ServiceDesk Configuration

In this guide we will cover:

• An overview on the basics of setting up the service desk
• Organisation Structure
• Ticket Types
• Service Level Agreements (SLAs)
• Email Templates

Admin Guides:

• Ticket Types
• Service Level Agreements
• Email Templates

Overview#

This should be (almost) all you need to get up & running with a suitable Service Desk. You should have:

• Your techs allocated to the relevant teams & with the relevant permissions. 
• Two core Service Desk Ticket Types – Incidents & Service Requests, which are almost identical (but still allow you to distinguish between something bring broken & a general enquiry)
• Your SLA’s personalized, to suit your expected response/resolution times for respective priorities.
• Email templates formatted to give the personal touch when it comes to communicating with end-users.

Organisation Structure#

First things first – setting up your Organisation structure. This consists creating your Agents (the people who will be solving Tickets) & giving them the relevant Department/Team membership, and the relevant permissions (via the Role(s) you allocate them).

To get you on your feet, the only changes you made need to make would include:

• Marking the ‘Infrastructure’ team as inactive.
• If you have a flat support structure (no Level 1/Level 2 etc..) – Marking the 2nd Line support team as inactive & renaming 1st Line support to ‘Support’
• Double checking you are happy with the permissions set in the 1st Line support role, then inviting your Agents into Halo with this role.

Ticket Types#

Now your Organisation structure is set up, you can focus on making sure the Service Desk will be fit for purpose come Go-Live. As part of the initial configuration, you should focus on two main Ticket Types: Incidents & Requests. 

There are only a couple changes you will likely need to make:

• Change the default Workflow for the ‘Service Request’ Ticket – this will ensure that the available Actions on Incidents & Service Requests are similar (which will reduce any initial confusion).
• Change the ‘Start an Approval Process’ to ‘*No*’ in the Service Request Ticket, as to avoid an unwanted Approvals being triggered upon tickets of this type being raised.
• Amend the ‘Field List’ for the Service Request ticket type to include the information you would like to capture.

SLA’s#

The majority of your SLA configuration should be good to go as soon as you get your trial. The only changes you may want to make would be around setting the specific Response/Resolution times for your priorities & around your work hours (to ensure the SLA timer is only ticking when it should be).

Email Templates#

This is an important area to consider changing before going live, as this will establish how you interface with your customers. The core email templates to consider are:

• New Ticket Logged (the acknowledgement email sent for when Tickets are raised)
• Ticket Update (the email template applied when emailing customers from a Ticket)
• Ticket Closed (The email template used when closing a Ticket)

These will cover 85-90% of your engagements.

For more detailed information on how to set up your service desk please see our Service Desk course.