Brainstorm announces Notes-based Intranet Help Desk application; New Visual Help Desk extends customer service via Notes and the Web.

CAMBRIDGE, Mass.--(BUSINESS WIRE)--Aug. 26, 1996--Brainstorm Technology Inc., the leading developer of tools and applications for groupware and the Internet, today announced Visual Help Desk for Lotus Notes v1.0, an automated customer support application that improves internal customer service by allowing MIS help desk to respond quickly and efficiently to support requests via Notes and the Internet.

Support for the Lotus Domino server will be available later this year when Domino ships.

Brainstorm's Visual Help Desk is the first groupware-based customer support help desk application that combines the strengths of Notes' sophisticated database repository with ease of access to information from any Internet browser. Employees in an organization are now able to actively participate in their help desk system by simply logging requests and problems via Notes or their corporate Intranets. They can also directly access the knowledge base from either Notes or their Web browsers thus providing users with instant problem solutions.

This ease of access for end users and the ability for help desk managers and service technicians to establish a repository of collective knowledge and experience in the knowledge base provides a true end-to-end customer support application that can be widely deployed to both locally and remotely to sites within an enterprise computing environment.

"Help desks are becoming increasingly integral to the success of the businesses they support," stated Riz Virk, President and CEO of Brainstorm Technology. "With Visual Help Desk for Lotus Notes, our first true out-of-the-box customer application, we have created a more efficient way for organizations to remain productive and avoid employee and system downtime."

"The world lives in group-based applications whether they are Web-based or traditional groupware such as Lotus Notes or some combination of the two -- either way we can solve their problems by developing applications that bridge the gap between these two environments -- Visual Help Desk is only the beginning," Virk added.

Built on Lotus Notes R4, Visual Help Desk takes full advantage of a number of its sophisticated features such as visual navigating for ease of use and graphical reporting for displaying charts and graphical views of management information such as open calls by technician, priority calls, assignments and call status tracking. This type of information reporting is far superior to typical text- based views which are cumbersome and can be complicated to interpret.

Tight integration with the knowledge base allows help desk information to be stored and shared throughout the organization providing end users immediate access to the knowledge they need. thus giving help desk staff and MIS managers a tool that can be easily updated and manipulated on the fly with very little need for additional training.

"Our help desk department is geographically dispersed among five cities and three provinces which presents a unique set of challenges," stated Tony Kwok, regional informatics officer at Industry Canada, a government agency that provides a range of services to Canadian businesses. "Brainstorm's Visual Help Desk software is superior in keeping tabs on all the calls that are logged from the various cities in our region."

The knowledge base allows superior storage of video and audio and software patches or files and enables the user to easily and quickly get information they need in multimedia rather than relying solely on text-based instructions.

Visual Help Desk for Lotus Notes is sold on a per server basis starting at $7,200 for an unlimited number of users. Also included with the server license are various options for customized consulting and on-site installation. Available immediately, the product is sold directly through Brainstorm Technology and its distributors worldwide.

About Brainstorm Technology, Inc.

Founded in 1993, Brainstorm Technology, Inc., is a pioneer in the development of Lotus Notes and workgroup development tools and applications. The company provides both off-the-shelf products and a range of consulting services designed to help companies gain access and integrate existing corporate technologies with emerging groupware platforms. The company's award-winning products, VB/Link, Datalink and Server AdminPlus are currently used by more than 1,500 organizations in 12 countries.

For more information about Brainstorm Technology Inc., call 1-800-201- 0320 or visit the company's Web site at www.braintech.com.

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Brainstorm Technology Inc.

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