Web App: Juvely

As James announced yesterday, in 20 days time (eeek), we are planning to launch the first beta version of Juvely. In this post I am going to go over what features will be available with this beta, what we still need to do, and what we are going to do to help the beta.

For now with this version of the beta we are going to just have the ticket section functional. The knowledge base section is mostly done, but needs a redesign and the chat section hasn’t even been started. The ticket section is the main bit though, so we think this will be alright. We are going to make a few minor changes to this to get it finished off (mainly just changing text around to make it clearer) and also add a couple of settings pages. The beta will be free so we don’t need to worry about billing or different types of account just yet.

Here are a list of features we hope to have available for the first beta:

• Users can create tickets by accessing the support centre or sending an email to the support address.
• Staff members can then reply to these tickets, change the priority, reassign them or close them.
• Users will recieve an email reply when a staff member replies to a ticket, and can then reply by email or by accessing the support centre.
• Staff members can opt to recieve an email when users reply to a ticket, otherwise it will be shown at the top of the ticket list as being updated.
• Tickets in the staff centre can be filtered by various options and also ordered by various fields.
• Tickets can be searched or live filtered by entering terms into the relavent boxes.
• Users and staff members can subscribe to RSS feeds of their tickets.
• The support centre that users access can be customised, and by default is a white label system. No Juvely logos or any mention (execpt for T&Cs and other legal mumbo jumbo). You will be able to customise this and add your own company logo.
• A smart, simple and elegant user interface that uses modern techniques such as AJAX to enhance the page, but not restrain usability.

In the near future we also plan to add SMS replies, but at the moment we still need to look more into it and the best way of charging for its use.

Right that is what we are going to have for Juvely, so let me also tell you what we are going to have to help the beta along. First of all we are going to get a proper website for Juvely rather than just a holding page. James is working on it as we speak trying to decide what design to use. He is also going to put together a press package with various info on Juvely so interested parties don’t have to trawl through the blog. We will also probably be moving to the MediaTemple DV (Dedicated Virtual) server as their GS (Grid Server) system sucks….. (see comments below)

To enable us to get feedback on the beta and for users to get support we will be putting in links to non entrusive forms that enable us to send us a message. We will also be setting up a forum for users to discuss any issues they are having, this will probably not require registration so you don’t need to remember yet another username and password. On the day of the launch we were thinking about setting up a Campfire room so that if anyone has any questions they can easily get in touch with us.

As things progress we will go more into detail about what we are doing so keep watching!