Effective communication makes the world go round. Whether you’re using TOPdesk to communicate with your colleagues or your customers, one thing’s for sure: you have to communicate clearly.
But in order to communicate effectively, you need to make sure that your text is clearly laid out, captures people’s attention, and is presented in an easily digestible whyormat. Key insights are missed when people skim over large chunks of text, severely hampering effective communication. You want your customers to easily understand critical knowledge items, rather than spending unnecessary time digging through neverending lines of text.
More Rich Text formatting possibilities
That’s why we’re thrilled to announce that we’ve recently released extra rich text features within TOPdesk, something that our customers have been requesting for a while now. As you’ll know, TOPdesk users have up until now been able to use the Bold or Italic features to increase their text’s readability—but with our latest updates, you can now structure your text even more easily thanks to headers and the ability to create lists (whether these be in bullet or numbers format).
With the help of our newest Rich Text features, you’ll be able to make your ideas more accessible, more readable, and most important, more comprehensible.
Towards better accessibility and better CX
Why have we invested in this? Put simply, there are two main reasons:
1. Tightening standards surrounding accessibility
We want to make TOPdesk accessible to everyone. And thanks to regulations like the EU Web Accessibility Directive, accessibility is rightly becoming front of mind for companies across the world. We therefore felt compelled to expand our rich text offerings, making it even easier for those who are visually impaired to read large chunks of text (such as Knowledge Items) within TOPdesk.
2. Much-requested by customers
Our top priority is keeping our customers happy and making their lives easier in the process. Customers have been asking us about rich text updates for a while now, so we thought the time was right to expand our range of rich text features.
However, TOPdesk is a huge product—so it’s always been incredibly time-consuming to roll out TOPdesk-wide updates. Up until now, all modules have been completely distinct from one another on a technical level—but that’s all about to change thanks to our new Tasks and Workflows approach (read on for more information).
So, what’s new?
First, you can now create bullet and numbered lists within TOPdesk—this will help you easily structure your text and knowledge items, making them significantly more readable than in the past. Say goodbye to using unsightly dashes (-) when creating lists. Instead, embrace bullets or numbers.
Second, we’ve also introduced different sized headers, allowing you to break up long chunks of text. Make large knowledge items easier to understand by including a variety of headers and subsections, helping you emphasize and categorize certain need-to-know parts of your text.
Both of these updates are available with our latest version (10.11.005).
What’s next?
We’re far from done. We’re still busy building out our new system, which will support even more rich text features (such as tables and code boxes). But this is a lengthy process that involves rewriting the very core of our product. As you may know, there are some inconsistencies within the TOPdesk user experience—for example, we rolled out our Rich Text updates to our Call Management functionality well before we were able to release it within Change Management.
So why is this? All our TOPdesk modules have, up until now, been entirely separate from each other on a technical level. That means that we can’t simply update one area and expect these changes to be reflected in other parts of TOPdesk. Instead, we have to manually update each separate section.
But we’re working hard to solve this problem. We’re reducing all the various TOPdesk concepts into two core components: Tasks and Workflows. Agents work on individual tasks on a day-to-day basis. These are developed from the ground up to be API-driven. Workflows, on the other hand, link individual tasks together in order to create end-to-end processes.
All Tasks and Workflows will be linked to a generic overarching system—meaning that instead of having to hard-code each process on an individual basis (like we currently have to do), we’ll be able to make changes by simply configuring a generic Tasks and Workflows system. Plus, we’ll also provide a range of out-of-the-box configuration templates to help you make your own desired changes.
These changes will increase consistency across the entire suite of TOPdesk features and dramatically improve the speed of rolling out new features.
Now it’s your turn
Introducing rich text functionality is just the first piece of the puzzle. To transform your communication, whether with your colleagues or your customers, it’s time to go out and create your very own TOPdesk Knowledge Items using Headers or Lists.
Good luck!
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