m-Power Demo Video Series: How to create a helpdesk portal
The m-Power Development Platform is a low-code development platform that lets you create enterprise-class web applications without coding. The m-Power Demo Video Series takes you on a deep dive into m-Power's build process, walking you through a start-to-finish development project.
In this video, we create a custom helpdesk portal from scratch. A project like this would easily take weeks using manual coding, but we complete the whole thing in under 2 hours. This video walks you through the project from start to finish, and explains each step along the way.
Don't have time to watch the whole video?
We've broken the video up into steps for those who don't have time to watch the whole thing from start to finish. You can filter the videos by topic and select one of the options below to view a specific step in the build process.
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Step-by-Step Videos
Introduction
In the first video in this series, we introduce you to the m-Power Development Platform and explain the helpdesk portal we're about to create.
Step 1: Demo
In step 1 of this video series, we go through a demo of the helpdesk portal we're about to create.
Step 2: Internal Data Dictionary
In step 2 of this video series, we create the data dictionary for our project. A data dictionary is a working environment within m-Power. You can register database tables to a data dictionary and build applications over them.
Step 3: Creating database tables
In part 3 of this video series, we begin creating the helpdesk portal. In this step, we create the 3 database tables we'll need for the project: The Customer Table, the Contacts Table, and the Tickets Table.
Step 4: Register Database Tables
In step 4 of this video series, we register an existing database table to our data dictionary. When registered to the data dictionary, we can use that table in our applications.
Step 5: User security setup
In step 5 of this video series, we enable security and create a couple of users for the internal side of our portal. With security enabled, only registered users can login to our applications.
Step 6: Build the customer management app
In step 6 of this video series, we create an application to list and manage our customers. Because it uses a 'maintainer' template, this application can read and write to the database.
Step 7: Build the contacts management app
In step 7 of this video series, we create an application to list and manage customer contacts. Customer contacts can login to the customer-facing side of the portal to submit and view their support tickets.
Step 8: Customize the contacts app
In step 8 of this video series, we customize the contacts application using m-Painter. m-Painter is m-Power's visual editor. It lets you customize the look/feel of your apps, add charts, maps, and much more.
Step 9: States dropdown list
In step 9 of this video series, we create a dropdown list over our states table. This will let users select a state from a dropdown list, rather than typing in the state abbreviation.
Step 10: Connect our applications
In step 10 of this video series, we create a parent/child relationship between our two applications. This will tie these two applications together, allowing us to drill down from the customer application to the contact application.
Step 11: Customize the mobile view
In step 11 of this video series, we check out the mobile view and make a small change. m-Power creates responsive applications that automatically adapt to tablets and smartphones.
Step 12: Building a helpdesk calendar
In step 12 of this video series, we create the helpdesk calendar application. The helpdesk calendar will let our support team manage support tickets using a calendar interface.
Step 13: Build the lookup window
In step 13 of this video series, we create a lookup window for the helpdesk calendar. The lookup window will display a popup window with all of our contacts so employees can select a contact associated with the support ticket.
Step 14: Set up email notifications
In step 14 of this video series, we create an automated email notification using m-Power's Workflow Designer. The email notification will automatically get sent to the contact once their ticket status has changed to 'close'.
Step 15: Setup the internal menu
In step 15 of this video series, we set up an internal menu for our helpdesk employees. This menu gives our helpdesk employees easy access to all of the applications we've built so far.
Step 16: Create the external dictionary
In step 16 of this video series, we set up our extranet dictionary. We'll use this dictionary to build all of our customer-facing applications.
Step 17: Setup multi-tenant security
In step 17 of this video series, we create a multi-tenant/row-level security object. This will let us secure our customer-facing applications at the row level, so each customer can only see their own data.
Step 18: Customer portal
In step 18 of this video series, we create the landing page for our customer portal. This is the page that customers will see once they have logged into the portal.
Step 19: Support ticket submission application
In step 19 of this video series, we create the ticket submission application. This application lets customers submit support tickets to our helpdesk.
Step 20: Ticket notification emails
In step 20 of this video series, we set up a new ticket notification workflow. Whenever a new ticket is submitted, our helpdesk employees will now receive an email with the ticket information.
Step 21: Ticket statuses
In step 21 of this video series, we set up a way to quickly change ticket statuses. This will let customers easily close their tickets or reopen tickets if needed.
Step 22: Open vs. closed ticket report
In step 22 of this video series, we create an open vs. closed ticket report. We'll use this report's graph in our dashboard once we create the next report.
Step 23: Tickets by user report
In step 23 of this video series, we create a report that visualizes the amount of tickets submitted per user. We'll also use this report's graph in our dashboard, which we'll create next.
Step 24: Build the helpdesk dashboard
In step 24 of this video series, we create a dashboard for our customers. The dashboard is using the graphs that we just made in the previous two steps.