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This website upgrade is the biggest change to VME’s customer website since we first introduced a customer forum back in 2007.
In this blog I will explain the main changes to the system, before the manual is published later this week.
Our older customers will be aware that VME has run a customer website since 2007. This consisted of various helpdesk systems, alongside a forum using the ‘phpbb’ software.
The forum worked well, but could sometimes be confusing unless you were using it on a daily basis. The integration with our internal systems was good, but unless you were using the website regularly it was easy for things to get lost.
The various helpdesk systems we tried each had their own strengths and weaknesses, but most were either too complicated, or the opposite – they didn’t fit our business well.
Now we’ve brought all these things together into the one system. Let me explain the functions you have available.
Blog
We’ll be using the blog more regularly from now on. Not only will it be used for announcements from VME, but we intend to publish “best practice” articles on how to use IntelliStore as well. We also will be inviting customers to create blog articles we can share with all of our users.
Unreads
This should be your bookmarked page. Every new project topic, incident, problem, change request, service request or forum topic will appear here until you’ve read it. Replies to existing items will also appear here, making sure you don’t miss anything.
Catching up on unread posts can be time consuming, so we’ve introduced the “Open all” button which will open up the first 10 unread items in new tabs on your browser. Once you’ve read them, refresh the page and press it again. Remember to hold down the control button while doing it.
Projects
This page lists all the projects VME are working with you on. Click on the project name, and it takes you to a summary page, with all the topics for this project in a list at the bottom, and you can also see all change requests raised as part of this job.
Incidents
Incidents work exactly the same as the old system – this is your first point of contact for the support team. If in doubt about where to type something – raise an incident :)
Problems
Our new system is ITIL compliant. What does this mean? It means incidents are only open long enough to get the system up and running again – not to solve the underlying reason for why it happened. That’s the job of problems, and here is where you’ll find a list of problems and their status.
Change Requests
Anything you want changed in the system that requires coding, will have a change request raised. This follows the existing procedure of having a functional requirement document created, and an estimate for quotation (unless it’s a FOC change request).
Now though you can see exactly the status of the change request, and filter by status (for example, all changes awaiting your signature).
Service Requests
These are for things you want us to do that don’t require code changes. Normally we will advise you how to do it yourself (run a sysupd for example), but if you want us to do it for you then we’ll raise a service request.
Forum
This is now reserved for any non project specific discussion. Each customer has their own private general forum, as well as access to the public VME forums.
Releases
This page replaces the release notes that used to be posted on the forum. You can browse per release, per application (e.g. Head Office, Back Office, POS etc) and you see all change requests and problem fixes in that release, sorted by product section (Inventory Management, Finance etc).
Profile
On the top right there is a menu where you can edit your personal settings, like your email address, avatar picture etc. One important item is under the Account tab, called Unread Settings. This is where you can decide the rules of what unread posts you get – for example, you might not want to see unread incidents, and might only want to see forum topics you’ve replied to.
That’s a very short introduction. If you have any problems contact the support team – they know the system well now :)
One last thing – there is a user manual for the website coming soon. I’ll create a blog post once it’s ready – and you’ll see that in your unreads.
