If you've read my column before, you've mostly seen reviews of software development tools for WebSphere. This column is a bit of a departure from the usual. All of us have experienced calling a support desk for help, and afterward feeling more frustrated than before the call. Support people struggle with limited, uncorrelated information and slow, unreliable tools.

The main thing missing is the ability for the responder to efficiently correlate existing information pertaining to the user's problem. In almost all cases, customers must call in to report the problem and then sit through additional calls to find a solution. Major angst can build up on both ends of the phone line, and once led me to do something kind of radical.

I joined forces with three other software developers about 10 years ago and started a company. Our goal was to create and sell a Web-based help desk. Of course it consisted mostly of static pages with batch-processed content. Our Java app generated new pages overnight from a defect tracking database and allowed CSRs to enter all the information that managers required. Unfortunately, our Web application never caught on.

We thought we failed to capture the market because we were ahead of our time. A short time later, we concluded that the Internet was not a suitable medium to host our sort of application since a thin-client solution could never compete against client/server apps that did the same things in a much more user-friendly way. Eden Communications, Inc. however, has now proven that we were wrong in deducing our reasons for failure.

IT PowerPAC WS Service Management Suite (ITPP WS), a thin-client help desk by Eden, has an impressive user interface by any standards. Even more impressive to WebSphere fans is that the system was created using WSAD and runs on either WAS 5.1 or WAS Express. It also runs compatibly with all the major database systems including MySQL.

IT PowerPAC WS goes far beyond the rudimentary Web-based help desk we created a decade ago. It is actually five related applications integrated into one. The entire system has a consistent look and feel and information can be shared smoothly between applications.

The first application is an incident manager, otherwise known as a help desk (see Figure 1). From here, users can log and respond to help tickets from customers. Help tickets submitted by phone or e-mail can be routed to an appropriate specialist or team, or automatically solved at first contact.

The incident management page is a gateway to the other functions of the system and facilitates automatic e-mail notification to technicians or teams, routing, reassignment, and escalation of a problem. In the course of these actions, database elements pertaining to resource and asset management, along with problem management, are updated.

The next tab on the main page takes a user to the problem management function. Here users can track defects as well as initiate and track change requests/upgrades. This functionality provides an integrated solution for the Quality Assurance crew since fixes and upgrades can be routed for QA verification.

Other tabs on the incident management page are asset management where users track location and status of software and hardware; resource management where users schedule time and people to work on fixing bugs, making enhancements, or closing out help tickets; and a knowledge base that includes bulletins, SLAs, reference material on products and services. In addition, the system includes role-based administration functions that allow extensive system customization.

The key to making any system comfortable for users is supporting reconfiguration to fit needs and preferences. ITPP WS goes beyond allowing customization - the system encourages it. Each user can customize his or her personal dashboard, as shown in Figure 2. They can choose the information they want to display and where the information is displayed on the dashboard.

ITPP WS was built to be flexible, so the initial setup might be considered intensive because there are many choices that have to be made by the administrator before the application is ready for production. The tool addresses this by leading users through the initial process and also providing an Administrator's Guide. In addition, Eden (of course) offers on-site training.

If users are not satisfied with any of the many (150+) canned reports available, they can use the built-in report editor to create new ones, as shown in Figure 3. Users can specify the data items to view along with sorting and grouping.

In the admin view, users with sufficient privilege can load user records from an existing lightweight directory access protocol (LDAP) connection (see Figure 4). An administrator can customize displays and forms, add customers, vendors, companies, technicians, and products supported. All drop-down lists, such as severity, priority, or defect are configurable. Users can also add services and products to be supported. All data entry forms are immediately validated, with the cursor moving automatically to the erroneous field.

Not only does IT PowerPAC WS have a consistent look and behavior, it automatically tracks relationships between the main functions. For example, an incident can be related to a software or hardware element and mesh with asset management. Assets such as hardware loaners, down systems, software patches, and licenses can all be tracked in relation to incidents and resources

The knowledge base tab facilitates searching documents related to software products, versions, patches, and fixes, as well as Service Level Agreements. To help technicians solve and route help tickets, the system presents detailed individual or company profiles including a history of problems solved and corresponding help tickets. Techs can immediately reference all SLAs relating to a ticket and take appropriate action.

Most of us have experienced calling customer support, and after a significant wait, find out that the CSR answering the call cannot solve our problem, but offers to have a more expert CSR call later. The sad thing is, this is often unnecessary. It has been proven that 40 percent of problems can be fixed at triage since fixes have already been formulated for similar problems at least once before, or solutions can be looked up easily in product documentation.

This is where ITPP WS's Auto Solve feature comes in (see Figure 5). Keywords in the problem description are automatically searched to find similar problem descriptions that have already been solved. This makes CSRs look brilliant and customers happier.

It is an interesting fact that 20-40 percent of problems are either so well known or so simple that they are solved without an incident report being opened, yet the statistics for these incidents need to be known for management purposes. To overcome this problem ITPP WS provides Fast Tickets that can be generated immediately via defined templates (see Figure 6).

IT PowerPAC WS's knowledge base is well integrated with the other features in the system. Detailed customer information, including Service Level Agreements, is immediately available for users seeking to solve customer problems. The knowledge base also supports an FAQ and bulletins, along with reference material on products and services. Service bulletins are automatically searched and each can have a distribution list associated with it.

From a management perspective, IT PowerPAC WS tracks progress on a help ticket and provides a non-editable audit trail of tasks and activities. In addition, there are a number of statistical reports available as well as the ability to create custom reports. Managers will also like the system's ability to track the time associated with solving a problem.

Eden plans to build a WebSphere Portal-based version for April 2005. Other features planned are support for IP telephony and additional IT project management. They will also be enhancing the product's current project tasks management by surfacing resource data through Gantt charts and providing the ability to do resource-leveling.

IT PowerPAC WS is a pure J2EE application and can run on top of DB2, MYSQL, Oracle, or SQL Server. Security is handled via JAAS. Beyond being a very nice WebSphere-based IT services desk, IT PowerPAC WS is a fine example of what WebSphere technology can do to create a thin-client application that is as user friendly as a thick-client UI.

This, however, is not the reason service reps and technicians will like the product. They will like it because Eden has done something my partners and I didn't know how to do a decade ago: they made the help desk a problem-solving assistant rather than simply management overhead.