Photography: Menno van der Bijl

TOPDESK 5.2 9

POUYAN DAddEH
is a TOPdesk consultant. He has extensive experience designing and developing forms.

A GOOD FORM IS HaLF THE JOB

A new phone, a new employee, or a lost access pass. You receive all types of request via the Self Service Desk. The required information will vary for each department. Thanks to the Form Designer, TOPdesk offers you the possibility to remain one step ahead.

Well begun is half done

Before we start talking about the specifics, it is good to discuss the design. This is essential for building a successful form. Do you know what you want to achieve with the form, and how you want to achieve it? Your goal could be to receive complete requests so the service desk can get straight to work with finding a solution. The Form Designer can be used to create large forms and receive detailed information; however, the requester might not want to take the time to fill in such a complex form. It could be easier to pick up the phone. An important factor is the user-friendliness. You do not want to make it too difficult to use a form.

form, divided into two sections. The top section includes a number of fields that can be used as much as you like, and do not directly connect to the TOPdesk database. These are the fields for offering a single choice (radio buttons for short lists, and search lists for longer lists), fields for uploading files, and fields for selecting a date and time. You can also use a number of card-specific components that are directly connected to categorization, the object ID of the requester, for instance. You can drag all fields to the canvas and change the name, make questions mandatory, or add options. On the right you can see a panel with fields from the call or change card. You can build your form step by step. You design the front end of your form using the canvas (visible to the caller) and the back end in the panel (the card that is registered in TOPdesk). You can also collapse the panel if you want.

Getting started with TOPdesk

Once you have determined what you are going to make, you can get started. When you open the Form Designers module page, you can (depending on your licences) create two types of new forms: for calls and for changes. After you choose a new form, you see a blank screen (your canvas) with blocks on either side. On the left side of the screen you can see the components for your

Each form has its own flow

Now you have created a nice form that callers can use, it is also important that the entered details are correctly processed in TOPdesk. We expand the panel on the right. A number of fields display a form icon.

10 TOPDESK 5.2

The Form Designer: the form elements menu (left), the design area (middle), and the panel featuring the processing information (right)

This means that these fields can be filled in from a question on the form. Not all fields on the card can be filled in from the form. These fields can be assigned a default value. To achieve this, enter the value that needs to be filled in when submitting this form.

to the Self Service Desk. At the top of your form, you can see a Publish button. This button lets you add the form to the form list. Callers can access this form via the Forms shortcut in the left menu in the Self Service Desk. Do you have a much-used form that you would like to focus on? You can create a separate button for this form on the Self Service Desk start page. To do this, use the Add to startpage button.

All your forms in the Self Service Desk

When you are satisfied with your form, you can make the form available. In this case you can make the form available to the people logging in

TIPS
The published forms list is ordered alphabetically. If you want to create a group, by department for instance, then you should name your form IT-, FM- or HR-. Would you like to set up the Start page buttons, or make specific forms available for a small group of people? TOPdesk offers an add-on that lets you adjust the buttons image, text, and availability. You can download this add-on for TOPdesk 5.2 via extranet.topdesk.com.