Help Desk Portal vs Service Desk: what is the difference?

In 2008 we released an application that allowed people without Targetprocess licenses to submit and track requests. It was called Help Desk Portal.

However, it eventually became obsolete in both UI and functionality, and it would have required too much effort to improve it. So, we decided to create a new software for external users, with a better user experience and feature set. We decided to call it Service Desk because it includes much more than just Help Desk functionality.

The first thing we had to do was match the functionality of our previous version of Help Desk, so that you don’t have to worry about making a decision on whether you want to sacrifice certain features in order get the newer version. Just like Help Desk, the Service Desk allows you to:

• submit public and private Issues, Ideas or Questions
• search and vote for them
• track the status of requests and related items
• add comments
• upload attachments

Activation and settings

Currently, On-Demand users can activate Service Desk from General Settings in Targetprocess, right under the old Help Desk configuration.

On-Premise customers can have it installed in two ways: either as an IIS application or a Docker container.

New functionality

General Settings

The page is available if you login as a Targetprocess user with administrator permissions. Here you can configure the ability to submit public requests, or to sign up or proceed as guest, we have also added some new ones. The most important addition is the ability to upload your own logo.

Projects and Custom fields

You can easily define which projects are available in Service Desk.

Here you can also enable which custom fields will be available to the requesters to see and fill. This can significantly increase the number of possible use cases and scenarios supported by the application.

Personal Settings

Requesters can now update your personal information and change your password. You can also upload an avatar which will be displayed in Targetprocess

Usability Improvements

• Project Filter - Unlike the old Help Desk, you can apply a filter to see requests from a particular project
• Description preview - you can now see part of the description directly on the request’s card which gives you a better idea of what the request is about. For those who prefer more compact view, it is possible to disable this.
• Last official reply - when opening the request you can quickly see the last comment submitted by someone in Targetprocess. It only appears if there are more than 5 comments, excluding replies
• Hierarchical Comment Trees - Just like in Targetprocess, you can have a structured discussion by replying to a particular comment.
• Login as a Targetprocess user - no need to sign up as a new requester if you have Targetprocess account
• You can now insert inline images using the Ctrl+V short-key, or just by dragging an image into a request's description or comments
• We don't show closed requests by default anymore, but it is optional