InstantKB 2011
SELF SERVICE CUSTOMER SUPPORT
Help your customers help themselves
- Publish & maintain articles, FAQs & product documentation
- Share downloads, step-by-step guides & company procedures
- Manage, route & prioritize customer questions or enquires
- Offer live suggestoins as customers compose questions
- Extend via custom form fields, content types & tabs
- Create custom workflows to control content & question life cycles
InstantKB allows companies to quickly provide a branded, web-based knowledgebase containing articles, documentation & FAQs to help your customers, employees or partners.
In addition the integrated contact form allows customers to submit questions if the answer does not already exist in your knowledgebase.
Be there for your customers anywhere, anytime
Provide instant access to all your company knowledge, documentation & support materials around the clock through a centralized, organized, searchable branded knowledgebase. Let your customers find the answers they need when they need them increasing customer satisfaction and reducing your inbound support.
Help your customers find the answers they need
InstantKB is optimized to ensure your content if public can easily be indexed by all popular search engines. This ensures your customers can find the information they need within your knowledgebase from a general web search. URLs are human-friendly, descriptive and keyword-rich increasing the relevancy of your page within search engines.
It’s all about great content
A helpful knowledgebase is only as good as it’s content. For this reason we’ve made it easy to create articles within InstantKB. Our familiar rich text editor allows you to create formatted articles with no HTML experience. To help ensure a consistent, polished look across all your articles InstantKB offers features such as HTML templates, global article CSS styles, inline spell checking & HTML validation.
The answer is not always there – what then
Not to worry. If a question or problem is not addressed in your knowledgebase your customers can submit a question through InstantKB. If our live suggest results don’t’ help your customer can submit the question allowing your support staff to respond to the question. Once the customer is happy with your answer you can optionally publish the answer within your knowledgebase to help others and avoid the same question again in the future.
Engage & let your customers help build your knowledge
InstantKB allows you to add comments for any article within your knowledgebase. Customers will often discover issues or caveats whilst working through your documentation and often this knowledge is lost. InstantKB allows you to capture this customer knowledge through comments. Other users can up (or down) vote user submitted comments. If a user comment receives a configurable number of up-votes the comment will be highlighted so it stands out below your article.
Central search across all your knowledge
Search all your knowledgebase articles including attachments, tags & user submitted comments. InstantKB offers relevancy ranked search results ensuring the most relevant results always appear at the very top of your search. InstantKB can index and search all your Microsoft Office documents as well as many other common file types’ out-the-box. You can also extend the InstantKB search capability through the use of 3rd party ifilters to search other file types such as PDF documents or CHM help files.
Improve discoverability of your content
Organize & improve the discoverability of your content through categories & content tags. We’ve made it super simple to create & manage your categories through our AJAX enabled tree-view control. Staff members can add or organize categories directly within the tree view control by right clicking any category to access the content menu containing options to sort the category or quickly add child categories. Our auto-completing tag feature will suggest existing tags as you type new tags ensuring consistent tags across all your content.
Capture unique knowledge using tabs & content types
InstantKB offers an innovative, unique custom tab feature allowing you to extend and add your own custom content types within InstantKB. As an administrator you can create any number of custom tabs to capture unique data. For example you may wish to create a unique tab to capture and manage feedback such as bug reports or feature suggestions from your customers.
Customize all your content forms
Our powerful AJAX based forms designer allows you too customize the data entry forms used to create or edit articles within InstantKB. You can hide any of the default fields provided with InstantKB if they are not relevant to your business or more importantly you can add your own unique custom fields to capture data specific to your business.
Capture all your unique data using custom fields
InstantKB offers support for over 13 custom field types allowing you to easily capture unique knowledge or meta-data within your articles. For example you may wish to add a custom product drop down list to your articles allowing your authors to select a relevant product when creating or editing articles. You can optionally display any custom fields you define alongside your articles within your knowledgebase front-end.
Automate your publishing & content approval lifecycle
InstantKB boosts a powerful workflow engine allowing you to create custom workflows for content approval. Workflows consist of a series of steps designed to mimic your existing approval or business processes. Workflows can be used to automatically notify staff members when content is placed into specific workflow steps and require action. Setup change actions to automate your data (status, priority, access) as it’s moved through the various workflow steps.
Role based security for all tabs, categories & content
Security trimmed results throughout InstantKB ensure users & staff members only have access to the tabs, categories & content administrators allow. Associate multiple member groups with any tab or category. The content within that tab or category will only be visible & accessible if the current user also belongs to one or more of the member groups associated with your tab or category. This allows you to tailor the visible tabs, categories and articles to unique groups of users within InstantKB.
Control over the features available to your users and staff
As an administrator within InstantKB you can customize or create permission sets to control the options available to both regular users (the users who will consume your content) and staff members (the users who will create your content). For example you can use permission sets to show or hide comments for regular users or limit your staff members to specific fields when creating content. There are hundreds of options available allowing you to precisely control exactly how your knowledgebase is presented.
Someo of the support centers built upon InstantKB
We’ve worked with thousands of companies to deliver engaging, customized online support portals.
You can see a few examples below. If we can help your business please contact us.
Dedicated admin control panel ensures complete control
As an administrator InstantKB provides unparalleled administration control. Create member groups to control access to tabs, categories & content within your knowledgebase. Define the fields & functionality visible to users through permission sets. Create staff departments and permission sets to control over the content, workflows & options available to staff.
Customizable Look & Feel
InstantKB comes with an incredible flexible skinning system allowing your developers & designers to fully brand and customize your knowledgebase to fit perfectly into your existing web site or intranet. You can use standard ASP.NET master-pages to quickly wrap your existing design around InstantKB or customize our documented CSS to change colours, fonts and layout.
Complete Cross Browser Support
InstantKB produces light-weight, strict HTML 5 & CSS 3.0 W3C validated mark-up. InstantKB has been tested on all major browsers to offer complete desktop and mobile cross-browser support.
Extend InstantKB through custom plug-ins
InstantKB provides a robust plug-in framework allowing developer’s to add additional functionality without modifying the core code. This allows you to keep your InstantKB installation right up to date without worrying about losing your medications. For example if you wanted to capture unique data during registration you can use our custom registration form plug-in to capture this data. When we release an update to the core product your plug-in will continue to work and you won't need to re-apply any custom changes to InstantKB.
Visual Studio 2012 Ready
InstantKB will work great with either the latest Visual Studio 2012 or Visual Studio 2010 IDEs. Express editions & LightSwitch are also supported. Developers can modify or customize InstantKB from within there favourite development environment.
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All Features
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Incredible Flexibility
Create your own custom tabs to capture any unique knowledge
Customize or create your own forms to collect data within tabs
Apply custom workflows to articles or data within any custom tab
Easily adaptable to track issues, defects or product features
Security & Control
Control the tabs, categories & content visible & accessible through member groups
Use staff departments to control the workflows & editing options available to staff
Create custom workflows to control content approval or track issues & defects
Control features & editing options for both users & staff through permission sets
Flexible member group security modal. Supports multiple staff & administrator groups
Powerful Search
Standard TSQL & SQL Server full-text (contains, freetext) support out the box
Search attachments (Office, Text, HTML etc) with SQL Server 2008 & full-text enabled
Search additional attachments content types such as PDF or CHM using extensible iFilters
Ranked, security trimmed, AJAX enabled search results ensure quick, relevant results
Optionally allow member groups to also search user submitted comments & tags
Dynamic RSS feeds for all search results. Get notified when new content is available.
Knowledgebase Articles
Easily create, control, maintain & share knowledgebase articles
Organize articles within a familiar windows explorer style AJAX enabled treeview
Add any number of file attachments, content tags & related links to articles
Allow eponymous & registered members to comment & rate articles
Easily send articles by email, bookmark articles or share using social bookmarks
Troubleshooter Guides
Create an interactive series of articles to guide users through specific problems
Effortlessly build your troubleshooter step structure through our AJAX enabled treeview
All the features available within articles are also available for troubleshooter guides
Downloads
Organize & control access to your digital media or product downloads
Password protect or restrict access to downloads through permission sets & member groups
Store files directly within SQL for enhanced security checks - no direct URL to downloads
All the features available within articles are also available for downloads
Glossary
Create & maintain a glossary of terms for common terminology used within your company
Staff members can easily add, edit or delete entries from the glossary through the Staff CP
AJAX enabled allowing users to navigate your entire glossary without a single postback
Tags
Tag any content within your knowledgebase helping improve discoverability
Provide web 2.0 tag clouds allowing users to quickly explore your content
Easily remember & reuse common tags with auto-completing tag text boxes
Dynamic RSS feeds are available for all tags. User can get notified when new content is available matching a specific tag
Attachments
Upload & associate file attachments to any content within InstantKB.NET
Search Office, HTML & Text based attachments with SQL Server 2005 & full text enabled
Define the allowed attachments within any tab & set storage limits using permissions
Access can be controlled for each tab & member group using permission sets
AJAX enabled file upload mechanism for staff members
Member Permissions & Groups
Permission sets allows you to control features for each member group within each tab
Associate permission sets with entire member groups or individual members
Associate multiple member groups with members to control the visible content
Associate member groups with tabs, categories & content to control group access
Staff Permissions & Departments
Control the editing options available within the staff CP through staff permission sets
Associate staff permissions with entire staff departments or individual staff members
Allow separate teams or departments to work separately on there own content
Associate workflows with staff departments to control access to available workflows
Multiple staff member groups allow you to separate your staff into multiple member groups allowing you to further control the categories staff can modify and create content within
Member comments & Recognition System
Allow users to add comments to content, all completely configurable with permission sets
Comments marked as helpful a specific number of times will be automatically highlighted
Content that receives a specific number of comments will automatically be marked as hot
As members contribute & rate other members comments recognition points are awarded
Define the number of points awarded to members for specific actions within InstantKB.NET
Member levels will increase based directly on the number of recognition points
Dynamic RSS Feeds
Live RSS feeds are available for all tabs, search results, comments & Tags
Subscribe to search results or specific tags through RSS. Get notified within your RSS client when new content is published matching your search critiria or tag
Staff members can subscribe to feeds to show content assigned to them (as it moves through workflow) or show content within a specific workflow step or status
Staff Control Panel
The dedicated Staff CP provides your knowledge experts complete control over content
Manage content, categories, glossary terms, members & user submitted comments
Administrators can use member groups, staff departments & permission sets to control the content, categories, workflows & editing options available to staff within the Staff CP
Administrator Control Panel
Manage every aspect of your knowledgebase through our comprehensivfe Admin CP
Manage tabs, field templates, custom fields, member & staff permissions, workflows, views, members, member groups, staff departments, application settings & much more
View reports for content within any tab by status workflow or staff member
Custom Tabs
Create your own custom knowledgebase, troubleshooter or download tab
Control which tabs are visible & accessible to specific member groups
Define custom content types (bugs, features, issues, work-items etc) within tabs.
Apply custom workflows to data within tabs to control the flow of articles or issues
Customize existing forms or design your own form with unique fields to capture & share unique data within any tab
Field Templates
Field templates allow you to customize & or create forms for use within InstantKB
Customize the default field templates to show only the fields important to you
Add custom fields to default field templates to capture unique data
Build your own field templates with custom fields for capturing defect, issues & workitems
Easily rearrange & group fields, hide fields, set default values, enforce fields etc
Create multiple forms for use at specific workflow steps - capture approval feedback etc
Custom Fields
Start capturing any unique data within minutes using custom fields
14 different field types ensures you can capture & display any custom data
Custom fields can be added to any tab you create within InstantKB.NET
Easily create multiple select fields (radiobuttonlists, checkboxlists, selectboxes etc)
Create required fields to ensure specific meta data is always provided
Define optional regular expression validation for textbox fields
Custom Workflows
Build powerful custom workflows to control content approval or track issues & workitems
Create custom workflows for working with content within any tab
Create multiple workflows & control access to specific workflows through staff departments
Define edit permissions, automatic change actions & notifications for each workflow step
Apply automatic change actions to any field when content is moved to a workflow step
Customize the available fields when working with data at any specific workflow step
Control the next available workflow steps & optionally enforce or disable workflow
Custom Data Views
Customize the default fields within the various datagrids used within InstantKB.NET
Customize the fields & metadata displayed alongside content through permission sets
Display custom fields within any datagrid or alongside content within InstantKB.NET
Customize the default sort column, order and records displayed per page for any datagrid
Search Engine Friendly, Guessable URLs
Support for basic & search engine friendly virtual URL rewriting.
Include content titles within URL's to help improve search engine ranking
Intuitive, guessable URL structure
AJAX Enabled User Interface
AJAX based interface reducing client postbacks
Lighting quick AJAX based treeview control supporting thousands of categories
AJAX enabled datagrids allow you to page & sort data without the need for postbacks
Developed inline & takes advantage of the Microsoft ASP.NET AJAX Extensions 1.0
Standards & Accessability Compliant
Strict XHTML 1.1 W3C validated semantic markup
CSS 2.1 W3C validated style sheets
Web 2.0 fluid CSS based layout - no nested tables, screen reader friendly
Confirms to W3C web accessability guidelines 1.0 & section 508 guidelines
Cross Browser Compatible
Tested with Internet Explorer 6+, FireFox 2+, Opera 9+
There are known layout issues with IE8 beta & Safari 3.1 which are working to address
Multi-Lingual
Localize every aspect of InstantKB (UI, Email Templates, Dictionary)
Drag & Drop Language Packs (automatically detected, no configuration required)
Easily change any text displayed within InstantKB.NET through a single XML file
Skinning & Template Driven
Portable skinning model
Each skin can have a completely unique layout and visual appearance
Drag and Drop Skins (automatically detected, no configuration required)
Allow users to choose between skins or set a default blobal skin
Each skin provides a standard ASP.NET 2.0 masterpage allowing quick design integration
High Performance
Designed from the ground-up for massive performance & scalability
Customizable data caching (greatly reducing database trips)
Parameterized stored procedures, Well designed tables, optimized indexes & fk constraints
Strongly typed data objects & data collections (No heavy, slow System.Data.DataSet)
High perofmance paging algorithm supporting hundreds of thousands of pages
Email queuing system, emails are queued and polled in the background at set intervals
100% compiled, managed .NET assemblies (No COM or other dependences)
AJAX enabled UI ensuring data is loaded on demand helping reducing client postbacks
Highly Scalable
Unique SQL Server based state management (no session or application objects)
Well defined architecture (separate presentation, application & data layers)
Takes advantage of data caching & AJAX to minimize database requests
Well Designed
Object Orientated VB.NET code, strongly typed objects & collections
Takes advantage of many familar ASP.NET techniques (forms authentication, masterpages)
Implements many design patterns (singleton objects, data factory, facade objects)
Takes advantage of our InstantASP.Common base libraries
Enhanced error handling, receive emails for errors or log exceptions to a file or event log
Developer Friendly
Integrates with Microsoft® Visual Studio.NET 2010 or 2012 (solution file provided)
Supports SQL Server 2000, 2005 & 2008 / 2008 R2 (and express editions)
Intuitive API with intellisense support within Microsoft® Visual Studio.NET
Fully commented, clean, eloquent code using many familar design patterns
Unique naming convention used for database stored procedures & tables reducing conflicts
Full product source code provided with Developer Licenses
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- Live Demo
- PDF Brochure
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Technical Details
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Our products are written in strongly typed, object orientated 100% managed.NET code
Programming Language: VB.NET
Developed using ASP.NET 3.5 web forms
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Our products are written in strongly typed, object orientated 100% managed.NET code
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System Requirements
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Web Server
Windows 2000, 2003, 2008, XP Professions, Visa / Windows 7 Home Premium or above (32 or 64-bit)
.NET Framework 2.0, 3.0, 3.5, 3.5 SP1 or 4.0
Internet Information Services (IIS) 6 or IIS 7 (Classic or Integrated Application Pools)
Database Server
Microsoft® SQL Server 2008 / 2008 R2, 2005 or 2000
SQL Server Express Editions are also supported
Development Tools
In order to modify source code within our products we would recommend Visual Studio. Both Microsoft® Visual Studio.NET 2010 or 2012 are supported. Visual Studio is not required to customize the look & feel, create new skins or modify the HTML contained within the MasterPage.Master file. Visual Studio.NET 2010 / 2012 are only recommended if you intend to modify the product source code.
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About InstantASP
We develop market-leading ASP.NET community & customer support apps. We help businesses of all sizes build engaging online communities and deliver exceptional customer support. Our community app, InstantForum allows you to quickly add rich social features & branded discussions to your existing web site. Our self-service support portal InstantKB is designed to help reduce inbound customer support by allowing you to quickly & easily publish articles, FAQs & documentation to help your customers. Our forthcoming Influx product currently in beta allows businesses to manage, prioritize & respond to inbound customer support enquires received via email, phone or the web.
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