Teams, Groups & Organizations: Published Ordered Knowledge Base: : General | Helprace Support

About Teams, Groups & Organizations

Vic — Fri, 08 Nov 2019 10:43:53 +0000

Need a compelling reason to group people in your help desk into categories?

Take control of your ticket workflows or limit access to tickets and areas in your user portal. Improve productivity of your support agents, allowing them to offer better customer service.

What are Teams?

Teams are a collection of your staff members, also known as Agents in Helprace. How you structure your Teams depends on how you want your tickets to behave. Simply put, you may want to create 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 (ie: the mailbox a ticket was sent to).
use them in ticket rules & notifications.

Learn more about Teams

What are User Groups?

User Groups are a collection of your end-users, customers, or anyone with the User role in Helprace. You can have one user belong to various Groups, which makes it particularly easy to segment users according to your needs. Use Groups to:

segment customers by value;
segment customers by support type needed;
restrict access to areas of your user portal;
use them in ticket rules & notifications.

Learn more about User Groups

What are Organizations?

Organizations are a collection of your end-users by company. Unlike User Groups, Organizations make it easy for users to participate in tickets between each other. It also gives staff a bird's eye view of what's going on. Use Organizations to:

allow staff to see all member participation within an organization (tickets or topics started).
allow organization users to share or view shared tickets;
automatically add users to an organization with a domain;
restrict access to areas of your user portal;
use them in ticket rules & notifications.

Learn more about Organizations

Teams, User Groups and Organizations are available in the Complete plan.

Teams

Edward — Tue, 30 Apr 2019 09:08:09 +0000

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

When Teams are added, they're displayed in the sidebar. Click to change them.

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

User Groups

Edward — Thu, 22 Nov 2018 09:04:37 +0000

About User Groups

User Groups are a collection of your end-users and Organizations. You can have one user or Organization belong to various Groups.

Use Groups to:

segment customers by value;
segment customers by support type needed;
restrict access to areas of your user portal;
use them in ticket rules & notifications.

Groups cannot contain support agents, because support agents can only be grouped in Teams.

What you can do with Groups

Separate requests by user

You are an online store that needs to separate your retail customer requests from internal help desk requests.

Segment customers by value

You are a store that needs to separate your most valuable customers from customers that spend less.

Support users in different time zones or languages

Create a Group for every time zone and language, assigning your user base to whatever Group you see fit.

Limit user portal content to different users

Make your user portal viewable to all registered users, but have a hidden area limited to users from VIP Customers Group.

Managing Groups

Only Owners and Admins can manage (create, modify, delete) Groups.

Agents can only add/remove Users and Organizations to Groups.

Creating Groups

Go to People and select User Groups.
Create a new Group by clicking on the + button and adding a title and optional description.

Adding & removing users

As soon as you create a Group, you can add existing users to it. Manage users via:

User Group page

Click on a desired Group.
Click Add User. Start typing in their name or pick from the list. The magnifying glass searches for users already in the Group.
Remove the user by clicking X to the right of their name.

People page

Click ⋮ to the right of their name and pick Change Groups.

User profile

Click ... to the right of User Participation and pick Change Groups.

When Groups are added, they're displayed in the sidebar. Click to change them.

Ticket view

Click ⋮ to the right of their name and pick Change Groups.

If a user assigned to Groups becomes an agent, they will be unassigned from their Groups.

Editing & deleting Groups

Go to People and select User Groups.
You'll see a list of your Groups. Click the ⋮ button to the right of the desired Group and select Edit or Delete.

Deleting Groups carries some implications. If you set up any Rules & Notifications, they will no longer function as intended.

Using Groups with Tickets

Searching tickets by Groups

To search for tickets belonging to a certain Group:

group:"VIP Customers"

To search for Pending tickets not assigned to a certain Group:

status:pending -group:"Billing Team"

Note: searching for a Group in the People page displays users belonging to the Group.

Learn more about searching

Using Groups in Rules & Notifications

Specifying Groups in Conditions & Actions

You can filter out incoming requests from a Group.

Example: You want tickets from "VIP Customers" to be assigned to the Owner. Simply set the Condition

Requester: User Group > Is > VIP Customers

and Action

Ticket: Assignee > Mr. Owner

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

Example: You want tickets from "VIP Customers" and "Bonus Program" Group to be assigned to a Team. Simply set the Condition

Ticket: Is > Added
Requester: User Group > Is > VIP Customers, Bonus Program

and Action

Ticket: Assignee > Tier 3 Team

You can add, remove or set one or more Groups to to a user.

Example: You want users with tickets tagged "vip" to only belong to the "VIP Customers" and "Bonus Program" Groups. Simply set the Condition

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

and Action

Requester: User Group > Set > VIP Customers, Bonus Program

You can check if a ticket is not part of a Group.

Example: You want tickets that do not belong to any Group to be automatically assigned to Tier 1 Team. Simply set the Condition

Requester: User Group > Is > Unassigned

and Action

Ticket: Assignee > Tier 1 Team

Using Groups with Organizations

A Group can have multiple Organizations in it. If a user belongs to Organization that is assigned to a Group, the user will be treated as a member of that Group by inheritance.

What you can do with Groups and Organizations

User Groups can act as support hubs for Organizations

Example: Create a User Group consisting of tickets from users belonging to different Organizations.

Define access to your user portal by combining User Groups with Organizations

Example: Create a portal where customers from ACME and MCC Organizations can participate with VIP Customers Group.

Adding Organizations to Group

Any staff member can add or remove Organizations to a Group.

As soon as you create a Group, you can add existing users to it. Manage users via:

User Groups page

Select Organizations tab.
Start typing Organization name or pick from the list. Remove the Organization by clicking X beside it.

An Organization belonging to a Group will assign users within that Organization to Group by inheritance.

Organization page, User profile, Ticket view

An Organization has a list of Groups it's assigned to. Click on them to change these associations.

Using Groups with Organizations and Teams

Viewing:

Save views as filters for tickets from User Groups
Restrict customer support agents to tickets from a Group or a combination of Groups
Create off-limits content (Spaces) in your portal for certain Teams and Groups

Rules & Notifications:

Automatically assign ticket received from users in a Group to a specific Team or agent
Automatically add new users to an Organization based on their email domain

Groups in User Portal

Content Restrictions

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

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

FAQ page for paying customers

A questions and answers page for features for paid customers.

Knowledge base for VIP Clients

A knowledge base with premium content for VIP clients.

Issue tracking for technical users

A problem tracking page for customers familiar with your product.

Idea lab for beta testers

An idea and suggestion gathering page for users testing the product.

Learn more about Space restrictions

Organizations

Edward — Tue, 18 Dec 2018 12:05:20 +0000

About Organizations

Organizations are a collection of your end-users by company. A user can be part of one Organization and Organizations can be part of User Groups.

Use Organizations to:

keep track of what company is contacting you;
allow staff to see all member participation within an organization (tickets or topics started).
allow organization users to share or view shared tickets;
automatically add users to an organization with a domain;
restrict access to areas of your user portal;
use them in ticket rules & notifications.

Organizations cannot contain support agents, because support agents can only be grouped in Teams.

What you can do with Organizations

Track and manage tickets and topics by company

You are a B2B which sells items to other companies. Organizations help you manage this.

Maintain and divide up requests based on email domains

You frequently get emails from users with an @acme.com email, so every time a user with that domain contacts you, it can automatically get added to that Organization.

Let everyone in an Organization to see each other's tickets or collaborate on them

You want users from ACME to see and respond to all tickets submitted by other members within their organization. You want users from MCC Inc to see tickets submitted by members, but not respond to them (read-only).

Limit user portal content to Organizations

Your user portal may be visible to all your registered users, but an area can stay hidden to customers from VIP clients who belong to an Organization.

Managing Organizations

Creating Organizations

Any staff member can create Organizations.

Go to People and select Organizations.
Create a new Organization by clicking on the + button. Enter a name.

You can also add organization directly from the sidebar in Ticket view or User profile.

Domains

If you have users with an email address @acme.com, including the domain (acme.com) will add them to the Organization automatically. This is regardless of whether your users or Organization are created first.

Leave this blank if you don't want to associate your Organization with domains.

Here are some things to keep in mind:

Removing a domain won't automatically disassociate included users.
A previously associated user will not be removed if their associative email is changed.
If a user already belongs to an Organization, they won't be assigned to another one automatically.
If a user has multiple emails they will be checked individually, starting from the primary email. If an email's domain matches the Organization, the user will be assigned to Organization.

Ticket Restrictions

Every Organization restricts its members' ticket functions.

There are three options:

Restricted allows users to view and respond to their own tickets only.
Visible allows users to view and respond to their own tickets as well as view all tickets within their Organization.
Shared allows users to view and respond to all tickets within their Organization.

How users can work with their Organization's tickets

Settings

Shared Organizations

This ticket restriction setting will be set as the default one. Ticket restrictions can be changed anytime.

Auto-create Organizations

You can automatically create an Organization when a user with a new corporate domain in their email address contacts you.

Previously created users with domains matching that of an existing Organization will be added to it once they display some sort of activity.

Free domains, such as those used by email clients (gmail.com, outlook.com) cannot be added to Organizations. However, users with a free email account can be added to an Organization manually.

Adding & removing users

Any staff member can add or remove users.

As soon as you create an Organization, you can add existing users to it. You can add users automatically using domains.

Manage users via:

Organization view

When viewing an Organization, Click Add User. Start typing in their name or pick from the list. The magnifying glass searches for users already in the Organization.
Disassociate the user from Organization by clicking X beside their name.

If a user already belongs to a different Organization, you won't see their name in the suggestions to add.

User profile, Ticket view

Click Organization in the sidebar. If a user does not have an Organization, you can add one.

If the user already has an Organization, you'll see it (as well as any Group associations).

You can leave Organization notes which will be visible with the Organization in the sidebar.

Editing, merging & deleting Organizations

Go to People and select Organizations.
Click the ⋮ button to the right of the desired Organization and select Edit, Merge Into and Delete.

Organization view

When viewing an Organization, click the Pencil icon, Merge or the Trashbin icon.

You cannot merge an Organization into itself.

Deleting Organizations carries some implications. If you set up any Rules & Notifications, they will no longer function as intended.

Viewing Organizational activity

Support staff can view all interactions, including tickets submitted or topics started by members of a given Organization.

Organizations view

When viewing an Organization,

Select Tickets to see all tickets participated in by Organization members.
Filter tickets by status (All, New, Open, Pending, On-hold, Solved, Closed)

Select Community to see all topics participated in by Organization members.
Filter content by type (All, Questions, Ideas, Problems, Praise, Articles, Updates, Actions)

User profile, Ticket view

Click Organization in the sidebar. All tickets and community topics started by Organization members will be visible here.

Using Organizations with Tickets

Searching tickets by Organizations

To search for tickets belonging to a certain Organization, type in the query

organization:"ACME Inc"

To search for Pending tickets not assigned to a certain, type in the query

status:pending -organization:"ACME Inc"

Searching for an Organization in the People page displays users belonging to the Organization.

Learn more about searching

Using Organizations in Rules & Notifications

Specifying Organizations in Conditions & Actions

You can specify an Organization in business rule conditions and actions. This allows you to filter out incoming requests from an Organization they belong to.

You can make a user's Organization a criteria for additional action.

Example: You want tickets from ACME Organization to automatically get assigned to ACME Team. Simply set the Condition

Ticket: Is > Added
Requester: Organization > Is > ACME

and Action

Ticket: Assignee > ACME Team

You can set or remove an Organization from a user.

Example: You want users with tickets tagged "acme" assigned to the ACME Organization. Simply set the Condition

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

and Action

Requester: Organization > ACME

You can check if a user does not belong to an Organization.

Example: You want tickets that do not belong to any Organization to be automatically assigned to someone. Simply set the Condition

Requester: Organization > Is > Unassigned

and Action

Ticket: Assignee > John Doe

Using Organizations with Groups

A Group can have multiple Organizations in it. If a user belongs to Organization that is assigned to a Group, the user will be treated as a member of that Group by inheritance.

User Groups can act as support hubs for Organizations

Example: Create a User Group consisting of tickets from users belonging to different Organizations.

Define access to your user portal by combining User Groups with Organizations

Example: Create a portal where customers from ACME and MCC Organizations can participate with VIP Customers Group.

Group associations

Any staff member can add or remove Organizations to a Group.

Organizations view

Click Change Groups.
Start typing Group name or pick from the list. Remove Group by clicking X beside it.

Organization page, User profile, Ticket view

An Organization has a list of Groups it's assigned to. Click on them to change these associations.

Using Organizations with User Groups and Teams

Viewing:

Save views as filters for tickets from Organizations.
Restrict customer support agents to tickets only from an Organization or combination of Organizations
Create off-limits content (Spaces) in your portal for certain Teams and Organizations.

Rules & Notifications:

Automatically assign ticket received from users in an Organization to a specific Team or agent
Automatically add new users to an Organization based on their email domain

Organizations in User Portal

Depending on Organization permissions, you can allow (or deny) users to view or participate in their Organization's tickets.

Users can work with their Organization's tickets in the user portal. Learn more

Content Restrictions

You can use space restrictions to limit an Organization's users access to portal content.

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

FAQ page for ACME

A questions and answers page for everyone from the ACME Organization.

Knowledge base for Technical Department of ACME

A knowledge base with ticketing collaboration for a technical users within ACME.

Issue tracking from all users and ACME

A problem tracking page for all users as well as input from ACME.

Idea lab for beta testers from all Organizations

An idea and suggestion gathering page for users belonging to any Organization.

Learn more about Space restrictions