and admins to place follow-ups on tickets. Follow-ups are incorporated with the system events allowing notifications to be sent to the agent as well as admins. These can be (and should be) assigned at the ticket level, not the agent themselves. Should a ticket be transferred, so is the follow-up.

Even though beta, other than a few bugs the application worked as expected. ST has never been the most intuitive software, but once you start working in it it becomes very clear. The newly added features fit directly into the ST interface, making them easy to deploy and use for agents.

Now, on a more personal note and an observation about SmarterTools employees. I mentioned in my last post I was having difficulty with a web service for single sign-on (SSO). This web service was to integrate DNN and ST logins. Shortly after the beta was released, I was contacted by SmarterTools. They wanted to assist in getting the web service issue resolved so that they where confident in the new web services in ST5. They even went as far as looking at my source code to verify it was not there service (it was my error).

Andrew handled my ticket, he was professional and did a complete analysis, for free!  And yes, he followed-up too. You don’t find many companies willing to spend time and resources on an issue raised in the self-help forum.

They’ve one me over and I highly recommend ST5. And by the way the new ST5 Web Service document can be found here.

The more you use and read about the capabilities of vTiger, the more I’m convinced you’ll find a solid use for it in your business. It has fast become a great tool in my business and I can see how it would benefit any SMB and all businesses as an intranet. Does it pack the punch off say Salesforce or Microsoft’s CRM? No, but it doesn’t pack the price tag either! And don’t get me wrong, because it may not contain all the bells and whistles of the aforementioned, that doesn’t mean it doesn’t meet or exceed them in a lot areas either.

The ease in which you can customize and configure vTiger to meet your needed, without having a team of developers, is astounding. Just recently we followed a published “how-to” on setting up vTiger as an automated help desk ticketing system. The how-to was straight forward and utilized a number of already built in modules and methods to create a custom [support] ticketing system. This particular system allows for the customer to send an email to a predetermined  email address and if that customer was a “know” contact in vTiger, a ticket was auto-generated and a “canned” response returned to them. In this email response are details that gave them the ability to track the tickets progress through the Customer Portal. Also through the Portal, the customer can comment on a ticket in real time, very handy when troubleshooting.

I’m certain that I will be revisiting the vTiger subject again soon, but I’d really like to hear what you have to say about it.