Parature from a user's perspective
The organization I was in was used by IT as a Helpdesk tool to capture, route and track Helpdesk tickets. I believe it was only being used …
Microsoft Parature (Discontinued)
Microsoft Parature (Discontinued)
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What is Microsoft Parature (Discontinued)?
Parature was a self-service customer support platform providing a self-service knowledge base to connect with customers across multiple channels, including email, the web, chat or social media. The company was acquired by Microsoft in January 2014 and reached EOL in 2017. Former users are encouraged…
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Product Details
What is Microsoft Parature (Discontinued)?
Parature was a self-service customer support platform providing a self-service knowledge base to connect with customers across multiple channels, including email, the web, chat or social media. The company was acquired by Microsoft in January 2014 and reached EOL in 2017. Former users are encouraged to migrate to Microsoft Dynamics 365 Customer Service.
Microsoft Parature (Discontinued) Competitors
Microsoft Parature (Discontinued) Technical Details
| Operating Systems | Unspecified |
|---|---|
| Mobile Application | No |
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What is Microsoft Parature (Discontinued)'s best feature?
Reviewers rate Availability highest, with a score of 7.5.
Who uses Microsoft Parature (Discontinued)?
The most common users of Microsoft Parature (Discontinued) are from Mid-sized Companies (51-1,000 employees) and the Computer Software industry.
Reviews and Ratings
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March 18, 2015
Parature from a user's perspective
The organization I was in was used by IT as a Helpdesk tool to capture, route and track Helpdesk tickets. I believe it was only being used by IT. The business problems addressed were that you don't have to be a rocket scientist to use it and that being a cloud based product made it easier to manage from an IT perspective.
- Works pretty well with all web browsers
- Does not need a ton of training to use
- Reduces the time to input and track tickets allowing the technician to do what they get paid to do, concentrate on fixing things
- Keep it simple - too many ticket routing tools like this try to do too much which ends up requiring more training time to use and makes it cumbersome for the user in production
- Love the fact that its web browser based but I'd love to see a Cloud Client that can be installed on the workstation so the user has a choice
December 18, 2014
Flexible, Expandable, Full Featured Customer Support Portal
Parature is used primarily by the Customer Support team to support users of our Resource Manager, Analytics, and Impact solutions. It is also used by our sales engineers during evaluations, our professional services group, and engineering team. We leverage the "Download Manager" capability for software entitlement and delivery. In addition we make heavy use of the Knowledge Base module to provide customer self-service.
- Parature ia an "All-in-One" solution that does most aspects very well. For us the key differentiator was the "Download Module". We provide our software electronically and we were able to use the Parature API to integrate with our entitlement systems to provide software delivery for our customers.
- The Ticketing Module is top notch and is completely customizable. It has a very powerful workflow system which includes routing rules and time based triggers giving you a lot of flexibility when designing the process.
- While not a feature of the product, the Customer Support team at Parature is top-notch. I don't need to contact them often, but when I do the replies are swift and detailed.
- The Forums Module is minimally functional and not well thought out - it seems more like an afterthought to the solution. We do use this module, but as a broadcast-only system for product updates and other alerts. It works well in this limited capacity.
- If you make heavy use of the Download Module you will find that you cannot "link" files into different folder structure. Our software is delivered in modules, some of which are common across product lines. I have to upload the same file multiple times in order to make it available in the various folder hierarchies.
- The WYSIWYG editor is a bit cumbersome, and often inserts a lot of extraneous HTML. This is particularly difficult in the KB Module when authoring large documents.
- There is a character limitation in the Ticket Module that causes the reply (from either the CSR or the customer) to be attached as an HTML document after the limit is reached. The information is not lost or truncated, but is not viewable in the context of the ticketing module - you have to open another browser window.
December 18, 2014
Parature Ticketing Solution - Feedback/Review
As a technician within a college's Information Technology Support Department, we used Parature to track the issues reported by our user-base (students/staff/faculty) in order to enhance the level of service we could provide. Building a knowledge base of our most common issues with Parature allowed for faster response times, quicker problem resolution, and the proliferation of knowledge among employees.
- Clean/Friendly UI. It was extremely easy to navigate around Parature's menus at a high level, and you could take advantage of the more robust features as you became more comfortable and familiar with how Parature operates!
- Strong Knowledge Base. Writing KB articles or ticket summaries and making use of the search function within Parature allows for expedient recovery of past ticket information. Being able to search for a fix action, or at least a troubleshooting article that can guide you towards a resolution is extremely valuable.
- Enhanced Notation Capability. Being able to send/post internal or external updates to a ticket is great! You can leave the wordy technical details for other employees while making sure to communicate the high-points and fix action to the end-user.
- Integration. After working for a different tech company, I have come to realize how robust Parature really is. This comes at the cost of being able to "play nice with others". While my current company's ticketing software plugs directly into a multitude of other .NET applications as an Add-in, Parature is cut from a different cloth and has to be run independently.
- Learning Curve. As a flip-side to the "basic level" ease of use, Parature has some complex functionality to it! While a user can read through tech references and help menus all day, a more intuitive design would make it easier for things like "issue association/categorization" or "filter open tickets by -keyword- in the problem description".
- Ticket templates. While it may be in the works (or has already been implemented in some fashion), Parature did not have a template feature when I was actively using it. It would severely cut down on the time it takes to make/fill out a ticket with basic information if I could click a button for "Account Lockout" issues or to "Create New User".
August 23, 2014
UCSC Conduct Office Review
Parature is being used by my department and by a few on campus. Parature is fairly new, but many other departments are gaining an interest in its uses and the multi-use products that Simplicity offers.
- Parature is excellent at housing information and making it accessible.
- Parature is excellent for anonymous and detailed communication with students.
- Parature needs to desperately make viewing student files and incident reports more seamless. Getting bounced between areas makes it very hard to manage where you are at at any given time.
- Parature really needs to bring back to sanctions tab at the top of each incident report. Hiding it under the incidents tab is inconvenient and not as user-friendly.
- It would be really great if Parature could have a retract button. In case a Summons or a VRA goes out and is wrong. Or at least a feature that allows the letter to be altered after it is sent out, Like housed on the Parature system and then the student sees the most up-to-date letter, and we cut down on re-sending and retracting statements made in the letter during the summons meeting.
August 23, 2014
Decent but not great.
Parature was used as a sole system of record for all our customer support cases, reviews, and feature requests. We used Parature to build our company's knowledge base for FAQ/help articles as well. It was only used at the the customer experience level.
- Syncs all support emails into cases that can the be prioritized, monitored, and tracked.
- Provides easy canned responses to common support questions helping save time.
- Provides live chat.
- Chat is not very steady. It often logs you out when you do not realize it.
- Chat options, reporting, and so on are very limited.
- Unfortunately, Parature's own support team is not very efficient.
August 16, 2014
Parature: Self Service Portal Success
Parature is used to allow clients to access our product support and help desk. The idea is for the service to cut down on live interactions with our staff. A year after implementation our call volume was down over 20%. As our knowledge database grew over time it has proven to be a more valued tool. The self service portal (and Parature) is used by our Client Service team (a group of about 25 members). The business problem the self service portal addresses is scaling our support offering as our client base grows without drastically adding staff.
- Knowledge base- easy to use (as reported by our clients)
- Ticketing system
- Reporting- very helpful to monitor quality
- Implementation- I think they have worked on improving this since we launched
- Custom requests
- Perhaps an interface with other business systems
August 06, 2014
Parature - meh!
I was using Parature when I was working at Blackboard Inc. The product was used as a CRM for our internal use and then was being used as a tracking/ ticketing system for our external clients. It was used only across Student Services and it addressed the problem of keeping track of of tickets and issues.
- It has a lot of in depth features. They are almost to many of them.
- The product is not user friendly at all. This needs to be worked out if Parature is going to make its mark on the industry.
- The tickets system is sloppy at times and seems to have a mind of its own.
- The custom version that was created for Blackboard was so up and down it was very frustrating
- The back end of Parature is very complex
- I believe with some major work the product could be great.
August 03, 2014
Para-TROOPER - A "die-hard" soldier of a ticketing system.
Currently, my organization uses Parature for our student and instructor support. It is not being used by our entire organization, but we have several departments that service tickets via Parature. It is terrific for providing quick responses, knowledge base article review/entry, and communication. Reports are easy to build and print.
- Parature allows to mass edit tickets.
- Parature will easily give you counts for each queue, folder, and sub-folders.
- Parature has all the selections available to address a ticket professionally.
- Parature has a mobile version that is extremely user-friendly
- Once in a ticket Parature will not allow you to go to the next/previous ticket
- The search options are a little broad in Parature.
- Tickets sometimes default to a Work in Progress Queue (depending on your selection) without telling you.
August 01, 2014
Support software for people who don't need support software
We previously used Parature for all our customer-facing support needs. Tickets came in via email or our support portal and were created in Parature. Then, a support engineer would triage and assign those tickets depending on the complexity. Ticket-based support allowed us to support more customers in a far more efficient manner than via phone.
- It's functional. It does what it needs to do without too many excess frills or features.
- Uptime was generally good and we were usually notified of any planned outages.
- Reporting is barebones at best. If you need special reports, we had to go through Parature to have them built.
- The use of frames on a website is very 1990s. It actually impacts usability of the product, especially when combined with how Parature handled sessions. An engineer could only work one ticket at a time which, honestly, isn't very realistic for a busy support team that is working on several issues at a time.
- Support was often unresponsive when contacted for unplanned problems.
- The knowledge base was not very friendly for clients and it provided no real encouragement for it to be used.
- It took several clicks to do something as simple as edit and assign a ticket or to close a ticket.
July 30, 2014
Maximum versatility for high traffic clients
We manage the customer service of a client that purchases Parature service. Therefore Parature is provided to us. The project is in the entertainment industry and we use Parature to address customer questions regarding their products and websites. As for business issues, Parature is able to handle the diverse departments within the projects that need to be addressed. Adjusting filter settings and dropdown ticket values that customers need to input help get the right questions to the right people.
- Parature is greatly diverse in the ways that queues can be set up. With just one service, the interface can be hyper organized to handle multiple departments and can therefore cover multiple related websites at once.
- The filter and drop-down settings are fantastic. When events are being held on the client's websites, we can adjust the ticket entry with fields that will help us organize questions during high traffic periods.
- Individualized profile interfaces for customers let them know the status of their ticket and the visibility reduces customer confusion.
- The only downside we've found to using Parature is the price per seat. Having individual seats for a whole team can become a bit costly.