A question came up on how to customize Autotask Tickets specific to a customer.

The question was: “Is there a way to set up a Ticket Template that only shows for a specific client? We have 1 client that has a regular type of requirement with a very specific set up – would be good that a Template could be used – but I don’t want an overload of templates.”

This is a great question as this problem does come up now and then. At my MSP, we had a few custom customers where we had very specific processes that had to be followed, many of them being proactive processes that were not needed anywhere else. (Side note: That immediately lets you know that it was outside the scope of normal “MSP” operations as it was bespoke vs consistent/scalable.)

There are a few ways to handle this, which I’ll address:

• Use recurring tickets to do the work for you.
• Use Autotask Forms (aka Ticket Templates).
• Use Ticket Categories.

Use Recurring Tickets in Autotask

If you know of the task beforehand, it’s best to use recurring tickets for, well, recurring work. The benefit of this approach is that you convert the manual effort of building out the ticket into an automated one.

Autotask Recurring Tickets is the native engine used by Autotask. That said, note that Rocketship has a recurring ticket that is much more powerful and scalable than the “included” version that comes with Autotask. Specifically, the Rocketship Recurring Ticket engine can be setup once and will automatically include and exclude customers as your contracts and sales impact your customer base.

How to Restrict to a Single Customer

Only build out the recurring ticket process for that customer:

• In Autotask, you would build out the recurring rule inside the Account and be done.
• In Rocketship, you would create a CRM Search for that customer and point your rule to that CRM Search.

Use Autotask Forms in Autotask

Another option is to use Autotask Forms for this. These are commonly referred to as “ticket templates” and “speedcodes”. An Autotask Form let’s you preset almost every value of a ticket, time entry, etc.  

How to Restrict to a Single Customer

The Access Control List (ACL) for Forms is me, department, and everyone.

Alas, this means you can’t effectively “restrict” this Form to a customer unless you created a department for that customer, placed your team in the Department, and then restricted the Form to that customer.

Another option: That said, note that your “naming” comes into play here. Another way to help filter out Forms is to have a naming standard. So, customer specific Forms may start with CS-xxxx for example.

Use Autotask Ticket Categories

This is likely the best approach although it can be tedious as Autotask Ticket Categories can be unwieldy, especially in large numbers. That said, they offer the ultimate control in managing what data your team can see and use when dealing with a ticket.

How to Restrict to a Single Customer

This would be done using a combination of Autotask Workflow Rules (WFRs) and Ticket Categories. Let’s assume you are trying to automate a process of this form:

• Customer: X
• Issue: Customer Specific Services

Then you choose from one of these two methods:

• Method 1: Any customer specific activity
• Method 2: Only one customer specific activity

Method 1: Any Customer Specific Activity

In this solution, we’ll create a Ticket Category that owns all Customer specific activities for ALL customers. This solves the “I don’t want an overload of templates” problem in the original request at the top of this article.

You would then do this:

1. Create your Autotask Form and share to Everyone.
2. Create a Ticket Category called “Customer Specific Activities.”
3. In Ticket Category->General->Available Form Templates, replace All with Custom and only add those Forms relative to this Ticket Category.
4. Create an Autotask Workflow Rule that triggers on any ticket of Issue=Customer Specific Services and updates the ticket to use the Ticket Category “Customer Specific Activities.”

Method 2: Only One Customer Specific Activity

This seems heavy-handed, but if you have a really big customer that has a set of processes that are frequent and important, you can modify the method above but make the Ticket Category very specific to this customer. One benefit of this approach is you don’t need the Autotask Form anymore. Ticket Categories do allow you to specify the Ticket Title and Ticket Description.