Setting up an online Help system: looking for suggestions

Pat Bensky (2/5/10 11:07AM)
Bruno LEGAY (2/5/10 6:50PM)


Pat Bensky (2/5/10 11:07 AM)

I want to set up an online Help system for our clients to use and am
looking
for suggestions. I'm not necessarily expecting a free solution
(although
that would be a bonus, of course) but I don't want a subscription-based
service.

Ideally, the system would:
- Allow people to search by phrase, "all" or "any" words
- Allow them to (optionally) search within a certain category - eg
Importing
data, Publishing data, etc.
- make it easy for them to contact us if they can't find an answer to
their
question
- Support ticket management

We don't need live chat or any fancy stuff like that.

This one looks like it would do the trick:
http://www.hesk.com/

Anybody use it, or have any other recommendations?

PB

Bruno LEGAY (2/5/10 6:50 PM)

Hi,

color><param>00000,08CF,D8CC/param>II want to set up an online Help
system for our clients to use and am  
looking
for suggestions. I'm not necessarily expecting a free solution  
(although
that would be a bonus, of course) but I don't want a subscription-
based
service.

Ideally, the system would:
- Allow people to search by phrase, "all" or "any" words
- Allow them to (optionally) search within a certain category - eg  
Importing
data, Publishing data, etc.
- make it easy for them to contact us if they can't find an answer  
to their
question
- Support ticket management

We don't need live chat or any fancy stuff like that.

This one looks like it would do the trick:
http://www.hesk.com/

Anybody use it, or have any other recommendations?
/color>
We have started to use wiki for online and collaborative help systems.  

This is great for documentation (I am a great believer in wikis).
Our idea was to have a "wiki" page for every page in your application.  

And we have a "help" button on the form wich opens the corresponding  
wiki page.
NOTE : we use a "map" defined in an xml file to map a page code to the  

page real name.
There are plenty of wikis to choose from.
We use JSPWiki running on Tomcat.

The other system is a bug tracking I guess.
I have not used Trac (http://trac.edgewall.org/), but it combines  
issue tracking and wiki (and it is free). Take a look at it and let us  

know what you decide.

On the commercial side, take a look at Atlassian produts (JIRA,  
Confluence).
http://www.atlassian.com/software/jira/

HTH
Bruno

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