HelpDesk Quick Start Guide

Different types of ticket / contract

There are 3 different type of Helpdesk ticket/contract.

Ad Hoc Tickets

All chargeable time accrued against the ticket will be billed.

To set up a ticket of this nature.

Link your contact and company and then their Ad-hoc contract.
Any activity logged against the ticket and marked as chargeable gets accrued against the ticket and contract
On Ad-hoc tickets, the charge time field is set to chargeable as default.
When the ticket closed, it's flagged as "to be billed" automatically and the amount of time to be billed is shown on the ticket in "Time un-billed"
Only activities marked as "Chargeable" are included in this time.

Pre-Pay Tickets

A pre-pay contract has been purchased which allows the customer a certain number of hours of support without any further charge.

To set up a pre-pay ticket

Link your contact and company and then their Pre-pay contract.
Any activity logged against the ticket and marked as chargeable gets accrued against the ticket and contract
On pre-pay tickets, the charge time on an activity is set to "Chargeable" by default
Any activity marked as chargeable will deduct time from the contract time to give the "time remaining" on the contract
Please note that at present, if a ticket overruns the time allowed on the contract, the system will not track this overrun. This is planned for future releases
We advise setting up a custom view to show any contracts where the contract time is less than or approaching 0 so sales can then get involved to sell more time.

Standard Contract Tickets

Link your contact and company and then their standard contract.
Time is accrued against the ticket and the contract as activities are added. Adding to "Chargeable" and "Non-chargeable" time as appropriate
Non-chargeable is the default charge type on contracted tickets
If any chargeable time is recorded against the ticket, then, when the ticket is closed, it is set to "to be billed", as with Ad-hoc.

Billing Ticket Chargeable Time / Tickets to be billed

Chargeable time on a ticket can be billed to the customer. You can set up a custom view to show all tickets which are ready for billing based on the "To be billed" field which is selectable from the list of filters on custom view creation (Under Billing information).

To bill the chargeable time on a ticket, click the "Invoice" button on the ticket
You can then select the chargeable activities and add to an invoice.
This generates an invoice with pre-completed product rows.
The Product (ID) to use in these rows is set in the settings, as is the time unit by which you charge (total billed time/time unit gives you the quantity of the product to be linked to the invoice).
When you save the invoice, the un-billed time is reduced by the amount of time you have billed. The "To be billed" flag is cleared if the in-billed time is now 0.

Managing Ticket Costs

If activities with costs associated are linked to Helpdesk tickets, then the total cost is accrued on the Helpdesk ticket in the "Costs" fields under ticket information.

Automated HelpDesk Emails

An automated email is sent out to the contact linked to the ticket when a ticket is opened. This can be turned on or off in additional settings. You can also choose the template to send out in additional settings. Only a limited number of field tags can be used in Open emails, so contact OpenCRM support for help with this.

Comment Emails

You can specify the email ID to use for comment emails in additional settings. Only a limited number of field tags can be used in comment emails, so contact OpenCRM support for help with this.

Other emails

Management of a ticket can be made greatly easier by templating a number of standard emails - e.g. Close emails, Request further information etc.

Send comments and show on portal tickboxes

The send comment to customer and show on portal tickboxes can be defaulted to on or off in additional settings.

FAQs

See this FAQ for some tips on the best way to create FAQs and publish them for your customers.

Managing SLA and Automated Ticket Escalation

Please see this FAQ.

Enabling automation of ticket creation by email using POP2OpenCRM