We are excited about the forthcoming InstantKB.NET 2010 release. To give you some idea of the improvements you can expect to see with this latest update we've detailed the key new features & improvements below.

Tickets

InstantKB.NET 2010 now allows your customers to easily submit support tickets. Your staff can effectively manage customer tickets through a new set of tools within the InstantKB.NET Staff Control Panel. Once a result ion is found for tickets staff members can optionally publish the ticket to your knowledgebase as an article to assist others in the future with similar questions.

The new live search feature will search your public articles within InstantKB.NET for suggested solutions as customers are composing new support tickets. This will help customers find a solution if one exists without having to contact support. This prevents duplicate questions & reduces your inbound support.

Custom User Forms

InstantKB.NET 2010 now allows you to design forms that can be displayed to your users under a tab on your knowledgebase homepage. For example you can create additional tabs to capture bug reports or feature suggestions from your customers. Or you may want to simply provide a basic contact form for your business to more effectively manage customer enquiries or frequently asked questions.

Complete Issue Management

You can customize every aspect of any new "User Form" tabs you create with the ability to define separate SLAs, rules, views, permissions, statuses, priorities & attachments allowed for each tab independently. You can quickly create tabs to capture & manage unique issues from your customers or employees. This offers incredible flexibility and ensures InstantKB.NET can be used as a single, central issue management solution for your business.


To demonstrate some of the key new features you can expect to find in the forthcoming InstantKB.NET 2010 you can find a collection of screen grabs below as well as a brief description for each…

InstantKB.NET Homepage

Out-the-box a new "Submit Ticket" tab will be shown on your InstantKB.NET 2010 homepage. As with all tabs within InstantKB.NET you can customize the Submit Ticket tab changing the icon, text or access for various member groups. Foe example you can restrict access to anonymous members.

Submitting a Ticket

Users can open tickets from your knowledgebase front-end. As an administrator within InstantKB.NET 2010 you can easily customize the form presented to users when submitting tickets. You can reorganize fields, add new custom fields (over 14 types) or simply hide existing fields.

To help mange custom expectations InstantKB.NET 2010 now introduces the ability for you to define service level agreements or SLAs. If you define agreements InstantKB.NET will display the expected response time to customers ensuring everyone knows what to expect...



As with all other tabs within InstantKB.NET you can customize the permissions for opening support tickets. For example you may require users register before they can open a support ticket. By default InstantKB.NET 2010 will allow all users to open new support tickets.

Ticket Management

A whole host of new features are available within the InstantKB.NET 2010 staff control panel allowing your staff members to track & respond to tickets. Staff members can define alerts to ensure user feedback or escalated issues are never missed. Standard replies reduce the time it takes for you to respond to common customer enquiries...



Staff Responding To Tickets

As a staff member you can quickly identify & respond to new tickets. Customizable workflows allow you to define notifications & automated multiple change actions on fields as a ticket progresses through workflow. Staff members can also define the time worked on a ticket allowing administrators to view reports for time spent with clients.



Manage How Tickets Work

As an administrator within InstantKB.NET 2010 you can customize exactly how tickets & other custom ticket type tabs work.



A set of separate options will be displayed here for any custom tabs you create.

Service Level Agreements (SLAs)

Administrators can now define SLAs which can be applied to tickets through a number of mechanisms. You can associate SLAs with specific member groups within InstantKB.NET allowing you to prioritize submissions from various groups. For example you may have a priority support group with a SLA defined for 6 hours whilst say anonymous visitors could have a SLA of 24 hours.



Depending on the SLA InstantKB.NET will set the tickets due date. If ticket does not receive a response before the due date it will be marked as overdue & any custom escalation rules you've defined will be ran against the ticket.

Outlook Style Rule System

To help manage incoming tickets within InstantKB.NET 2010 administrators can create automated rules to determine how user submitted content is managed & assigned.

Combined with our service level agreements you can use automated rules & SLAs to better manage custom expectations by displaying an expected response time to your customers depending on the status or priority of the ticket.



The expected response time shown to customers is linked directly to the due date for tickets shown to your staff members. If a ticket does not receive a response in a timely fashion escalation rules can be used to notify specific staff members or update the status & priority of overdue tickets.

To help you manage incoming tickets InstantKB.NET 2010 introduces a new rules system. Similar to Microsoft Outlook you can define rules for user submitted content to ensure it's prioritized & assigned correctly.

Escalation Rules

Escalation rules ensure overdue & priority issues always raise to the top of your ticket list.

In addition for maximum flexibility you can define multiple custom escalation rules to perform additional actions on overdue tickets. For example you may wish to update the status & priority of a ticket or automatically assign overdue tickets to a specific staff member with an optional email notification.



If you define service level agreements tickets will be marked as overdue if they don't receive a response before the due date. InstantKB.NET will monitor overdue tickets in the background and execute any custom rules you've defined.

Standard Replies

To help reduce the time it takes to respond to common questions you can't publish within your knowledgebase staff members can define public or private standard replies. These can easily be used when responding to clients to minimize the time it takes you to get through your support load….



Public standard replies are visible to all staff members within your Staff CP whilst private standard replies are only visible to you within the Staff CP.

Staff Alerts

Your staff members can create alerts to keep them informed of ticket activity. Similar to our new rules system you can define a number of conditions for alerts. For example you may only wish to be alerted when a new ticket is submitted to a specific department or when tickets are escalated or updatd.




New Documentation / MSDN style tabs

We've introduced a new option when creating knowledgebase, troubleshooter or downloads tabs.

This will add a splitter in-between the tree view navigation on the left and the content on the right. When clicking a category within the tree view control a single article will be displayed on the right as opposed to a list of several articles. Our new documentation skin is provided with InstantKB.NET 2010 to demonstrate the new split view.

You can see an example of this skin used within our own online documentation at…

Status & Priority Icons

To help more easily identify at a glance the priority or status of items within InstantKB.NET alongside custom highlighting you can now also associate small icons with any status or priority.



Single Sign On (SSO) with InstantForum.NET

Single sign on with InstantForum.NET 2010 will be improved & documented with the InstantKB.NET 2010 update. This will ensure users don't have to register or login again as they move between InstantKB.NET 2010 & InstantForum.NET 2010.

Plug-In Framework

Similar to the InstantForum.NET 2010 update earlier this year InstantKB.NET 2010 will introduce our new plug-in framework. This will allow developers to extend & add additional functionality to InstantKB.NET without having to modify the core code.

This makes it much easier to preserve custom modifications during future product updates . We also intend to develop a number of sample plug-ins to hopefully inspire others.

Visual Studio 2010 Support

InstantKB.NET 2010 will target Visual Studio 2010 once released. InstantKB.NET 2010 targets .NET 3.5 with support provided for .NET 4.0 environments. We'll continue to support Visual Studio.NET 2008 and will be providing a 2008 solution file.