Using VisualSP to increase user engagement

You as the customer have invested in VisualSP as a support system for your organization. Naturally, you would like to maximize the user benefits through large-scale adoption of VisualSP throughout your organization. Here are some best practices we have seen when working with other customers to increase user engagement with VisualSP.

Customize the Help tab

There are several things you can do to customize the help tab that will increase what we call ‘the stumble factor’ - the likelihood your users will stumble across the help without you have to point it out to them.

1. Replace the VisualSP logo with your own. You can upload a custom logo for the help tab (24 pixels x 24 pixels) and for the help panel (32 pixels x 32 pixels). This increases visibility by adding an element of familiarity to the help tab. It will increase the click rate for the tab.

   

2. Update the title of both the tab and the panel. The tab can be renamed to "<Company name>'s Help" and the help panel heading can be changed to "<Company name>'s Help System". Making these changes will assure the users that the VisualSP help system is a company sanctioned application and will increase their comfort level with using the system when they need help.

3. Place the default location of the tab to a position that works best for your users. You want it to be out-of-the-way, yet easily accessible. We have found it best practice to place it in the lower right corner of the window.

Learn more: Customize the help tab in VisualSP Online

Sign up to receive your organization's feedback emails

In the VisualSP help panel, there is a Feedback link at the bottom of the panel.

We encourage you to add your email address into your subscription settings so that you receive this feedback. Read more: Receive feedback through the VisualSP feedback link You can also make the feedback form more prominent by making it an actual Help item and configuring it to default to the top of the Help panel by making it a Spotlight item.

You can even add a button to your page using jQuery that will open the feedback form in the panel.  

Advertise the out-of-the-box content

Your subscription to VisualSP includes hundreds of help items your users can start using immediately. Here are some ideas to help jump-start the utilization of our help content. Realistically, your users are much more likely to use those items if you also use them. Here are some easy ways to start doing that.

1. Sending links to help items. You and your Support Desk can easily copy a link to a VisualSP help item and include it with their response to end-user support questions. The link will open the help item in the context of the page where it applies, increasing the user’s comprehension.
2. Embed links on pages. The ‘copy link’ functionality described above can be used to insert and group help links on a common landing page.
3. Create inline help tags. Help items can be exposed directly in the interface of your site as inline help icons directly attached to buttons and menus you want your users to click (or potentially, to not click…).
4. Auto-show help items. All of our help items can be configured to automatically load when a user visits a page after a set number of visits.

Create a custom GROUP of help items

The VisualSP Help panel is customizable. You can add your own group names and populate the group with our content or your own custom content with a simple configuration change.

Stimulate interest by creating groups such as Top 5 things you need to know, or Most popular help items, or <companyName> Helpful Links. This serves as shared bookmarks for your company's intranet and should contain the top links for your users. You can easily configure the content in these new groups to show globally, instead of just in a specific location. This helps give better visibility to your most frequently needed answers – regardless of where the user happens to currently be browsing.

Spotlight Help

Spotlight important help items, such as Create a help ticket and Submit feedback, across all scopes by configuring the help items in the All Applications scope:

Encourage users to install the VisualSP browser extension

Use a banner in SharePoint Online to encourage your users to install the VisualSP browser extension so they have access to help wherever they go in your Microsoft 365 environment. This banner help item displays a link that leads to the browser extension installation page.

Provide easier access to your internal support organization

The VisualSP Help panel is a convenient location to provide links to your company's support system. The links can easily be configured to appear across all SharePoint Online scopes, or globally across your Microsoft 365 environment. These can be links to:

• Open a support ticket
• Teams / Yammer / Skype instant messaging link
• Help / support site

Publish links to internal help materials or courses

Do you have a LMS in place? How about an internal Knowledge Base, an informal wiki site, or another library of help material? This material, such as courses, videos, blog posts, user guides, job aids, policies, etc., can either be within your company’s Intranet, or stored elsewhere on the web. You can use VisualSP to surface that content making it easily accessible right from the Help panel. Instead of hoping your users find the proper information, bring the information to your users from within the already recognizable VisualSP Help panel.

Advertise your internal training schedule or community events

Offline events of interest to the entire company can be evangelized as help items in the VisualSP help panel. Train your users where to go to find the latest training schedule, lunch ‘n learns, and Power User community events. These help items can be links to separate web pages, a document, or a Rich HTML pop up window.

Use as your announcements portal

Instead of (or in addition to) announcing things via email, get better exposure by auto-showing those announcements as a help item. Use it for platform / migration / upgrade announcements from IT, Power User community event invitations, corporate deadline reminders, or intranet announcements for content managers.

Use banners to inform users of governance

Inform users of important governance information where they need to know it (for example, restrictions on what content should be uploaded into a particular document library). Use a banner to auto load important governance information that informs the user of something they need to know when they need to know it.

VisualSP for Microsoft Teams

Deploy the VisualSP for Teams app for all of your users if it isn't already deployed.