Web+Center Blog

New Web+Center 7.5 features
Web+Center version 7.5 includes new functionality in the area of Asset Management and Project Management. Listed below are some of the details and screen shots of these new features.

Asset Management
Some final changes are being made to Web+Center Version 7.5 Beta. This version has several new features that are helpful for the next area of automation that is sorely needed at most companies and organizations – Asset management and inspections.

Companies today allocate significant resources to purchase new computer equipment, but barely have time to document their assets in an efficient way that could be used for tracking those resources and planning future upgrades and repairs. Most organizations have a simple Excel spreadsheet file listing computers and resources which does not allow for notes or support issues that can be tracked in a multi-user environment against that asset.

Web+Center has offered an asset management tool for several versions, but version 7.5 has additional features that allow for:

• Configurable Asset “Categories” in addition to simple text box fields
• Options to attach files to asset records and send asset information emails
• Asset Search options to create brief, detailed, and report views to export results or to Excel/CVS files.
• The search result screen displays numbers of support cases associated with that asset
• Ability to create an Asset Search report URL query which can be saved and emailed to other users
• Enhanced field audit feature to record and log any changes to the asset fields

Asset Search Page showing Results View Options

Asset Search – Report View showing results and email able URL Asset Query

Project Management
In addition to asset management and asset inspections enhancements, the project management features allows one to use Web+Center to track, budget, and manage larger projects that contains a collection of cases, each with billable hours and expenses. The best way to test this new feature is to go to our on-line demo version and log into the Tech+Center Application and click on the “Projects” button in the button panel.

Project Resource Reporting Page

Case billable time and new expenses features
Test On-line Version 7.5 Beta
You can test version 7.5 on line or it can be downloadedfor installation on your own servers. Once it has turned production, upgrade scripts will be available to licensed customers who have an current support renewal contract.

• Tech+Center Application
• Customer+Center Application
• Business+Center Application
• Reservation+Center Application
• Pocket+Center Application

I recently came across an article with some information on software selection that should be helpful to organizations looking to purchase Help Desk/CRM/Facilities management software.  This article can be found on the Software Advice website.

I  recently came across a good article about the importance of an efficient Help Desk process and associated software to provide valuable customer support, especially during the holidays when new products are in the hands of customers who want support for their new gift items.

Check out the article at:

The Holiday Help Desk Stress Test

Web+Center
Screen Shots

The Web+Center suite is a suite of 5 web-based applications including:

• Tech+Center – Tech Help Desk Application
• Customer+Center – Customer Self Help Application
• Business+Center – Sales/CRM Application
• Pocket+Center – Mobile Device Interface (iPhones, web-enabled phones for Techs)
• Reservation+Center – Admin login for Reservation System

The screen shots below give a quick view of each of the 5 applications that Web+Center suite.

Support Staff / Tech+Center Login screen

Web+Center Asset Management Options (Tech+Center)

Integrated group calendar functions and scheduling and integration with Outlook (Tech+Center)

Define and organize multiple customers within companies or organizational groups (Tech+Center)

Extensive web-based configuration options for configuring help desk

Support Ticket inside of Tech+Center

Sample report available for analysis of Help Desk Operations (Tech+Center)

Configurable Customer (Customer+Center) Portal

Customer+Center Support Ticket page (Customer+Center)

Menu page for Pocket+Center / Tech Interface for Mobile Devices (Pocket+Center)

Business+Center integrated invoicing and accounting module for IT organizations that bill customers for services (Business+Center)

Support Ticket inside of Tech+Center (Tech+Center)

FREE Remote Control Crossloop Utility bundled with Web+Center suite

Complete reservation application for reserving of assets and resources (Reservation+Center)

OVERVIEW

Web+Center versions 5.0 and 6.0 both support the ability for customers and technicians to attach a file to a case and append it as a link in the support case so both Technicians and Customers can share files. The configuration of this feature requires a few steps and by default, this feature is disabled with the out-of-box configuration. The steps below outline to how to enable and configure this feature and change a Microsoft system setting that prevents files larger than 210K from being properly downloaded. The configuration steps for this feature are also located in the end of Web+Center 6.0 User Guide system configuration chapter.

Steps to Configuring Web+Center File Attachment feature

• On the Web server, first create a physical file directory on the web server where you plan to have the files downloaded to. The downloaded files are stored in the physical file structure and not in the database but links are to the files are appended to the case histories for sharing of the files. We recommend the path of “c:\wcfiledownloads” but it can be any directory. This directory should be added as part of your daily/weekly backup for your help desk system.
• Set the file security permissions for that file directory to EVERYONE full control and no other users.
• Create an IIS virtual directory that points to that file directory. We recommend the virtual directory name of “wcfiledownloads” but it can be named to any name which will be used later.
• Important – Set the application permission settings for this virtual directory to READ only. Do not allow script or execute permissions. This allows files to downloaded and read/shared (.exe, dll, docs, PDF, log, etc) without the downloaded file running on the server.
• NOTE: A reboot of the entire web server maybe required to properly set all of the Access Control Lists (ACL) for the file security permission directories.

Configuration Steps inside of the Web+Center Application

• Log into the Tech+Center application with Configurator level permissions.
• Click on the Administration button in the button panel.
• Click on System Configuration Menu link.
• Click on the Other Configuration link.

  

• Under the File Upload Options check which application (Tech+Center or Customer+Center) to enable file upload
• Enter a physical file path on the webserver that you created previously (Example: c:\wcfiledownloads )
• Enter the File Upload virtual directory you defined above (Example: wcfiledownloads)
• Enable file renaming based on case number. (Recommended) This will rename the file like Error.Log to a file name like C1023-Error.log when associated with Case number 1023. This prevent similar named files from overwriting each other.
• Select the maximum File size in bytes or enter 0 to allow any file size.
• Press the Submit Button.

• To allow files greater than 210K in size to be downloaded, a Microsoft system related setting must be modified. Follow the specific set of instructions below for either IIS 6.0 or IIS 7.0
• For IIS Web Servers Version 6.0
  * Make a backup of the c:\windows\system32\inetsvr\metabase.xml
  * You will probably need to stop the IIS admin service before it will let you save this file.
  * Edit metabase.xml (with note pad or other text editor)l (Note: you may need to first check “Allow direct editing of Metabase file” in the IIS settings).
  * Find the line “AspMaxRequestEntityAllowed” and change the value to “10485760″. (10 MBytes)
  This allows IIS to create ASP objects that can be up to 10MB in size.

  ——-

• For IIS Web Servers Version 7.0
  *Click on the default website, and then selecting the ASP limits /properities and then you will find the Limit Max Body entity and increase this from 200,000 to a larger value (10485760) as needed.

• On the Customer+Center page, there will be a link to allow customers to attach a file to the case once the ticket has been initially created and a case number exists. This initial step is required since the files are renamed based on case number.

  

• On the Tech+Center application, a file attach icon will appear in the upper right hand corner of the case form. Click on this icon to attach a file to the case. Multiple files can be attached to the case, one file at a time with each submit.

  

OVERVIEW

If you start to customize Web+Center, you will most likely create an ASP error sometime during development and debug cycle of your code customizations. The Active Server Page (ASP) scripting language is a very easy and quick development language and the error messages provides by ASP environment point you quickly to the error by displaying the particular module name, line number and error type of the programming error.

If you are editing the ASP scripts with an text editor that has line numbers (like TextPad from www.Textpad.com, one can quickly go to that line number and debug and correct the issue and continue with your development/debugging process. With IIS 7.0, the error messages are replaced by default with a generic “An error occureed on the server when processing the URL. Please contact the system administrator” To re-enable the full ASP error message, follow the steps below on your webserver machine.

• Launch IIS Manager and navigate to the website that you want to enable or disable ASP error messages.

  

• Scroll down to the IIS section and double click on the ASP icon
• In the list of ASP features, change the Send Errors To Browser to True from False

  

• Click Apply and restart the web server.

Problem: How To connect to more than one Active Directory Domains with a single Customer+Center database

At my company we have three different domains setup for each out of State location. When we first started using Web+Center 6 we ran into the issue of getting all the customers in the database from three different domains since Web+Center 6 LDAP configuration will only accept one LDAP configuration at a time. The initial work around was to add all the customers from one site and then change the LDAP configuration and add the other sites one site at a time. But this posed another issue in that only the domain configured in the LDAP configuration could log into WC6 so another workaround was needed.

Solution:

The solution was to create two more directories under the (Internet Software Sciences) folder so that you would have folders (Web+Center 6.0), (Domain1) and (Domain2) and then copy the contents of the Web+Center 6.0 folder to the other two folders. Next I created four more virtual directories in IIS that connected to Tech60 and Customer60 folders on Domains 1 and 2. An example of the virtual directory name: Domain1tech60 and Domain1customer60. Now you are able to login as the Tech under http://”Helpdesk Server”/domain1tech60/default.asp setup the LDAP configuration for that domain and the users would use the following to login to enter helpdesk cases: http://”Helpdesk Server”/domain1customer60/DoAutologin.asp this also allows the new virtual directories to use the database located in the Web+Center 6.0 folder. Now when a tech adds a new user to any of the sites they will all be recorded in a central database shared between the domains which makes it easier to maintain. What I did to make it easier on me was to add three shortcuts to my Desktop for the Tech logins: (http://”Helpdesk Server”/tech60/default.asp), (http://”Helpdesk Server”/domain1tech60/default.asp) and (http:// “Helpdesk Server”/domain2tech60/default.asp). I also added three shortcuts for our users on our Intranet Website: Location 1 (http://”Helpdesk Server”/customer60/ DoAutologin.asp), Location 2 ( http://”Helpdesk Server”/domain1 customer 60/ DoAutologin.asp) and Location 3(http://”Helpdesk Server”/domain2 customer 60/ DoAutologin.asp).This approach works since the Active Directory configuration information entered while configuring the AD option is stored in a encrypted file called ZCustomerHolder.asp. This file is located at the Web+Center folder level, so it can be shared by Tech+Center, Customer+Center and Reservation+Center.
Creating multiple Web+Center directories and virtual directories that all share a common database DSN allows this approach to work.
This approach could also be used if you need to create a unique interface to different customer clients that each desired to have their own “customer portal” while on the backend, technicians can log into one system and process support requests from more than one customer+center portal.

Figure 1-1 – Multiple domain jump pages with different Customer Login portals.

We have also extensively customized the Customer+Center interface adding some of our own buttons and links. This goes to show that the Web+Center 6.0 software is very easy to use and a flexible program to configure even for those of us who are not professional programmers. The screen shot below shows an example of how we customize the Customer+Center case form with the logo and calendar clock and other features.

Figure 1-2 – Customized Customer+Center page

Author Corey Webber Information

“My name is Corey Webber. I live in East Tennessee with my wife of 15yrs Brandy, my two girls Chrissy and Sarah. I have lived in East TN all my life. I enjoy spending time with my wife and girls we have garden, twelve chickens, two cats and two dogs so it can get pretty interesting around the house. When we get a chance, we go fishing and just enjoy nature. In high school I studied electronics from there I started working in IT at CoorsTek I was there for 14 yrs. I’m currently working at SL America as an IT Technician providing support for SL Alabama, SL Michigan and SL Tennessee.”
Email: cwebber@sl-america.com
SL America Corporation – formerly Samlip America, Inc. is a GM approved automotive parts supplier for Companies like Chevrolet, Saturn, Cadillac, Chrysler, Subaru and Hyundai as well.