In helpdesk and NOC tickets, it can be very difficult to track the actual state of the ticket via notes because many notes have several days of notes being added by your techs as well as any automation you may have.
My recommendation is to break out “ticket state” from ticket notes. That is, you should have a special place in every ticket that clearly defines the state of the ticket. Here is what every ticket should easily provide to a helpdesk manager as well as any tech looking at the ticket:
- Ticket Status. Handled by the Ticket Status field.
- Assignment. Handled by Primary/Secondary Resources fields.
- Root Cause. No field provided.
- Next Steps. No field provided.
- Last Note to Customer. No field provided.
In this blog, I’ll share how recommendations on how to implement Root Cause, Next Steps, and Last Note to Customer.
Since Autotask already provides the machinery for Ticket Status and Assignment, consider those “solved.”
For Last Note to Customer, you can use the Ticket Resolution field as described in Using the Autotask Ticket Resolution to Track Latest Outbound Communication. The benefit of this approach is that you can very easily include the Ticket Resolution in automated emails from Autotask reminded the customer that you are waiting on them.
For Root Cause and Next Steps, I recommend you create these Text Multi-line UDFs for Tickets: Root Cause, Next Steps. You should then create an Autotask Form (aka speedcodes) for use by your techs and include the UDFs in the Forms (this is done by editing the appropriate Ticket Category).
Solving this in Rocketship
Rocketship allows you to directly update Ticket Resolutions and UDFs via the note field in Published Macros. You can also require that techs enter a Last/Next Steps note when using the Ticket Routing (escalations) feature. Each of these features combined ensures a ticket always has the correct information available, and available quickly, to helpdesk managers as well as those assigned to the ticket.
