THE ECONOMY 

In tough economic times both businesses and individuals have to buckle down and tighten their budgets.   An individual may choose to switch their telephone service to a less expensive carrier, eliminate their home phone altogether or forgo that $5 latte at Starbucks and settle for a cup out of the community office pot.

   
Businesses facing these challenges must react with the same decisiveness in order to cut their costs and stay competitive.  If your supervisor comes to you and asks you to cut 10% of your IT budget next year where are the savings going to come from?

  
If you're using a solution other than Mouse Tracks I strongly urge you to take another look at the product.  Since late last year we've released Mouse Tracks 2007, Mouse Tracks 2007 6.5, Mouse Tracks Web and many other updates to the suite.  The value/price ratio of Mouse Tracks is second to none.  In fact we've had many customers who have switched from higher priced packages not because Mouse Tracks was less expensive but because it is a superior product!

   
If you're not using Help Desk software in your IT group you definitely should get a package.  When your supervisor is thinking of cutting cost the last thing you want is for that cost to be you (or a fellow colleague).  Mouse Tracks will help account for your value to your organization.  When your boss wonders what you've been doing the past three months you can simply run a report and show him the 200+ problems you've solved.   Not using Help Desk software in your IT department is the equivalent of not using accounting software in your finance department.  These are must have tools that neither department should be without.

If your budget is spent this year remember to take a look at us in 2009.  Remember when comparing products & pricing that all of our prices include 1 year or support and maintenance.   If you're already a Mouse Tracks user do not forget to budget for your annual maintenance.  Staying current on maintenance is more cost effective than purchasing upgrades as they're released and assures you continuous access to technical support and upgrades.

IN DEVELOPMENT 

Rather than letting you know what might be included in the 2009 release in this newsletter I'll focus on what already has been completed.

 
Help Desk Status Field

In the 2009 release we've changed the 'Resolved' field to 'Ticket Status'.  Ticket Statuses in Mouse Tracks 2009 can be of type Open, Closed, or Pending.  You can define your own status fields and assign them one of these values.  For example you could create a status named 'Waiting on 3rd Party' and assign it the 'Pending' value.  You could also create an 'Escalated' choice and assign it the 'Open' value.

   
Attachment Manager

In the current version of Mouse Tracks you need to know what record has attachments assigned in order to find the attached file in the database.  Mouse Tracks 2009 will let you find these records by browsing attachments and then viewing the parent record.

 
Access Levels

In addition to giving users access to a particular Mouse Tracks module you can now define the access level to the module.  The New Access Levels available are:  No Access, Restricted Access, Normal Access, and Full Access.  You can also choose whether or not the Mouse Tracks User has 'Delete Permissions'.   These access levels can restrict or enable whether or not a user has the rights to add records to related tables and whether or not the user can view items they do not 'own'.  You are no longer faced with the choice to give a user all or nothing access to a particular Mouse Tracks module.

Documentation, Documentation, Documentation 

Since our original release of Mouse Tracks version 1 back in 1998 the documentation module has been available.  Some of our customers have mentioned that the documentation module doesn't feel integrated like the rest of the application modules.   In Mouse Tracks 2009 the documentation module has received a major overhaul.  Documents now support the attachments feature like the other Mouse Tracks modules.  In addition documents can be related to any Mouse Tracks Inventory item.  This allows for the powerful ability of shared documents within Mouse Tracks.  For example you could now create a document record named 'HP Server Model XYZ Docs'.  Within this record you could include a pack of electronic documents that are relevant to this server.  You can then easily associate this document record with all of your HP Servers.   The documents module has still maintained its prior abilities to track items such as books, training materials, DVDs, etc...