Basics:Links

From Cerberus Helpdesk Wiki

Previous versions of Cerb lacked the ability to “link” related tickets. Merging tickets was one option but not quite the answer as that would combine the conversations (messages) and both list of recipients. Another workaround was to copy the ticket masks or URLs into the comments (http://example.com/cerb5/index.php/display/AAA-00000-000), but that wasn’t very practical either; to create “two-way” references you would need to copy ticket A’s mask into ticket B’s comments and vice versa. So here’s where links comes in to play.

Links enables you to “couple” any two Helpdesk objects together: tickets to tickets, tasks to tasks, tickets to tasks, tasks to tickets, all the main object types can be linked in any combination:

Each relationship is 1:1 so whatever object you link to will include it’s own link back to the source (excluding addresses). This enables you to navigate back and forth without needing to intervene ahead of time, jump from a ticket to a task to another ticket and back again. Every instance of those seven objects (minus addresses) will have a dedicated ‘Links’ tab — a giant list of everything a source connects to.

Because addresses don’t have their own page with a ‘Links’ tab they cannot link back.

Adding links

Let’s stick with our original problem of linking related tickets. We definitely don’t want to merge them together... What we do want to do is leave each ticket intact as-is and just “bundle” them together; this way we can see all related tickets at a glance and jump between them. From your starting ticket, click the ‘Links’ tab and select “add ticket” from the dropdown.

The seven object types make up the list of choices.

This will bring up the Ticket Chooser window, which allows you to search for specific tickets or groups of tickets and then add them in as links (filter presets?). To make this easy we’re going to do a straight search for tickets with the subject “How long for X hosting?” (samples were created using the Simulator/Web Hosting). Select the tickets and click ‘Add Selected’. Notice you can “trash” any of your selections if you make a mistake.

The Ticket Chooser. To double check these are the right tickets you can click the subjects to open each one in a new tab/window.

When you’re done you will have a brand new worklist with the selected tickets; if we had added tasks or time tracking entries, they would have their own “chooser” and appear in their own distinct lists. These worklists function just like any other worklist in the Helpdesk -- if the object supports (peek) it’ll be there, if you can edit the properties from ‘bulk update’ it’ll support that too. The only difference is the inclusion of an “Unlink” button.

If you want to remove a link, make sure you unlink and not delete the tickets.

Try clicking the linked ticket. That should have jumped you to that ticket’s display page which has it’s own ‘Links’ tab; inside Links you’ll notice the original ticket sitting there. The “two-way” reference I was saying was so important earlier is done for you automatically. This is substantially better than copying the second ticket’s mask into the comments of the first ticket by hand and vice versa.

Project Management

When problems in the Helpdesk evolve beyond answering support tickets, you can start planning larger projects by getting creative with links. This is a lot simpler than it sounds, and using the word “projects” so loosely is part of what makes it seem more complicated than it really is. The reality is projects don’t technically exist -- there is no “project” object (like there is a ticket or task) and there’s no dedicated area where all active projects reside.

So what I’m really suggesting when it comes to project management is expanding your use of links to unify several things in one location. There’s no right or wrong approach and you can tackle a new “project” from different angles. Remember each link is 1:1 and if you bind enough objects together you can create a spidering effect, where every related resource is a click or two away. That’s why it doesn’t matter what you start with, although it’s good to pick a decent base as a springboard so you have a starting point later on. Maybe you want to start with a …

• Ticket: Perhaps you get a long-winded e-mail asking for several different things -- they need an estimate on upgrading their server, need to speak to billing about a charge on their invoice, and need documentation on your product. Here you’d divvy up all the individual requests into specific tasks, pass those out to workers, and then link them back to the ticket.

• Task: Now let’s assume there’s a planned maintenance update for an aging server and you’ve scheduled it for the following month. You have a new Helpdesk task as a reminder to notify the customers on those servers a couple days beforehand. What you can do is link the task to each customer’s e-mail address ahead of time and then when the time comes, send them an e-mail blast (using Broadcast). Even though we don’t have screenshots of the address book, as stated earlier “Addresses” and “Organizations” are one of the seven objects types that are link-enabled.

• Opportunity: You have a couple good sales leads right on the fence but they all have similar concerns -- a couple of the questions are more technical, a couple are sales-oriented, and each was sent to the Helpdesk individually through a couple of different tickets. As a manager you could link the tickets with the same questions together, and pass one set to your sales team and the other to your tech support team (by giving them the “parent” ticket from each). Then have both groups go through the tickets and leave their responses in a comment or sticky note. When each group signs off let the manager combine all the responses into the latest ticket and send it out.

My Work

I just got done suggesting you choose a starting point for your projects but I didn’t really propose a good way to organize them. Even though there’s no “Projects” tab, there is a ‘My Work’ tab. You can think of ‘My Work’ as a staging ground for personal projects. Inside the ‘home’ area, each worker gets their own personal links page to use for whatever they want. Managers may want to use theirs to watch the progress of bigger projects, while workers can use theirs to keep an eye on what they need to get done for said projects.

The grey names next to the items represent worker assignments, or owners in 5.1 lingo. You can now have multiple people/workers/owners assigned to any object. More on that in a bit.

The basic idea is still the same but instead of linking an object to another object (ticket -> ticket), you’re just linking the space itself to an object (My Work -> ticket). However, this also works in reverse. Any time you link yourself to another object (ticket -> worker) from any place in the Helpdesk, the link will appear on your personal 'My Work' page too; you can think of the 'My Work' space as an extension of the worker it's assigned to, and the link is fulfilling the 1:1 relationship requirement. With that said assigning yourself a ticket, task, or other object does NOT make you the sole owner (assignee) of that object, instead you will be ADDED to the ticket as another owner (see More than just a feature).

When there’s multiple instances of the example scenarios we talked about, we could adapt them to this format -- a dozen new tickets with a handful of requests, a couple of tasks where several people need to be e-mailed, and five older sales opportunities that need to be read through -- each ‘My Work’ page would have lists of tickets, tasks, and opportunities in one spot for quick access. From there, just click into each project’s “starting point” and you’re all set.

“My Work” the workspace?

If you experimented with workspaces in the past, you’ll recall the default ‘home’ workspace was also labeled ‘My Work’; this should be corrected eventually but for now don’t confuse the two (see CHD-1971).

Naming conventions aside you may be curious what the difference between them is? Doesn’t the screenshot almost look like a links page? Why should you do projects with the ‘My Work’ links and not the old “My Work” workspaces? First the similarities.

• Both sit in the ‘home’ menu of each worker and “belong” to each worker to use however they want.
• Both let you view all the different Helpdesk components on one page (tickets, tasks, opportunities, time tracking, …).
• And both let you customize the content of each list.

Now the main difference… With the links tab you are choosing the exact items you want to track, with workspaces you’re filtering the items through a saved search. Throughout this guide we’ve been running a basic search to show the things we want to link to and then selecting them from a list. If you’re familiar with workspaces you know you also do a search, but with workspaces you’re really saving that search so any matches past, present, and future are dynamically selected.

Technically with workspaces you’ve always been able to create simple projects as well, but the point is it’s never going to be as fundamentally sound as the new method with links. To do it the workspaces way, your sources would have to have a common “thread” you could easily pinpoint and find through a saved search. Even the easiest approach is a lot more involved than links.

1. If there wasn’t a keyword or phrase you could use to filter out non-project pieces, you would probably need to create a custom field for each object type you’re using: tickets, tasks, etc.
2. Then set the “Project” custom field to a unique value for each project piece, e.g. “Server Installation”, to include only the results you want and none of the rest.
3. Finally create the workspace and configure or copy a worklist for each type (where “Project = Server Installation”).

None of this is to say you can’t use links in conjunction with workspaces; while distinct concepts there is overlap potential. There’s no reason you can’t link two tickets together, and create a workspace to monitor one or both of the tickets. What I’ve been referring to here is the benefits of constructing a project tab in ‘My Work’ (links) versus a “My Work” (workspace). The former is a practical solution the developers envisioned, the latter was always a bit of a workaround we used to recommend in the past.

More than just a feature

So far we’ve been talking about Links solely as a new notch on your “Cerb5 tool belt”, but the truth is it’s much more than that. Links is part of a larger transition going on in the Helpdesk right now to make room for a completely new infrastructure; in the process the concept has embedded itself into the “core” of the product and became an integral part of several existing features. Let me explain what I mean with a few examples:

• The common ticket assignment, "Next Worker", is one of those components making the switch; the old worker assignment options are gone and in its place are “Owners”. Owners are nothing more than worker-links -- the assigned workers literally show up as links but the general idea remains the same. You're still assigning a ticket to a worker but thanks to links it's no longer “one worker for one ticket”, the new system accommodates “one ticket for one or more linked workers”.

Besides manually adding workers/owners from the ‘Links’ tab, you can also add them through the ‘Edit’ button near the top of the ticket; clicking the + button next to ‘Owners’ will pop up a Worker Chooser.

• Tasks and time tracking, like tickets, are also deprived of their original worker assignments and show up as “owners” in their respective ‘Links’ tab.

Again, the ‘Edit’ button will work here too.

• Time Tracking entries are now directly added as ‘Links’ to the ticket. The two names in small grey text towards the middle (Joe Geck, John Smith), indicate they're the present owners of the time entry. Remember owners represent assignments not necessarily who originally created it.

Time Tracking stamps will not show up like they used to as a ticket comment in the ‘Conversation’ tab (see CHD-1983).

• Time Tracking can now be linked to tasks as well. Similar to tickets each task page will have a “Track Time” button.