Spiceworks IT Help Desk Overview

Table Of Contents

Why Should I Use The Help Desk? How Does The Help Desk Work? Getting Started Tracking Your Work How Do My Users Submit Tickets? Configuring Email Email Templates Custom Attributes

User Portal Reporting Working A Ticket Editing The Default Ticket Categories Deleting Multiple Tickets Multi-Site Help Desk (For Remote Collectors) Rolling Out The Help Desk Tips And Tricks Questions

Frequently Asked Questions

Can I merge duplicate tickets? Starting in 5.1, you can merge tickets. Just click on the duplicate, click the merge

ticket button and select the original ticket from the list, or search for it if it isn't listed.

Can I assign tickets to specific queues? Ticket Views allows you to create queues for tickets that will automatically

populate with the tickets that meet your requirements.

Can I add a help desk only role? I don't want my help desk techs in the inventory section. Spiceworks 5.0

introduces a built-in help desk only user role.

Can users submit screenshots in their ticket? Sure, your users can press a hot-key and have a screenshot taken

and automatically added to a new email using programs such as Screenshot-By-Email .

Why Should I Use The Help Desk?

A help desk can help you manage your daily projects and user-requests. Spiceworks' integrated help desk can simplify your work day tremendously.

Keep your users informed: The help desk can keep them up-to-date on the status of their ticket leaving you free to

work on the actual issue.

Divvy up your work: You and your co-workers can work on tickets side by side and avoid doing the same job twice.

Identify common issues: You can identify the machines and users that create the most work. This can help reduce

your workload.

Document your work: You can document everything you do in a day, which can help you show your boss where

your time is allotted.

How Does The Help Desk Work?

A help desk can help make your user support process efficient. It can help take care of the details, letting you focus on the actual issues.

Receive tickets by email or through Spiceworks: Your users can submit and keep track of the status of their

tickets on their own. Now you don't have to spend your time sending updates.

Ticket queues: You and your co-workers can work on your own tickets. You can also see each others' tickets. This

will help your team balance the workload.

Built-in reporting: Built-in reports can tell you which machines or users create the most tickets. Now you'll have the

documentation you need to make the case for upgrades.

Getting Started

Helpdesk Overview Video

Receive help desk tickets: Decide if you're going to allow your users to submit their requests via email or if you

want them to use the Spiceworks user portal.

Customize the user portal: Add helpful links (such as to your intranet or company website), notifications or

warnings, and instructions for your users. See this page for more information.

Consider adding custom attributes: You can add custom attributes on tickets such as department, floor, or request

type.

Set up multiple techs: Decide which techs will be working tickets and set up user accounts for them.

Get notified: Determine how you will be notified of tickets. Will you log-in to the help desk everyday or do you want to

receive emails?

Set up Ticket Rules & Views: Set up Ticket Rules to automatically populate fields in the ticket and set up Ticket

Views to organize your ticket queues.

Work the Help Desk: Work the Help Desk, taking advantage of everything offered, from Tickets Anywhere to CC'd

users. See Working The Help Desk for more information.

Tracking Your Work

Managing The Help Desk Video

Spiceworks gives you the ability to track the work that you do on a daily, weekly or monthly basis so you can show your boss how valuable you are.

Create tickets anywhere in Spiceworks by clicking the new ticket icon in the Spiceworks status bar at the bottom of the screen.

Run reports on your tickets to show your boss where your time is spent.

Keep track of upcoming renewals, tasks, and projects using the "Due Date" feature of the ticket.

How Do My Users Submit Requests?

To make it easy to get started, the help desk has very few requirements before users can submit tickets. You don't have to create accounts for your end-users in Spiceworks.

You can submit tickets for your users. Just click Add Ticket from the toolbar and use the user's email address in the

user field. They will receive notifications from the help desk as you work on their request. This is a great way to help your users adopt the help desk.

Users can submit tickets by visiting the User Portal at http://servername/helpdesk. Read more in the User Portal

section below. You can also set up Active Directory Authentication.

Users can submit tickets by emailing the email address you've set up. Read more below in the configuring email section.

If your company has CC rules that certain departments have to be CC'd on certain issues or if you just want to prevent certain CC'd addresses from being included on tickets, you can enter those addresses in the CC email filter

setting found under Settings → Email Settings → Additional Settings. Enter the email addresses in the field for

CC Email Filter. The CC'd user will receive the initial email, but will not be CC'd to the ticket to receive any ticket notifications.

Configuring Email

Receiving Help Tickets From Email Video

To use the email capability of Spiceworks you'll need incoming and outgoing email servers. Spiceworks can work with IMAP, POP3, and Exchange (2003, 2007 and, in 5.1, 2010) for incoming email. Spiceworks supports SMTP and

Exchange for outgoing email. You'll need a dedicated mailbox (such as helpdesk@yourcompany.com) that your users

can email.

Configure your incoming and outgoing email settings.

Configure help desk notifications to decide which email notifications are sent.

The emails contain a link to the help desk so users can check the web portal. If you'd like to change the hostname (for ex. to include the FQDN) then you can change the Email URL Hostname setting in advanced settings.

Configure email templates that the help desk sends by visiting Settings->HelpDesk Settings and clicking on the Modify Email Templates link.

By default Spiceworks checks email every 300 seconds (5 minutes). You can change this by changing the Email Check Interval setting in advanced settings.

Ignore emails that you don't want to treat as tickets. You can configure Ignore Emails (Subject), Ignore Emails (Subject), Ignore Emails (Subject) in advanced settings.

Email Templates

Using Liquid Templates Markup, you can create an HTML and a Plain Text template for your ticket response emails. Include information only for admins, display what you want, where you want. Check out ticket notifier templates for more information on how to use and how to create the new templates. Note: There is a known issue in Outlook 2007 where the new ticket link is not highlighted as a URL. Please read this

Microsoft Knowledgebase article on how to correct this problem. You will have to edit the template to remove the From: line and replace it with User:. Note2: Sometimes helpdesk emails can hang in your user's mailbox and prevent then from retrieving other emails.

Learn how to fix this

Adding Columns To The Help Desk

Spiceworks 5.0 gives you the ability to customize the layout of your Help Desk by adding and removing columns. You can set up custom views using Ticket Views then add whichever columns you deem important tho that view. Column choices include your standard ticket attributes (status, #, summary, creator, etc) as well as any custom attributes you have.

Choosing columns to be displayed

Navigate to your Help Desk.

Click in the column heading row.

Add check marks next to the attributes you want displayed; remove the check marks to remove the column from the display.

Custom Attributes

Custom Attributes Video

You can customize the help desk to meet the needs of your company. If you need to track specific information as part of a ticket (the department code, for example) you can add custom attributes. You can also allow users to enter custom attributes as part of ticket submission.

Learn how to add your own custom attributes.

Learn more about managing custom attributes.

User Portal

The user portal is another way for your users to submit and keep track of their tickets. You can customize the user portal with pictures, links, articles, notifications, warnings, and instructions for your users.

Accessing the user portal: To access the user portal from within Spiceworks, you can simply click User Portal from

the left-hand nav panel, or, if you are already in the help desk, there is a link directly to the User Portal. Your end

users can access the portal by putting http://servername/portal into their browser.

Enable user authentication: Create a secured user portal by using the username and password credentials in your

active directory on the user portal.

Make custom attributes visible: Decide which custom attributes you want your users to see. You can set up custom

attributes that only your help desk techs see as well as attributes that both the user and tech see. If you want the user to see the custom attribute all you have to do is check "visible in portal".

Set up custom messages and formatting: You can set up warnings and notifications for your portal users by

providing instructions and/or important information ("Phone system is down" for example). These messages are helpful when you have an outage or issue that you know will affect multiple users. The custom message can also include HTML. This will enable you to embed polls, chats, etc. Please be careful with the HTML you use as it can break the page. If you need to reset the page the following links will clear the content:

http://<yourserver>/help_desk/tickets/update_notice?clear=true

http://<yourserver>/help_desk/tickets/update_sidebar?clear=true

Display your company logo: You can upload images to the User Portal.

Advanced customization: Everything in the new User Portal is customizable. You can change the welcome

message, add several types of content blocks that come preloaded, or create your own content. Move the content boxes around to get them in the order you want.

Translate the User Portal: You can translate most of the Portal using the language packs available in the

Community or by creating your own. See this help page for more information.

Make the User Portal URL Easy to Remember: Read this how to on making the url easy for your users.

Reporting

Reports Overview Video

Spiceworks allows you to run reports against your help desk tickets.Track time spent on tickets, ticket status, and run reports to show your boss where you've spent your time.

Learn more about the reporting functionality.

Sometimes tickets contain requests for a purchase. Spiceworks allows you to mark a tickets as "Requires Purchase" and then filter accordingly.

Working A Ticket

Spiceworks makes working the help desk a snap! Help desk tickets can be submitted by you from the Spiceworks desktop. Or, by anyone in the company using email or a web browser. You can create tickets from just about anywhere in the Spiceworks application by clicking New Ticket on the actions tool bar. Some of the things you can

do with tickets are:

Assign a ticket to you or your co-worker.

CC additional users onto a ticket if you need other people to be informed about what's going on.

Interact with the user by posting comments in the ticket which are sent automatically to the user.

Post private notes for admins only. Use this to keep notes for yourself.

Mark tickets as requiring a purchase. Now you can run a single report and buy everything at once.

Track the time spent on a ticket. This provides invaluable documentation on where you spend your time.

Specify the category (maintenance, end user support, etc) to which a ticket belongs. You can also add your own categories to the default list.

Use the Tickets widget on My Spiceworks Dashboard to see your tickets at a glance.

Work your tickets from anywhere by adding Tickets Anywhere commands to emails from the Help Desk about that ticket.

Learn more about Working The Help Desk Learn more about tickets in Spiceworks 4.0 here.

Editing The Default Ticket Categories

You can customize the ticket categories to have the organization level you want. This allows your users to choose which specific category their ticket falls under.

Click Settings from the left hand panel.

Select Advanced Options

Under Standard Attributes, find the row headed by "Category".

Click the text in the "Default Value" column. The default text here is ",Maintenance, End User Support".

Type in the categories you want displayed as choices for your users' tickets, with commas separating the category names.

o Putting a comma before the first item, as is done in the default choices, creates a blank space at the top of the list.

o Another option is to put a phrase such as "Choose One:" instead of a leading comma. This will be what appears when a user writes a ticket and will encourage the user to select the proper category.

Click anywhere else on the screen to save your entry.

Deleting Multiple Tickets

Beginning in version 4.7.51425, you can bulk delete a sequence of tickets. You can do this by noting the range of ticket numbers you want to delete, then navigate to Settings → Help Desk Settings. Scroll down to the Bulk Ticket Delete area and enter the first and last ticket numbers of the range you want to delete. This will delete all tickets in that range. Make sure you really want to do this! Click Delete to begin the process. Note that this can take a few

minutes depending on the number of tickets you are deleting.

Remote/Multiple Help Desks

Spiceworks 5.0 brings the ability to use remote help desks for each remote collector. The setup for each Help Desk needs to be done on the remote install before it is configured to be a remote collector. You'll want to set up the email settings, help desk settings, User Portal, and any Active Directory authentication. After the setup is complete, configure the device as a remote collector and connect it to your central installation. Now the tickets will come in branded with the site name of your remote collector, to be used in reports, queues, rules, etc.

Rolling It Out To Your Users

A key step in succeeding with the help desk is encouraging your users to adopt the it. If they're used to stopping by your desk or calling you, it will take a little time and encouragement to move them to the help desk. In the long run it will be beneficial to them. Here are some tips from the user community on helping users adopt the help desk.

Send an email inviting them to use the help desk. To get you started, use this sample.

Create a shortcut to the web interface on the desktop. Check out this script for a way to automate this

Tell users that requests logged in the help desk get the higher priority.

When users do stop by, create a ticket for them but enter their email address in the User field. This will ensure they get an email from the help desk system about their ticket.

Read more ideas.

Read a how-to on getting users to adopt the help desk

Tips And Advanced Tricks

Here are some additional tips and tricks for you to use.

Turn on the ability to delete tickets.

Learn how you can filter out out of office notifications from the helpdesk.

Use the help desk to track when assets are checked out.

Create a "My Tickets" filter under the '''My Tools''' section.

Add chat to your help desk user portal.

Use the help desk portal on your company intranet using iframes

Use keyboard shortcuts to navigate the help desk quickly. The supported shortcuts are:

o n: new ticket

o t: check for new tickets (force email check)

o r: reply with comment on existing ticket

o u: show unassigned tickets

o o: show open tickets

o c: show closed tickets

o p: show past due tickets

o a: show all tickets

o m: show my tickets

o ↑ (arrow_up): previous ticket

o ↓ (arrow_down): next ticket

Questions?

Try searching for answers. It's very likely someone has already asked your question before.

Post a question in the support forum.

Email support@spiceworks.com

[#Add'lResources]

Other Spiceworks Help Desk Resources

Take a Tour of Spiceworks’ Free Help Desk Software

Top 10 Ways a Help Desk Helps You

Tips for Persuading Users to Use the Help Desk

How to Sell "Using a HelpDesk"

Designing a Helpdesk Category Structure

Anyone Here in a Helpdesk Position?

Getting Your Less Technical Users to Embrace the Help Desk

What is the Scope of Support for Your Helpdesk?

Helpdesk Staff to User Ratio

Pros and Cons of Having Helpdesk Software

Rev 84 (diff) — Last edited at April 18, 2011 05:36 pm by Jonathan (Spiceworks)