Self-Help Desk Feature: Help Desk Portal

The home page of the Self-Help Desk application is a "help portal", bringing together useful support information in one place. When you open the Self-Help Desk application, it senses if you are a user, a help desk staff member, or a database administrator, and shows you information relevant to your role in the application. Here is what users see when they open Self-Help Desk:

(1) All users see the current Announcement, and can read the full version by clicking the announcement or see past announcements by clicking Announcement.

(2) The Tip of the Moment randomly shows Tips and changing every eight seconds or if the user clicks Tip of the Moment.

(3) Users see their help desk requests (Problem Reports and Service Requests), whereas help desk workers see a list of their assignments, and database administrators see overall request statistics (see below).

(4) Users see only the Views and Actions in the navigator that they have the right to use. Administrators have another menu that lets them perform administrative actions, such as to set the Application Settings.

(5) All users can enter a quick search or click Advanced to open the Search Wizard, which includes three types of searches (full text, keyword, and the "Ask" wizard).

(6) Users can pick from a list of names (like "Help Desk", "Network Problems" or "Notes IDs") and click Send Email. A new memo appears, with the name translated to an email address (read from the Application Settings).

(7) Lotus Instant Messaging is built into the application, so you can chat with other users.

Database administrators see a summary of request statistics on their home page, which gives an overall indication of the help desk performance:



Help Desk employees see a view of requests assigned to them.

Supporting details are instantly available with only two clicks.