Working as a Help Desk agent

A Help Desk is a project of the type Help Desk. Its tickets are work items that customers raise in the help centre or by e-mail. Agents work them in the project's Help Desk tab.

The Help Desk workspace

• Tiles at the top: Mine, Open, Unassigned, Resolved today
• The queues on the left: Inbox, Mine, Unassigned and, while a ticket's SLA clock is close to its limit or past it, SLA running out; below them By status
• The ticket list in the middle, with Search tickets. Nobody has it marks an unassigned ticket
• The open ticket on the right: the conversation, its files and the Ticket panel

The ticket panel

Change the Status (following the workflow transitions, like any work item), the Assignee and the Priority. The panel also shows the Ticket type, the customer's Organization, the channel it came in by and the work item Type. A ticket marked Internal was opened from inside the system: no customer sees it and there is nobody outside to reply to.

See it as the customer shows the ticket the way the customer sees it in the help centre. Open the ticket's key for the full work item page with links, time and sub-items.

Reply or write a note

1. Under the conversation, choose Reply to the customer or Internal note.
2. To start from a saved answer, choose Ready answers and pick one.
3. Write, optionally Attach files, and choose Send reply or Save note.

A reply is shown to the customer and they are told about it. An internal note is marked Internal note - customers cannot see: the customer never sees it and is not notified. When the Help Desk reads a mailbox, customers can answer by e-mail and their answer joins the same ticket. If you may read tickets but not answer them, the reply box is replaced by a note saying so.

Saved replies

Saved replies are kept in the project settings under Saved replies (New reply, with a Title and the Reply) by whoever manages the Help Desk. Everyone on the desk can then insert them.

SLA clocks

When an SLA policy covers the ticket, each target (for example First response and Resolution) shows a clock: running, held (paused, for example while waiting for the customer), kept or overdue, with when it is due or how far over it is. A customer-visible reply can stop a clock; internal notes never do. Whether the customer sees the promise depends on the policy.

Organisations

Customers can belong to an organisation. Depending on the desk's settings, members see each other's tickets in the help centre and may reply to them. The organisation is shown on the ticket.

Reports

The Reports tab shows how the desk kept its promises over a stretch of days: SLA kept, First response kept, Resolution kept, Tickets with a breach, Average overdue, a weekly chart and the Worst tickets. Narrow it by ticket type. Dashboards can carry the same numbers with the SLA kept and SLA breaches widgets.