Teams

About Teams

Teams are a collection of your support agents. By grouping your agents into Teams you are able to control the visibility and behavior of tickets. Use teams to:

• assign a ticket to a group of agents, rather than one agent;
• group issue type with support type or staff expertise;
• answer for various departments in your help desk;
• set different visibility permissions for various tickets;
• restrict ticket visibility based on rules & notifications;
• use them in rules & notifications.

Teams cannot contain end-users. End-users can only be grouped in User Groups and Organizations.

When you separate your support agents into Teams, you must take into account the various user roles in Helprace.

What you can do with Teams

Here are some of the things you are able to do with Teams in Helprace:

Assign a team to mailbox

You want to ensure that emails to billing@acme.com are addressed by the Billing team.

Separate responsibility for requests

You want to assign billing and refund tickets to the Billing team. Assign tickets that contain common questions to the Level 1 Team.

Restrict access to confidential requests

You want to ensure that no one except certain agents (with the exception of Admins, Owners) see tickets meant for the Billing team.

Escalate requests according to complexity

Tier 1 team, Tier 2 team, Tier 3 team. Tier 1 and 2 agents can only see tickets assigned to each other, while Tier 3 agents can see everyone's tickets. Some agents may be part of both teams.

Divide up teams according to expertise

Support Team and Product Team can share a a support agent with expertise in both areas. However, other agents do not see contents of teams they do not belong to.

Assign requests to a team based on tags

Tickets with the word refund in the subject or body get tagged "refund" and are assigned to the Billing Team.

Divide support by time zone, language, etc

EST-E Team is for supporting English-speaking customers on the east coast and the PST-S Team is for supporting Spanish-speaking customers on the west coast.

Managing Teams

Only Admins and Owners can manage (create, modify, delete, add agents to) Teams.

Creating Teams

• Go to   People and select Teams.
• Create a new Team by clicking on the + button and adding a title and optional description.

Adding & removing agents

As soon as you create a Team, you can add existing agents to it. You can add users automatically using Default Teams. Manage agents via:

Teams page

• Click on a desired team in Teams.
• Click Add Agent. Start typing in their name or pick from the list.
• Remove the agent by clicking X to the right of their name.

If a particular person is not available in the list or if you can't find them, they likely have a role of User. Change their role to Agent before adding them to a Team.

User profile

Default Teams

Adding new agents in Helprace will add them to a default Team automatically. Note that this will only happen after a default Team is set.

This is regardless if agents are added via the API, imported in bulk, or added individually. To make a Team default:

• Go to   People and select Teams.
• You'll see a list of your Teams. Click the ⋮ button to the right of the desired Team and select Make Default.

Remove default Team if you want new agents created without being assigned to a Team. To remove a default Team:

• Click the ⋮ button to the right of the desired Team and select Remove Default.

Editing & deleting Teams

Teams page

• Go to   People and select Teams.
• You'll see a list of your Teams. Click the ⋮ button to the right of the desired Team and select Edit or Delete.

Team view

Edit or delete with the pencil and trashbin icons.

Deleting Teams carries some implications. If you set up any Rules & Notifications, they will no longer function as intended. The tickets that were assigned to a Team will revert to Unassigned, but you'll be able to see ticket history in All Events.

Using Teams with Tickets

Assign tickets to a Team

Any staff member can assign a ticket to anyone, including to Teams. Tickets can be automatically assigned to Teams as well.

Tickets can be a assigned in various of ways from the assignment drop down:

• Unassigned removes assignment
  • removes agent but leaves Team if ticket is assigned to agent
• Unassign Team removes Team assignment
  • visible when ticket is assigned to Team or to agent within it
  • makes Unassigned if assigned to Team
  • removes Team but leaves agent if ticket is assigned to agent
• Assign to Me assigns ticket to yourself
• Team assigns ticket to:
  • a Team as a whole
  • an agent within that Team
• No Team lets you select an agent without a Team

Here's an example:

Ticket access and visibility

Owners and Admins always have access to all tickets.

Agents don't have access to tickets assigned to Teams other than their own, unless assigned to them personally.

If an agent assigns a ticket to a Team they do not belong to, they will lose access to the ticket upon submission.

Searching tickets by Team

To search for tickets assigned to a certain Team

team:Billing

To search for Pending tickets not assigned to a certain Team

status:pending -team:Billing

Learn more about searching

Managing Team Filters

There are three types of ticket filters:

• Shared (visible globally for everyone).
  Owners and Admins can manage them. Agents can only view them.
• Team (visible to members of certain Team).
  Owners and Admins can manage them. Agents within the Team can only view them.
• My Filters (visible to the individual only).

Therefore, you can set up filters (or views) that will be available to a specific Team. For example, you can have tickets that are assigned to that team to show up in the filter. You can add additional filters that list the tickets assigned to each agent within that Team.

• Go to the Tickets page and click on the ⋮ button in the left pane and select Add Filter.

• To show unresolved tickets assigned to a Team named Billing, type in the search query

  team:"Billing" status:(new OR open)

• Choose what Team you'd like it available to.

Using Teams in Macros

You can assign a ticket to a specific Team using saved commands (macros). Learn more about Macros

Using Teams in Rules & Notifications

Specifying Teams in Conditions & Actions

You can assign your mailboxes to Teams.

Example: You want to ensure that emails to billing@acme.com are addressed by the Billing team. Simply set the Condition

Ticket: Received At > Is one of > billing@acme.com

And Action

Ticket: Team > Billing

You can make a ticket's Team a criteria for additional action.

Example: You want to send an email to the Owner whenever a ticket is assigned to the Billing Team. Simply set Conditions

Ticket: Assignee > Is > Changed
Ticket: Team > Is > Billing

and Action

Notification: Email user: > Mr. Owner

Auto-assign tickets within a Team

You can escalate tickets to a Team.

Example: You want tickets tagged "urgent" assigned to an agent automatically in Experienced Team. Simply set the Condition

Ticket: Tags > Contains at least one of the following > urgent

and Actions

Ticket: Team > Experienced Team
Ticket: Assignee > (Auto: Least Busy)

You can check if a ticket is unassigned to a Team.

Example: You want tickets unassigned to a Team to be assigned to a specific agent. Simply set the Condition

Ticket: Team > Is > Unassigned

and Action

Ticket: Assignee > John Doe 

You can also use User Groups and Organizations in instantaneous business rules and time-based business rules.

Sending notifications to Teams

You can send an email to members of a whole team at once.

Example: You want to let agents know a ticket has been assigned to their Team. Simply set the Condition

Ticket: Team > Changed

and Action

Notification: Email user > (Assigned Team)

Teams in User Portal

Content Restrictions

You can use space restrictions to limit Team access to portal content.

For example, you can restrict access to your portal in a number of ways:

FAQ page for Billing & Refund staff

A questions and answers page for top management and those with the authority to issue billing & refunds.

Knowledge base for Support Tiers

A knowledge base for Tier 1 - Tier 3 support engineers to share tips and troubleshooting steps.

Issue tracking for Product Teams

A problem tracking page for product development teams to report internal issues.

Idea lab for support staff

An idea and suggestion gathering page to improve support processes.

Learn more about Space restrictions