ReadyDesk version 8.7 has been released and is available for download today. This latest version has some great new features.  Be sure and check out the new online demos and download the updated user manual.

Below is a short list of some of the enhancements in this release:

Redesigned Scheduling feature:  The scheduling feature is now independent of tickets.  This allows you to create schedules without the need to open a ticket.  Once a schedule has been created it can be associated with one or more tickets if you need to.  The outlook integration has been expanded and now uses iCalendar format, so the schedules can be imported into any system that supports the iCalendar format, including Google calendar.  New email templates have been added for customizing the new and updated schedule emails.

Navigation updates:  In previous versions, if you were working on a ticket or in a chat session and had typed a response, hitting backspace could cause the page to go back a page in the history if the focus changes from the text field to something else, resulting in a loss of everything you had been typing.  We have updated such pages to prevent the backspace key from being used for backward navigation, preventing loss of work.

Asynchronous Email:  When a technician updates a ticket the email notifications that are sent are now sent asynchronously.  This will greatly speed up ticket update times, especially for tickets with large email attachments.

Speech API:  The new HTML5 standard includes a speech API.  This allows for text to speech and speech recognition directly through the browser, with no special plug-ins required.  We have built both of these features into live chat.  When text to speech is turned on (it is off by default) the text the other party sends will be read out loud.  If you choose a non-English voice, such as Spanish, it will automatically speak the translated message.  Speech recognition allows you to speak into your computer's microphone and it will automatically enter the spoken words as text in the message field in live chat.  We have added some commands like "delete that" and "send message" for even less dependence on using the keyboard.  These features are very new, and should be considered experimental for the time being.  Google Chrome is currently the only browser that supports the HTML5 Speech API.  Firefox and Internet Explorer are said to be working on these features for their own future releases.

Web Services API:  ReadyDesk now comes with a Web Services API for integrating external applications with ReadyDesk.  You can use it for things like creating/retrieving/updating  tickets, customers, invoices, schedules, time entry, etc..  The simple to use API uses commands sent as parameters in a URL, and the output is available as URL Delimited, XML and JSON.  For security purposes an API key is required (which can be generated via the admin console) and you can also limit which IP addresses can interact with the service to prevent unauthorized use.

Data Push:  The ticket trigger rules have been expanded to push ticket data to an external URL.  This will allow you to send ticket data to another application in real time using a URL, and you can define which values are sent.  This is useful if you need to synchronize ticket data across multiple systems.

For existing customers, please note that a database upgrade IS required with this release.