Introduction#

Today (4th June 2017) we are pleased to announce the release of our new support portal service. We hope that this new service will make it much easier for you to get help, request new features, or report any issues with our apps or services.

Why We Developed the Support Portal##

For some time we've had a bug tracking system which has been fine, but was limited in its functionality. We prevented spam but required you to verify your email address before it went live, which seemed to prevent people from raising bugs, as there were several times when a bug was raised, but was then not verified. This is no longer a requirement, instead we use the new Google ReCaptcha to check that you are a human and not a bot trying to submit the form.

We also had cases where an issue was raised in the bug reporter, but it wasn't a bug, it was either a feature request, or just general help. Now there is a place to get general help, raise issues and request features. More information on this later.

Below we describe each section of the support portal and what you can expect to see in the future.

Support Tickets###

If you need help with one of our apps or services, you can raise a support ticket. Support tickets are visible to everyone on the website, so please don't post any sensitive information such as passwords or telephone numbers etc. The idea of the support ticketing system is that it is community based.

Users can up vote and down vote questions, see what questions have been asked and the community can also answer the question, i.e. our users can help other users. But don't worry, we're handing this off to the community and we're not going to be involved. We will also answer questions if an answer hasn't been provided, or if we can provide more information to an existing answer. You'll be able to see if it was answered by us as the answer will be labelled with "Boardies IT Solutions".

When the original reporter gets an answer which resolves or answers their question, they can then accept the answer - they are the only one that can accept the answer. (You will be required to enter your email address that you used to raise the ticket to confirm you are the original poster). However, if after some time, an answer hasn't been accepted, Boardies IT Solutions can override it if we feel that an answer provided is correct.

Feature Requests###

We strive to make our apps as functional and useful as possible. We also want to make sure that our apps and services do everything our users would want it to. Therefore, you can raise a feature request for an app or service. You can up vote or down vote feature requests and add comments. We will then take a look and investigate whether this is something that we can add to our app or service. You'll be able to check the status of the feature requests that will let you know what we are planning, i.e. has been added to our road map, we will not implement it or whether it has been released.

Issue Tracker###

As we may have already mentioned - we want to make great apps and although we do our best to ensure there are no faults in our apps or services, unfortunately, some will always get through. Therefore, if you find an issue with one of our apps or services, we want to know, so we can fix it as soon as possible. Issues can be marked as "Me Too" i.e. if a user reports a problem and someone else has the same problem, they can increment the "Me Too" counter instead of raising another issue. Issues can also be commented on to add more information or to provide a workaround to the community if you find one until we release a fix.

What's to Come?#

Although the support portal has been released, we're not done yet.

First of all, as mentioned above, the existing bug reporter sometimes had more of a question or a feature request then a bug. Currently all of the existing bugs from the old system has been imported into the new issue tracker, but we will be going through them and migrating them to the relevant section of the new support portal.

We are already working on a new version that will include a knowledge base. The knowledge base will include user manuals and, where relevant, installation instructions for all of our apps and services, as well as an FAQ (Frequently Asked Questions).

We would love to know what you think of this new support portal, so please let us know, and of course, if you want to see something added to the support or find an issue - raise it via, you guessed it, the support portal.