Teams, working hours and stages
Each service team has its members, a lead, its own working hours and holidays, and its own email address. Tickets move through stages you name, and a waiting stage stops the response-time clock while you wait on the customer, parts or a quote.
PLANSEvery plan
The problem it solves
- Requests land in one shared inbox and nobody knows which team owns them.
- Response times are counted through nights, Sundays and festival holidays, so every report looks worse than the work.
- A ticket that is waiting for the customer's answer or a spare part counts against the team as if they were idle.
- The IT desk and the maintenance crew want different steps, but share one board.
How it works
- A Helpdesk Administrator opens Helpdesk > Configuration > Tickets > Teams, names the team and picks the Team Lead and the Members.
- Choose the Working Hours. The days off in that working-hours calendar are the team's holidays, and response-time clocks run only in those hours.
- Give the team its email address under Intake, so mail to it becomes the team's tickets.
- Check the stages under Helpdesk > Configuration > Tickets > Stages. Nine come ready, from New to Cancelled, and you can rename, add, reorder or limit them to some teams.
- When a technician moves a ticket to a waiting stage, the clock stops. Resume Work, or the customer's reply, starts it again and the deadlines move by the time spent waiting.
Everything it does
Teams
- Name, Team Lead and Members (back-office users only)
- Working Hours: a calendar; it starts as the Entity's calendar. Its days off are the holidays
- Assign Method: Manual (the default), Round Robin, Least Open Tickets, or By Skill, then Least Open
- Intake: the Email Alias and what to do with emails from unknown senders (Hold for Review to start with)
- Serves Entities: a team can work for more than one of your Entities
- From Growth: Visit Reminder (hours before), 2 to start with. From Scale: a Store for parts and a WhatsApp number
- Timesheet Project: where the team's ticket time goes in Timesheets
- No limit on the number of teams or team email addresses
Stages
- Ready to use: New, Assigned, In Progress, Waiting on Customer, Waiting for Parts, Waiting for Quote Approval, Solved, Closed, Cancelled
- Each stage has a Kind: New, Assigned, In Progress, Waiting, Solved, Closed or Cancelled. Reports and response times use the kind, so a renamed stage still counts right
- Waiting On (for a waiting stage): Customer, Parts, Quote Approval, Vendor or Other. The customer sees Waiting for you, Waiting for parts or Waiting for your approval
- Pauses the SLA: ticked by itself on a waiting stage; the three ready waiting stages pause
- Needs a Resolution Note: on for Solved, so nobody solves a ticket without writing what was done
- Folded on the Board: on for Closed and Cancelled
- Teams: the teams that use the stage; empty means every team. A team's own stage of a kind is used before the shared one
- Email to the Requester: an email sent when a ticket reaches the stage. New sends Ticket Received with the expected times; Solved sends Ticket Solved
- Drag the rows to change the order on the board
Who uses it
Helpdesk AdministratorCreates teams and stages, sets working hours, the email address and the assign method.
Team LeadLeads the team, is told of new tickets to assign when nobody was given the ticket, and moves work between members.
Technician / AgentWorks the team's tickets and moves them through the stages, including the waiting ones.
Where you use it
- Web: Helpdesk > Configuration > Tickets > Teams and Stages (Helpdesk Administrators); the board under Helpdesk > Tickets
- Customer portal: the plain status of each ticket
- The SmartMy Desk app: technicians move tickets to waiting stages and resume them (built and in testing, not in the app stores yet)
What you control
Settings
- Working Hours per team: the Entity's calendar to start with
- Assign Method: Manual to start with
- Emails from Unknown Senders: Hold for Review to start with
- Visit Reminder: 2 hours before (Growth)
- Waiting stages pause the clock; Solved needs a resolution note
Notifications
- Ticket Received: to the requester when the ticket reaches New, by email, with the expected response and resolution times
- Ticket Waiting for You: to the requester when the team waits on them. It goes by email and in the app's inbox, and by WhatsApp or SMS where set up
- New Ticket to Assign: to the team lead when a new ticket has no technician, in the app's inbox. App push is built and not switched on yet
Questions
Can the IT desk and the maintenance team have different stages?
Yes. Each stage can be limited to some teams. A team uses its own stage of a kind first, then the shared ones, and the board shows the team's stages.Do Sundays and holidays count against our response times?
Not for targets counted in working hours. The clock runs in the team's working-hours calendar and skips its days off. A target set to 24x7 counts every hour.How many teams and team email addresses can we have?
As many as you need on every plan. Only agents and Entities are counted.Can one team work for two of our companies?
Yes. Fill in Serves Entities on the team. Your plan needs more than one Entity for that.Related features
RESPONSE TIMESResponse and resolution targets in working hoursResponse-time policies set how fast your team must reply and solve, per priority, for chosen teams, kinds of issue, customers and tags. Targets count in working hours and holidays or round the clock, pause while a ticket waits, and are never typed by hand.SET-UPKinds of issue with their own raise formKinds of issue form a tree, such as AC > Not cooling. Each kind decides its team, skills, priority and who may raise it. It also sets the questions on the raise form and whether a photo, site or unit is required.RAISING A TICKETTickets from email, with unknown senders heldEach team can have its own email address, such as support@ or maintenance@. An email to it becomes a ticket for that team, and replies land on the same ticket. Senders you do not know are held for review, added by their email domain, or turned away.WORKING A TICKETRouting and assignment by turn, load or skillRouting rules send each new ticket to the right team by issue type, customer and site. The team then gives it to a technician: by hand, in turn, to the least loaded member, or by skill.RESPONSE TIMESEscalation before a target is missedEscalation rules act when a share of a response-time target has passed, such as 75 % or 100 %. Each level tells the team lead, the customer's account manager or people you name, and can hand the ticket to them.PRIVACY, AUDIT, PLATFORMSeveral entities in one accountRun the service firms of your group, such as an AMC company and a trading arm, in one SmartMy Desk account. Each Entity keeps its own tickets, contracts, settings and books, and one team can work the tickets of several of them.
See one of your own jobs run through it.
Tell us how a complaint reaches you today and what you bill for. We will show you the same job in SmartMy Desk.