Sometimes you will want to manually add a ticket yourself, this might be when a customer calls with an enquiry for which they haven't raised a ticket, but you want to keep a record of it, or it might be some work for which you are charging an hourly rate. Creating a ticket will ensure you don't forget about it, can monitor its progress, can make notes and send notifications to the customer.
Follow these steps to raise a new Ticket:
- Go to Helpdesk > New Ticket.
- Search for an existing customer or add a new one.
- Enter the subject. Make it something descriptive so you can easily see what the ticket is about.
- Enter a detailed description for the issue or work.
- You can save to add the ticket now, or continue. Learn more about the other fields below.
| Assigned to | Select the employee name who is responsible for working on this ticket. You can add or change this at any time. If an employee "claims" an unassigned ticket they will automatically be entered in this field. |
| Status | Defaults to the New Ticket status as per your settings - Setup > Helpdesk > Helpdesk settings. |
| Service Level | Is blank unless setup on the contact record. Add or change this at any time. |
| Category | If switched on your customer selects this when they create the ticket. Opt to hide or show this field for customers raising tickets in Setup > Helpdesk > Helpdesk settings. You can add or change this at any time. |
| Add a note | Type any notes on the progress of the ticket here. You can add as many notes as required. When you save they are listed below, the most recent at the top. You can delete notes that you added (not other users). For each note specify whether who to notify, if anyone, read more about public and private notes below. |
| Add a file | Click the Browse button to locate and attach a file to the ticket. |
Public or Private Notes & Notifications
Use the two checkboxes at the top of the screen to make any notes visible to customers and specify whether an email/SMS notification is sent:
- Notify staff only - this will add a private note and send all the ticket details and note history as an email to any staff members listed on the ticket. You can add staff members and customers to the ticket at the bottom of the screen to ensure they receive updates.
- Notify everyone - this will add a public note which the customer can view when they log in to their account on your website or in the web portal. It will also send an email notification to both the customer and staff, however, the customer will only be given details of the original ticket and the current note being added but staff will receive a full ticket history. If the customer has a mobile number on their account they will also receive an SMS message to tell them they have received a response to the ticket.
- Leave both checkboxes unticked to add private notes that can be viewed by staff members only, but send no notifications.
You can add or remove people from the notification list at the very bottom of the ticket; both customers and staff members. Select staff members using the Add field on the left, and select customers using the Add field on the right. Begin typing to search all your contacts.
If you want profile pictures to be displayed you can sign up with Gravatar.com and upload your photo.
Editing the Ticket
Ticket subjects can be edited by administrator users only. As the ticket subject is what you see in ticket listings often it can be useful to make it something more descriptive to enable people to easily see what the ticket is about.
Notes can be deleted but not edited. You can only delete notes that you have added. Locate the note in the history and click the Delete link.
