Skip to content
Log in Sign up

Module 08

Service desk and portal

A ticket is a work item, so everything work items already do arrives on it unchanged.

What it does

A desk queue with its SLA column, drawn schematically
A ticket is a work item
Comments, attachments, watchers, history, mentions, search, saved searches, reports and time logging are the ones the rest of the product already uses. A queue maps to a project, so a request gets a real key like SUP-41 and the permissions you have already set.
The SLA clock reads your calendar
Eight business hours means eight hours the team actually works. Targets are measured against the work schedule and the holiday calendar you already keep, half days included, and a policy with no schedule is measured in wall-clock hours for a round-the-clock target.
Waiting on the customer stops the clock
When a request goes back to the customer the clock pauses, and the due times move forward by the paused span when it resumes. They are not recomputed, so a schedule you edit today never changes a target a customer was already given.
A customer sees their side, and only their side
A portal contact sees their own organization's requests and the comments marked for them. Internal notes on their own ticket stay internal, and no logged time is shown in either hours or money.
A customer is not an employee
A portal contact has no employee profile, so they are not in your People list, your assignee picker, your approver picker or your seat count. What they can reach follows from who they are rather than from a permission somebody could widen.
Mail to a queue becomes a request
Give a queue an address and what arrives there opens a request. A reply threads onto the one it answers, found by a signed token in the reply address rather than by a matching subject line, so two customers writing about the same broken printer never meet.

What it is not

Naming the ceiling is what makes everything above it credible. The roadmap says which of these are deferred and why.

  • Attachments on inbound mail. A message becomes a request carrying its text; a file sent with it does not arrive yet.
  • Mail from an address nobody recognizes becoming an account. A stranger's message becomes a request with no requester attached, and somebody inside decides who they are.
  • A published knowledge base for customers. The Library is internal.
  • Chat, telephony or a satisfaction survey.

The rest of the product

Try it against your own week

Log a real week of your own hours and put it through approval. That is a better test than any feature list, and it takes an afternoon.
Sign up See pricing