Software Update: Mouse Tracks 2009 7.0

Mouse Tracks is a Windows application with which a helpdesk and goods management administration can be set up. For example, help desk tickets with the required resolution times and work groups can be kept up to date, computer inventories can be made including an overview of the available software licenses and various relationships can be established between all components for generating reports. For an overview of the different editions and their possibilities, we refer you to this page. The developers of Gritware released Mouse Tracks 2009 a few days ago. The continuous version number, if the changing year designation is not taken into account, is set at 7.0 and includes the following announcement:

Mouse Tracks 2009 (version 7) is a major upgrade. The 2009 version adds many major features while maintaining its intuitive “keep it simple” interface. Listed below are the highlights of the new features in Mouse Tracks 2009.

Major new features:

• Updated Mouse Tracks Permissions
  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. A ‘Mouse Tracks Web’ Access option has also been added that allows you to grant/deny access to the web interface.
• Expanded Documentation Module
  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 Docs’. Within this record you could include a pack of electronic documents that are relevant to all servers of this type. 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 and DVDs.
• Help Desk Status Field
  The ‘Resolved’ field has changed 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 or you could create an ‘Escalated’ choice and assign it the ‘Open’ value.
• Active Directory Synchronization Module
  No longer will you need to repeat the tedious task of adding a user to Mouse Tracks when you add a user to your domain. Simply run the synchronization module and the program will make sure all of your AD users (filterable via LDAP Query) are valid user accounts within Mouse Tracks. In addition to importing the users, other information is also synchronized with the account. First Name, Last Name, Phone Number, Pager Number, Cellular Number, Title, Department and Notes are all pulled into the Mouse Tracks database when you run the synchronization.
• Automated SMTP Email Notifications
  We received quite a bit of feedback suggesting that the Windows Client behave more like Mouse Tracks Web in regards to email notifications. We listened and automated Emails from the Windows Client have been implemented. The prior functionality of being able to manually initiate emails is still available.
• Active Directory Authentication to Mouse Tracks Web
  The new version of Mouse Tracks Web allows your end-users and technicians to logon to the Help Desk Interface using their Active Directory User ID’s and passwords. Combined with the Active Directory Synchronization feature the administrative overhead of your Mouse Tracks database will be greatly reduced.
• Mouse Tracks Web 7.0 Released
  This new version of Mouse Tracks Web is compatible with Mouse Tracks 2009.

Minor new features:

• All child container forms (non-modal) can now be maximized and minimized. This prevents the prior awkward behavior of a form restoring itself when a non-maximizable form was shown. Detail forms will now show as maximized when the application work space itself is maximized.
• An attachment management form has been added. In previous versions you needed to know what record had attachments assigned in order to find the attached file in the database. Mouse Tracks 2009 will let you find these records by browsing attachments to find the parent record.
• Updated tab controls, form colors, and added gradient workspace background.
• The ‘Append to Resolution’ button has been removed from the Help Desk Detail form. Information typed into this section is now automatically added to the ticket resolution when the record is saved.
• When creating new help desk tickets the program now attempts to suggest a technician based upon the ticket type (like the web interface does). If there is not a technician associated with the ticket type the technician will default to the one entering the request. Ticket Type and Technician fields have swapped places to make this more intuitive.
• User ‘Title’ field added.
• Software Product ‘Maintenance Expiration’ date field added.
• Attachments that do not have an associated extension will now trigger the “Open With” windows dialog allowing you to choose a program with which to open the file.
• Added Quick Search Filter to Knowledge Base List form. This filter searches the KB articles Title, Description and Resolution fields
• Added Quick Search Filter to Help Desk List form. This filter searches the Help Desk Description and Resolution fields
• Cost Center Dropdown lists now displays the Cost Center ID & Cost Center description.
• A users email address can now contain multiple email addresses (separate them by semicolons).
• Drop down lists now display up to 12 items without having to scroll (increased from 8)
• Status Bar has been updated to show pending & unassigned tickets.

Bug fixes:

• Fixed bug that would not allow the deletion of allocated software products when there were more allocation records than master software records.
• You can now clear the default assigned technician from ‘Ticket Type’ records.
• Double clicking (to delete) a software asset allocation record no longer incorrectly deletes the master software product.
• The Software Asset List now correctly remembers the last used sort order.
• Fixed 512 error ‘Unable to Open Clipboard’ that sometimes occurred when copying text to the clipboard buffer.