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Can't group by "Level"? Really? Workaround, please!

Hello:

We're a new company. We've been using Web Help Desk for months but just opened our doors about a month ago. The Help Desk, now that we're fully staffed, needs to be reconfigured. We talked about how we wanted this to work and I set it up that way a few days ago, or so I thought. Today, just by happenstance, I discovered on my own that the functionality wasn't working the way we wanted it to. I studied my work and realized quite quickly what was going on but couldn't find a resolution so called support. Support said, in short, "you can't do that." Great; now what am I going to do?

I'm going to explain what I'm trying to do and then explain what is actually happening. And finally, if you actually take the time to read all of that, hopefully one of you fine folk will have a workaround to this.

We have three tech groups - Access, General, and Admin. In each group there were three levels configured by default - level 1, level 2, etc. We have IT Help Desk Technicians, IT Technicians, and IT Business Analysts. We wanted all of the tickets to come in to Level 1. We have our IT Help Desk Technicians to Level 1 for each of these groups. The tickets would come in to level 1 and not be automatically assigned to a tech, we just wanted them to sit there unassigned. An IT Help Desk Technician, in his own time, would view the unassigned tickets and having opened one, either assign it to himself so he could do the work and close the ticket OR he could "Escalate" the ticket to Level 2 support. The escalated ticket then, would go to Level 2 and again, not be assigned. An IT Technician, in his free time then, in turn, would pick up the unassigned ticket and assign it t himself so he could do the work and close the ticket OR he could "Escalate" the ticket to Level 3 support where the whole process would repeat with the IT Business Analysts.

So I created the groups and assigned the IT Help Desk Technicians to Level 1 on each of the groups. I assigned Technicians to Level 2 on each of the groups. And I assigned IT Business Analysts to the Level 3 of each group. I told Web Help Desk to NOT automatically assign tickets to anyone on any level. And with that, I thought I had done it. From the "Tickets" button at the top, I could see "My Tickets" and "Group Tickets". The fault is that I assumed "Group Tickets" means I can only see tickets that are assigned to the same level as me. In other words, if I'm level 2 for each of these groups, I assumed "Group Tickets" meant that I can only see all of the Level 2 tickets for all of the groups. Nope - I was wrong. "Group Tickets" actually means "Group Tickets" - jokes on me. So I'm assigned Level 2 for a group called "Access", Level 2 for another group called "General", and Level 2 for a third group called "Admin" and when I click on "Group Tickets", I'm seeing EVERY SINGLE TICKET for EVERY SINGLE GROUP NO MATTER WHAT LEVEL IT IS. I'm a level 2 and I can see the tickets assigned to Level 1 and Level 3 in addition to my own Level 2.

And you can't change the groups from Access, General, and Admin to IT Help Desk Technician, IT Technician, etc. because should a ticket be assigned to an IT Technician, and he needs to escalate the ticket, it can only be escalated up to another Level within his own group, not redirected to another group.

Since you can't change views to only see tickets assigned to your level, I don't even know why they have levels. The only possible way levels would work is if you allowed the system to automatically assign the tickets to an employee and we don't want to do that.

Anyone else trying to do something similar? Anyone know a workaround for this?

Thanks,

Magus

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ScottRich

Magus, if you just want the list to show tickets by group and level, you can create querys with filters to do that. I have my Group Tickets view set to only show my level 3 network tickets and my level 1 change management tickets. You do this by going into Search Tickets and setting up your search parameters, then use the Save Query as to name it and share it. Then you select it on the Group Tickets view. Of course everyone still has access to all the tickets, but this at least gives you the correct list to work from.

billypilgrim

Unless I have completely misunderstood the problem something is not right here because I previously worked on our Helpdesk who are level 1 in every group and the Helpdesk can only see level 1 tickets, I now work in our 2nd line Infrastructure team & I can only see level 2 calls assigned to our group. I am an admin and always have been since I set the system up in the first place.

One thing which caught me out initially was if people are set the Lead Tech or the Tech Group Manager for a request type then they will see every ticket for that category regardless of the level or if it is assigned to someone else so I would check these out.

I ended up using a dummy account for Lead Tech since it just confused the heck out of everyone, for Tech Group Manager I just made sure each of those people was the relevant Team Leader who just needed to keep an eye on what their team had assigned to them.

billypilgrim

The other part, about not being able to assign to another group- that is because in WHD the Request Types are always bound to to a particular Tech Group.

The way to get around that (which sounds like it could work fine in your set up) would be to make some extra Tech Groups which cross over a little so that further up the escalation path the Techs you want the tickets to go to are included in that group.

As an example we have our Helpdesk as level 1 for everything, an Application Support team who have their own associated request types and a Tech Support team who have their own categories but in some cases where both teams need to contribute to a request we have a couple of request types where the Helpdesk are still level 1, App Support Techs make up Level 2 and Tech support Techs make up Level 3, so we had to make a new Tech Group which included all those people.

The end goal is making the system assign the ticket to the right people, this meaqns it will not necessarily mirror the teams you have sat in the office if you catch my meaning.

magus

billypilgrim is correct. The system is actually functioning as I had hoped it would. I've been too busy to get back on here to report the update. In the end, the problem was with my own view. I am the Admin of the Help Desk and so, when I view group tickets, I ALONE am seeing them all. The other associates, however, are only seeing tickets assigned to their groups and levels. Technicians, for example, can only see LEVEL 2 tickets for the groups Access, General, and Admin.

So funny how that worked out but I'm very surprised that Support didn't catch that when I was with them on the phone. When I explained the situation, the guy literally told me it wasn't possible to make it work that way when in fact, it was designed to do just that! Ha.

Thanks for the comments!