About Egnyte
Egnyte is an enterprise file services solution created for businesses that allows it's users to store, share, and collaborate while also securing and protecting the content to a level that enterprises need.
Egnyte is an enterprise file services solution created for businesses that allows it's users to store, share, and collaborate while also securing and protecting the content to a level that enterprises need.
The Project
Egnyte's Helpdesk was a Help Center for users where they can get product support. As Egnyte's product offerings grew, Egnyte's Helpdesk navigation and design did not make it easy to implement new features or products. We wanted to redesign it so that later on it would be more flexible in terms of adding in new navigation and products.
Egnyte's Helpdesk was a Help Center for users where they can get product support. As Egnyte's product offerings grew, Egnyte's Helpdesk navigation and design did not make it easy to implement new features or products. We wanted to redesign it so that later on it would be more flexible in terms of adding in new navigation and products.
My Role
I worked as the sole designer of this project, managing the user research, user experience, and UI. I also took on the customization role and implemented the design with HTML, CSS, and JS with Zendesk's custom theming feature.
I worked as the sole designer of this project, managing the user research, user experience, and UI. I also took on the customization role and implemented the design with HTML, CSS, and JS with Zendesk's custom theming feature.
The final redesign of the Helpdesk
Helpdesk Improvements
The Helpdesk at the time focused on product support, where the homepage presents a list of the different end points.The organization of the site was also getting out of hand, with new end points being introduced but not well thought out in the Helpdesk.
Another struggle in the Helpdesk was that with more of the content being hidden, most users relied on searching for their questions. The current design did not highlight search at all.
Egnyte's Helpdesk before the redesign
More than product support
On the homepage, we wanted to bring more prominence to other user resources, especially those that can help new users. We made Training, Getting Started, and Community as the top items on the Helpdesk.
We also made the search bar large and a part of the header on every page. This made search more prominent and promoted users to search, rather than browse for answers.
Wireframes of the homepage (left) and article page (right), the most-viewed page types
Introducing Egnyte Protect
During the design phase, a new Egnyte product was introduced, called Egnyte Protect. With this, the current Egnyte product was now called Egnyte Connect.
With this change, we had to reconsider the homepage. We had to go away with our idea for user resources on the front, and present the two products first since we did not have user resources for both products. For the Help link in Egnyte Connect, we linked it straight to the category page so the user resources are presented there.
Visual mock-ups of the final design
We also had to reconsider the navigation, and how we would organize content for product support and announcements.
Site navigation of the new Helpdesk
Duplicate, duplicate content
Egnyte Connect has an end point called Storage Sync, which connects with on-premises servers. Depending on the server, the installation and troubleshooting can vary slightly. Because of this, there were duplicate content but slightly different for these different servers.
To reduce the amount of upkeep for these articles, we decided to consolidate some of these articles and just separate the information by tabs. You can also link to specific tabs if needed.
Tab solution for duplicated content across multiple articles
Customizing Zendesk
Once visual design and the navigation was complete, development was underway. I used SASS for CSS, HTML, jQuery/javascript, and Curlybars (Zendesk’s language to customize dynamic content).