Workers and Seats
From Cerberus Helpdesk Wiki
To understand seats you need to have a grasp on what a worker is first. Even though workers are the driving force behind a lot of other features we document, workers are usually only mentioned in passing ("Notify a worker with a comment"). In many cases we assume workers, as a concept, is borderline common sense and for many of us Cerb veterans it's one of only a handful of topics that you could say that about, tickets being a close second. So before we look into how seats integrate with workers, let's make it clear what a worker is in the Cerb universe.
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Workers
The basic role of workers has not changed from the 4.x days, if you already know what a worker is feel free to skip ahead to seats.
- Conceptually, a worker is an employee for your company or organization who is going to get work done in the Helpdesk. In our system a worker could be a supervisor, a part-time employee, a contractor, or anyone who has a login account to the Helpdesk.
- Feature-wise, a worker is capable of answering e-mails, creating tasks, assigning work through comments, closing resolved tickets, or performing any major Helpdesk function the administrator allows them to (permissions?).
Whoever installs Cerb creates themselves as the first worker during setup and is given Administrator privileges. Once logged in for the first time they can add more workers by clicking over to the 'helpdesk setup', 'Workers' tab. New workers are registered in the system with an e-mail address and a password for their sign on credentials.
Workers vs Users (Customers)
Our product like many others has two interfaces, a private "back-end" and a public "front-end". We usually refer to the back-end as the Helpdesk and the front-end as the Support Center (or SC for short). Workers are given immediate login access to the Helpdesk, while the Support Center is for your users to use. We tend to refer to "users" differently depending on context such as "customer's e-mail", "address book contacts", or "client ticket history" but the terminology is usually interchangeable.
- The previous couple of screenshots were images of the Helpdesk, it's where all the magic happens behind the scenes. If you haven't tried out Cerb yet and want to see the Helpdesk part of it in action, try out the on-demand demo. Inside the Helpdesk workers can see things like a client's tickets, internal tasks, and time tracking reports. Only administrators have access to 'helpdesk setup' where they can install mail rules, configure auto-responses, and set worker permissions.
- The Support Center is a separate portal for your clients, that exists OUTSIDE of the Helpdesk (deploying an SC?). There are several optional modules you can install and most of them can be made public, or require a customer to register and log in through the Support Center first. The more popular ones include a Knowledgebase (FAQ), E-mail Contact Form (Open Ticket), and a client Ticket History. The Support Center administration is actually done inside the Helpdesk through the 'Community Portals' tab.
That's not to say you can't create a new Helpdesk worker account for a trust-worthy "customer", or new Support Center user account for one of your "workers" (registering SC accounts?); although the latter probably isn't necessary because as a worker you have access to all opened tickets, including your own, inside the actual Helpdesk.
Hopefully all this makes even more sense when you familiarize yourself with the product, but is the distinction between worker and user clear? The reason we went overboard explaining everything is we get questions all the time on how our licensing works, and in 4.x our pricing was based on number of workers, but in 5.x it's based on number of seats (and seats are based on workers).
Seats
Let's start by defining a "seat" then we'll explain why you need to consider seat count when determining your initial financial investment in Cerb. Seats represent the number of workers you can have logged in to the Helpdesk simultaneously. The more seats your company is licensed for, the more workers you can have operating the software concurrently. Once you hit your "seats cap", the next person who tries to sign on will be locked out until another worker signs out (and lets the session expire). It's literally the equivalent of giving up your chair for someone else to take a seat.
If you're an old 4.x user who paid to raise their total worker cap at the time, this cap will be removed when you upgrade. With 5.x you can have however many total workers you want (unlimited), they just can't all be logged in at once.
- Remember, because seats are tied to workers and workers only, they have zero impact on the number of contacts you can have in your Address Book, or the number of Support Center clients you can register -- which is exactly why we spent so much time clarifying the differences earlier.
How many seats?
To determine the number of seats you need, just calculate the maximum number of Helpdesk workers you envision working through your busiest stretches. Do you regularly operate with 5 team members during peak business hours? Then go with 5 seats. Have two shifts of employees working round the clock? Take the shift with the larger team and convert those to seats; if you have 15 daytime workers and 10 nighttime workers, you will only technically require 15 seats even though you have 25 workers total.
Installation and license pricing
Configuration-wise there is nothing special required to activate seats. A fresh unlicensed Helpdesk is restricted to ONE seat, but you can sign up for two additional seats free. Once we -- WebGroup Media, WGM develops Cerb -- send you a license key for a total number of seats (including the two freebies), you simply sign in as an administrator and input the license under 'helpdesk setup', 'System'.
Financially, seats represent the upfront cost of licensing Cerb, once you "buy in" you don't have to worry about any additional feature restrictions beyond that. All you have to concern yourself with going forward is the possibility you may need more seats at some point. Because the pricing structure is per-seat, should your business grow or your requirements change it's just a matter of buying more and getting an updated license.
To purchase a license for more than 3 seats visit our website (as of this writing there is a Cerb4 to Cerb5 50% upgrade discount on seats).
- IMPORTANT ASIDE: Your purchase technically only covers you for the version you installed, any major releases in the future -- 5.1/5.2/5.x -- is optional and may require an additional fee. To learn more about "Paid Updates", check out the buy page on your website (same place I pointed you to for buying seats) or read through our License FAQ.
