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Ticket support and e-mail management
Ticket support and e-mail management functionality is available in SupportSuite and eSupport.
A ticket can be thought of in many ways: an issue, an e-mail, a message or as a threaded conversation. However you decide to use tickets, a ticket is central to an e-mail and issue-based support desk.
Tickets can be raised by e-mail or submitted online via your end-user support desk. Inside the support desk, tickets reside in departments, are set to a status and have numerous properties.
Ticket submission
Tickets can be raised by end-users using an intuitive and customizable support desk interface, or directly by e-mail (see below). The default ticket submission form is clear, simple and supports custom fields.
E-mail management
The robust e-mail parser allows incoming e-mail messages to be automatically parsed into tickets or ticket responses, and processed according to rules you specify (see "E-mail Parser Rules" below).
Your support desk can be configured to collect e-mail from POP3 or IMAP boxes at regular intervals, or you can route messages directly to the e-mail parser by using forwarding aliases.
E-mail parser rules
The rule-based e-mail parser system allows you to configure any number of rules (such as based on content, from addresses, file attachments, length and size) which determine how the system handles incoming e-mails both at pre-parse (when the e-mail content is being parsed) and post-parse (after the e-mail has been converted into a ticket) stages.
Example actions include automatically responding to or rejecting incoming messages, changing ticket priority, assigning a ticket to someone and changing the ticket's department.
Two-way e-mail parsing
When enabled, the two-way e-mail parsing feature allows both end-users and staff users to update tickets in the support desk via e-mail.
A staff user can reply to a ticket update alert e-mail. This reply will be processed by the e-mail parser, recorded in the support desk and forwarded to the end-user (ticket creator).
Ticket management
An intuitive, powerful and customizable interface
The staff control panel gives your staff and support agent users access to their departments, where they manage tickets, handle issues and respond to your end-users.
Without being overwhelming, the staff interface provides one-click access to an array of powerful ticket tools, making finding and managing tickets simple and fast.
Customizable ticket views (ticket listings)
Each staff user can define their own private ticket listing view, or named views can be saved for selection by other staff users.
The columns of a ticket listing (i.e. what properties of tickets are shown in the ticket list) can be customized. Custom field content can also be displayed in ticket listings, as well as the number of tickets shown at one time, the sort order and what the list is to be sorted by.
Searching
There are several ways to search for tickets throughout your support desk. 'Quick search' searches the content of tickets based on your search terms.
Advanced search allows you to combine an unlimited number of wide-ranging search criteria; such as ticket owner, the last reply date, ticket priority, department, status, whether the ticket has an attachment, whether the ticket has been escalated and so on.
One-click ticket filters (pre-defined searches)
A ticket filter behaves much like a "saved search", the only difference being that results are not saved - only the search criteria are.
Staff users can define an unlimited number of search criteria and save this set as a named filter. This filter can be made public (visible to and usable by all staff users) or private (usable only by the staff user who created it).
The filter can then be instantly executed from the department and status tree; clicking on the filter's name will perform a ticket search according to the specific criteria, bringing all relevant tickets into view.
Pre-defined ticket responses
Pre-defined responses (for greetings, commonly used text and frequently asked questions) can be created and organized into folders, sorted by category, type or however you see fit. Pre-defined replies can be dropped into a ticket reply using an integrated menu that is easily accessible when replying to tickets.
Ticket properties
Departments
You can maintain an unlimited number of departments (such as Support, Sales and Billing) and enforce access permissions to each for individual staff users or across entire staff teams.
Departments can be made either public (tickets can be submitted directly to the department by your support desk users) or private (for example, for internal purposes). Tickets can be moved between departments with ease.
Statuses and priorities
Each ticket has a status: Open, On Hold or Closed. Administrator users can create new and customize existing statuses, as well as bind a status to specific department(s). Tickets within a department of a certain status can be listed directly from any area of the staff control panel using the department and status tree.
Each ticket can also have a priority. A priority can be selected by an end-user (when submitting the ticket) and altered by staff users. As well as the default set, customized priorities with custom colors can be created by administrator users.
Flags and labels
Each ticket can have an unlimited number of labels attached to it and can be flagged with a certain color, allowing you to sort tickets physically (labels) as well as visually (colored flags) with ease.
Administrator users may add, edit and remove flags via the administrator control panel. Labels can be created by all staff users, and using the department and status tree can be instantly filtered by label (across all departments) with a single click.
Ticket workflow and SLA support
Our support desk solutions bring enterprise standard workflow management to your support desk. However, this is not to say that these advanced features will over-complicate a workflow when you want to keep things simple.
Ticket assignments
Tickets can be assigned to specific staff users, either manually or (if enabled) automatically following a reply by a staff user. If a ticket alert rule is configured (see below), assignment notifications can be sent.
Ticket event and action alerts
Rules can be created that specify when a specific ticket action occurs (governed by specific criteria), a ticket alert (e-mail or SMS) is generated and sent to staff users.
Each staff user can individually customize the way they are alerted about ticket actions. For example, a ticket alert rule can be created to e-mail a particular staff user or all staff users when a ticket is created or when a ticket is assigned to somebody.
Alerts can be sent via e-mail or SMS (this requires the SMS Gateway service) and can be created to cover a large scope of events and granular criteria.
Find out more about the SMS Gateway.
Ticket due times and SLA support
Sets of 'working hours' can be defined on a weekly schedule, and SLA plans (minimum ticket response times) can be configured and enforced that correspond to these working hours. This means that ticket due times will be tracked according to the 'working hours' you define for an SLA plan.
SLA plans can be attached to tickets according to scopes: department-wide, to an entire group of end-users, to an individual user or to an individual ticket. If a ticket does not fall under a specific SLA plan, a default (configurable) ticket due time will apply. Specific due times can also be set manually for each ticket.
These integrated workflow features allow you to control response times, increase efficiency and enforce standards across your entire support operation.
Automatic ticket escalations
Escalation rules can be configured to automatically perform a number of actions (such as changing a ticket's status, assigning the ticket to management, changing the ticket priority etc) when a ticket becomes overdue.
Scheduled automatic ticket follow-ups
Automatic ticket follow-ups can be configured to perform actions after a specified amount of time has elapsed, or on a specific date. For example, a ticket can automatically replied to, moved to a different department, escalated to a higher priority, assigned to another staff user or automatically followed up with another reply.
Advanced features
Automatic knowledgebase suggestions (Instant Response System)
An acclaimed Kayako innovation, the Instant Response System can drastically cut down on the amount of support tickets submitted by users.
This is accomplished by unobtrusively providing common solutions to problems before tickets are submitted. While a user is drafting their ticket submission, the IRS system will show them relevant articles that may assist them in solving their problem.
IRS can also be enabled for staff users, suggesting knowledgebase articles to assist them with composing a ticket response.
Download repository integration
As well as the ability to attach files stored on your computer to ticket responses, any file uploaded to the repository (public or private) can be attached to a ticket response.
Ticket RSS feeds
Staff users can access RSS feeds of ticket listings for a particular department (using HTTP authentication).
Export tickets to PDF and XML documents
Entire tickets can be exported and saved as PDF documents (a printer and reader-friendly format) or as XML documents.
Ticket locking (reply collision handling)
When a staff user is viewing a ticket, a small padlock icon will appear next to that ticket in the listing. Other staff can still access the ticket at the same time. If one staff user is in the process of typing a reply to a ticket, all other staff viewing that same ticket will get to see the reply content in real-time. This is done to ensure that multiple replies are not erroneously sent at the same time.
Custom fields
Defined by administrator users, custom fields allow you to define input fields to manage data that is vital to your organization.
They feature a variety of field types (text fields, radio buttons, checkboxes, etc) and can enforce constraints on or validate data entry using the 'required field' flag or validating input using regular expressions.
Custom fields for ticket submission can be assigned to departments, allowing you to collect different information for different types of issue.
InstaAlert for desktop ticket alerts
Bundled with SupportSuite and eSupport, InstaAlert is a lightweight desktop application for Microsoft Windows. The application resides in your system tray, connected to your support desk installation. It will notify staff users about new tickets and replies to existing tickets. Clicking on an alert will take you directly to that ticket in your default web browser.
A "Pro" version of InstaAlert is also available at additional cost that provides more detailed ticket and department information.