Basics:Workspaces

From Cerberus Helpdesk Wiki

Workspaces are Cerb5's way of creating saved searches; most often used to monitor tickets that fit an established set of criteria. These criteria are the same search filters you find in 'mail', 'Search', so once you select what kinds of things you need to watch out for, save it as a workspace and the Helpdesk will take care of updating the list automatically. Workspaces are well suited for complex workflows such as a designing a basic SLA, which combines workspaces with the power of mail rules and custom fields. On the flip side, workspaces can be as disposable as you want; build a temporary saved search for a quick project, use it, and then delete the whole thing later.

Now before diving in too deep, it's worth clarifying how we define what a workspace is exactly. Traditionally we use it as sort of a blanket term to encompass the entire concept, but technically workspaces are the individual pages that group all the saved searches together. In reality, each saved search is just a worklist and you can have as many as you want within any workspace tab. We call these "worklists" to clearly indicate we are not only referring to ticket lists -- the following object types are also list compatible:

In the picture each worklist filters on tickets and tasks assigned to you, the worker, respectively. Note that a worklist can only show one type so you can't mix tickets and tasks into one list, but you can group these together as two separate lists in the same workspace.

Contents 1 About Workspaces (built-in tutorial) 2 Two ways to configure worklists and workspaces 2.1 The "Copy" Method 2.2 The "Manual" Approach

About Workspaces (built-in tutorial)

When you first log in to the Helpdesk an 'About Workspaces' tab sits in your ‘home’ menu, to the right of the ‘Notifications’ tab.

The About Workspaces tab contains a brief tutorial on how to get started, and a button to create a default "My Work" workspace. My Work is what you see in the first screenshot I showed you, and the example workspace we'll be redoing from scratch.

• If you don't see the tutorial in your Helpdesk, don't be alarmed, it's probably because a manager already set up a workspace on your behalf. (Once a workspace is added, the tutorial is closed and will only reappear if you delete the last one.)

Two ways to configure worklists and workspaces

The Copy method starts with a search first and then copies the filters to a new worklist. With the Manual approach we reverse the process, making an empty worklist and then putting in the search filters afterwards.

The "Copy" Method

From any list in Cerb5, run a search with your desired filters as you normally would. We're going to recreate the My Tasks worklist to show all incomplete tasks assigned to me. In 'activity', 'Tasks' you'll need two filters: Completed = False should be a preset, so just add Worker = Me.

Notice the ‘copy’ link in the blue header of the list, click it to move the saved search into one of your workspaces. Whatever columns, rows per page, and "sort by" preferences you were using are also carried over.

You’ll be given the option to save the list to a new or existing workspace.

If you opted for a new workspace it will be added as a fresh tab to your ‘home’ page; your saved search turns into a worklist.

The "Manual" Approach

From the ‘home’ page, click the ‘Add Worklist’ button. Choose your worklist name, whether or not you want to append it to an existing workspace, and most importantly what “type” of objects you want to watch. This time, we're going to recreate the My Mail worklist to track all open tickets assigned to me.

At this point you have a blank shell which is looking at all relevant tickets. Not the most useful worklist. You need to filter this list down to a smaller subset, very similar to running a search first as shown originally. Click ‘customize’ (to the left of 'copy' in the blue header) and start adding filters at the bottom.

Both methods are "compatible" so use whichever approach you feel more comfortable with.

• And for the record, you can delete or change the order of the worklists by using ‘edit workspace’. If you want to delete the entire workspace (tab), the option is right next to it.