In March 2011 the JED hit 7000 listings.  Now, half way to 8000, we are announcing a major change and improvement to the JED.  It's my pleasure to introduce the JED Support System.  With over a quarter million registered users in the JED, providing support is the primary use of volunteer time.  In the latest blog, we outlined a few areas of improvements that we would be working on over the coming months.  One of these areas was a new ticket support system.  After nearly two years going back and forth between what we wanted for the teams, end users and management, we have come up with a solution that goes far beyond standard ticket support and includes a Knowledge Base, Announcement Panel, Download and Sample Repository, task calendaring, integration with Mosets Tree and ArtofUser and more!

So Where Is It?

The new support portal is located currently only on the JED.  You can access it by clicking here or on the "Listing Support" link on the bottom left of the JED menu.  Eventually, all tickets across each directory/site will end up archived on my.joomla.org to provide cross-team access to support.

Who is it for?

Any user with a current or new listing and in general, any user of the JED that needs access to team support.  From today foward, all communication regarding listings or accounts on the JED will go through this ticket support system.  If you email the team, you will receive a response asking you to submit a ticket.  This helps us track requests and fulfill them as quickly as possible.  Please note, Reporting of Reviews and Listings will still be handled through the standard Report buttons and not the ticket support system at this time.

What software is used?

After much testing, the JED under oversight of the CLT chose MaQma Helpdesk.  A very special thanks to Pedro Goncalves for his dediecation to this project and for a great product.  New features and improvements are still being developed that will even further enahnce the system we have now.

Where did the idea come from?

Back in 2009 Elin Waring, then president of OSM, came up with the idea that it would be beneficial to the community and working groups if there was a system in place to monitor communication and proactively respond to recurring issues.  At the time, a mixture of CiviCRM and JForce was being developed.  However, as with many things in life, things changes.  As with many things in software, the problems we are trying to solve today may be completely different tomorrow.  The initial team of Jennifer Mariott, Toni Marie, Louis Landry and others were the thought leaders that put this into motion.  For that, the JED Team and CLT wish to thank everyone involved in moving this initative foward.

What softwares were tested?

A primary concern was to use an extension already made for the Joomla platform.  We tested JForce, Billets, RSTicketsPro and even a few other non-Joomla (but open source) software packages.  Our sincere thanks to the developers of these products for allowing us to test and ask questions.

What is planned next?

The next phase will be cross-site support search for the teams, Trademark Application Integration and mobile support/applications.  From there, a redesign of the JED Listing Details page is on the front burner (look for a blog post in the next few days!)  Additionally, many more Knowledgebase Articles are coming soon along with centralized JED Documentation.  This new system provides a way for us to streamline this process and make it easier to search for answers.

The JED Team looks foward to using this new system and in a few months we'll be able to report back statistics on the number and type of support requests we receive which will help further define the future of the JED!