My team is constantly called on the phone after a user submits a ticket asking what the status of their ticket is. If the user doesn't contact us directly, there are times that they don't even bother and just ask their manager to escalate their ticket. This is sometimes done in a matter of minutes, so has nothing to do with the helpdesk not responding in a reasonable timeframe. It leads to interrupting the techs working on another ticket to take the call and explain that we'll get to it as soon as possible (when their place in line comes up).
What I am proposing is robust functionality to configure and display various queue views (permission based) showing open tickets that would be visible in both the client and tech web GUI views. This would be integrated with the existing "Tech Permissions" functionality to assign a specific view to techs, while adding a "Client Permissions" config page to assign a different view, likely with much less info than the tech view. I think the client side could be fairly simple at this point, setting default permissions that can be modified on the individual client level on a case by case basis. Perhaps even allow for logic to dynamically assign client permissions based on imported fields from LDAP integration (though I can't think of a scenario for this off hand). When creating each view, you would create logic on how to prioritize/rank tickets. In my situation, it would be very simple due to our relatively small environment. I would first sort by priority, then by create date (oldest to be addressed first). Ideally, you would allow every ticket/location/client/tech/etc. field, including custom fields to be used in the ranking logic. An advanced option using SQL (or the SolarWinds equivalent) would be very valuable as well. Some mechanism to manually override this logic would be desired, but if we allow custom fields to be used in the logic, I imagine we could create one for this purpose. Perhaps this functionality could replace the My Tickets and Group Tickets tabs, though I see value in making this a new tab on its own. Lastly (that I can think of at the moment), each view assigned to a set of permissions should only make visible those fields that I want visible for each view. For example, as the manager watching all tickets, I might have a queue view available only to me that allows me to filter to tickets in which I'm expecting the next action to be taken by someone on the helpdesk staff (filter out status' "Resolved" and perhaps others, or filter based off of other ticket/client/tech/location/etc. fields and associated custom fields). I might want to display in my view ticket #, request detail, status, last x notes, tech, open time, work time, etc. For the tech view, I might want to clean it up a bit by removing open time and work time, and perhaps (and perhaps not) filter to show on the techs' tickets. For the clients, I might want to show only their ticket #, ticket subject, and place in the queue.
