What Do You Want in a Helpdesk and Ticketing System?

QuixoticJeremy

@manxam said in What Do You Want in a Helpdesk and Ticketing System?:

Proper scheduling! That's one of the major missing pieces for all the less expensive PSAs/ticketing systems. This is about the only thing that ConnectWise does really well:

While in a ticket you can assign a status and then schedule the ticket for either
a) perform this task on this day/time (i.e: you've made arrangements with a user to do X at time Y and it should take Z time to complete)

b) follow-up with the user at this date/time for whatever purpose you deem necessary (i.e. pre-ticket closure email ensuring the issue is resolved to the client's satisfaction)

Exchange / Outlook integration a huge plus...

Also, time tracking via manual entry or start/stop.

Definitely some great ideas in here and also some ideas that are already in place! I like the scheduling concept and will try to put that through product management. As for time tracking this is already in place. It works currently but it is very bare bones where we we're planning on revamping it an approaching it from a (very slightly) different direction.

nadnerB

I'll reuse my list from here:

Here's a few things that I really appreciate:

Merging tickets. Absent = Deal breaker

Reply to the ticket (instead of creating a new ticket). Absent = Deal breaker

Multi-Tech assignment.

Clean interface

Customisable reports. Absent = Deal breaker

Multiple ticket views (Mine, All, closed, urgent, stale.. etc)

Sub-tickets is a nice feature

Add users/clients easily

NerdyDad

@nadnerb said in What Do You Want in a Helpdesk and Ticketing System?:

Reply to the ticket (instead of creating a new ticket). Absent = Deal breaker

This in and of itself is essential. In an SMB at least, users will just hit reply instead of clicking a link to reply to a ticket. For SolarWinds, this will create a new ticket, which becomes a nuisance created even by some techs.

DustinB3403

I want relevant searching. Most searches suck

QuixoticJustin

@quixoticjeremy said in What Do You Want in a Helpdesk and Ticketing System?:

@manxam said in What Do You Want in a Helpdesk and Ticketing System?:

Proper scheduling! That's one of the major missing pieces for all the less expensive PSAs/ticketing systems. This is about the only thing that ConnectWise does really well:

While in a ticket you can assign a status and then schedule the ticket for either
a) perform this task on this day/time (i.e: you've made arrangements with a user to do X at time Y and it should take Z time to complete)

b) follow-up with the user at this date/time for whatever purpose you deem necessary (i.e. pre-ticket closure email ensuring the issue is resolved to the client's satisfaction)

Exchange / Outlook integration a huge plus...

Also, time tracking via manual entry or start/stop.

Definitely some great ideas in here and also some ideas that are already in place! I like the scheduling concept and will try to put that through product management. As for time tracking this is already in place. It works currently but it is very bare bones where we we're planning on revamping it an approaching it from a (very slightly) different direction.

Yes, I'm excited about the scheduling bit. That's something that I have seen before but I've not heard anyone on our team here discussing this yet so this is something that seems extremely possible in the short term and was simply overlooked. But seems like a super value-add compared to a lot of other products. That's exactly what we were hoping to find in this thread.

Keep the ideas coming!

QuixoticJustin

@nerdydad said in What Do You Want in a Helpdesk and Ticketing System?:

@nadnerb said in What Do You Want in a Helpdesk and Ticketing System?:

Reply to the ticket (instead of creating a new ticket). Absent = Deal breaker

This in and of itself is essential. In an SMB at least, users will just hit reply instead of clicking a link to reply to a ticket. For SolarWinds, this will create a new ticket, which becomes a nuisance created even by some techs.

I've heard that Spiceworks often creates a new ticket as well, because of parsing issues or something. But when we test it, it seems to work.

QuixoticJustin

@nadnerb said in What Do You Want in a Helpdesk and Ticketing System?:

I'll reuse my list from here:

Here's a few things that I really appreciate:

Merging tickets. Absent = Deal breaker

Reply to the ticket (instead of creating a new ticket). Absent = Deal breaker

Multi-Tech assignment.

Clean interface

Customisable reports. Absent = Deal breaker

Multiple ticket views (Mine, All, closed, urgent, stale.. etc)

Sub-tickets is a nice feature

Add users/clients easily

Great link, I'll check that out. Thanks.

scottalanmiller

@nerdydad said in What Do You Want in a Helpdesk and Ticketing System?:

@nadnerb said in What Do You Want in a Helpdesk and Ticketing System?:

Reply to the ticket (instead of creating a new ticket). Absent = Deal breaker

This in and of itself is essential. In an SMB at least, users will just hit reply instead of clicking a link to reply to a ticket. For SolarWinds, this will create a new ticket, which becomes a nuisance created even by some techs.

We use osTicket and it makes tickets for responses, it's a mess. Other than that one thing, though, it's a solid system. One of the best I've used so far. A bit slow and needs a UX overall, but mostly really good and flexible.

QuixoticJeremy

Getting some work done on some of these suggestions right now while I have a moment in between Mango prep!

QuixoticJeremy

Youtube Video

Here at mango, working on getting some work done.

QuixoticJeremy

@wrx7m Here we go. This was the thread we were collecting ideas from. From here you can get a feel for a lot of the stuff we're working on for ticketing and feel free to add to them!

scottalanmiller

"Hot ticket item"

QuixoticJeremy

@scottalanmiller said in What Do You Want in a Helpdesk and Ticketing System?:

"Hot ticket item"

I'm clever, I know lol

scottalanmiller

NerdyDad

@scottalanmiller said in What Do You Want in a Helpdesk and Ticketing System?:

Is that Gavin Rosdale and Gwen Steffani behind them, and then Owen Wilson? What movie is this from?

QuixoticJeremy

@nerdydad said in What Do You Want in a Helpdesk and Ticketing System?:

@scottalanmiller said in What Do You Want in a Helpdesk and Ticketing System?:

Is that Gavin Rosdale and Gwen Steffani behind them, and then Owen Wilson? What movie is this from?

Zoolander

IRJ

@dashrender said in What Do You Want in a Helpdesk and Ticketing System?:

email integrated. Users and support staff can create/update/close tickets via email.
Include attachments.
ticket status reminders - remind support staff if a ticket hasn't been worked on after x amount of time.

Email integration cannot be understated. Most users never want to login to a system. As a user of various support systems, It really irritates me if I have to login to their system to update my tickets.

nadnerB

@nerdydad said in What Do You Want in a Helpdesk and Ticketing System?:

@scottalanmiller said in What Do You Want in a Helpdesk and Ticketing System?:

Is that Gavin Rosdale and Gwen Steffani behind them, and then Owen Wilson? What movie is this from?

Zoolander

NerdyDad

This probably isn't an immediate need but would like to see it in some iteration down the road.

My company likes to use forms to automate some business processes (new employee creation, employee permission changes, employee terminations, etc.). Some of these processes requires certain managers or a CAB outside of the IT department's approvals. So they would need some kind of email or notification of some type that requires them to click a "yes/no" or "approved/denied" set of links either embedded into the email or like back to the website for the decision. This would probably be best tied to a ticket.

So, 3 things here:

User splash page
Custom forms
Approval processes

Thanks guys.

QuixoticJeremy

@nerdydad said in What Do You Want in a Helpdesk and Ticketing System?:

This probably isn't an immediate need but would like to see it in some iteration down the road.

My company likes to use forms to automate some business processes (new employee creation, employee permission changes, employee terminations, etc.). Some of these processes requires certain managers or a CAB outside of the IT department's approvals. So they would need some kind of email or notification of some type that requires them to click a "yes/no" or "approved/denied" set of links either embedded into the email or like back to the website for the decision. This would probably be best tied to a ticket.

So, 3 things here:

User splash page

Custom forms

Approval processes

Thanks guys.

Taking notes thanks for the input. Definitely have had similar talks to this before so I'll make sure that this is on our project list. (likely already is).