Workflows Integrating work flow procedures is an excellent way to improve efficiency and streamline your internal processes. NetHelpDesk offers a multitude of options to help your teams with their workload, and ensure a higher quality of work, especially when being audited. Integrating your work flows and processes that you and your team follow is important, so we make NHD incredibly flexible, to work around how you currently work. WHAT ARE WORKFLOWS IN NHD? Workflows in NHD control the action buttons, so using that guide alongside this one is very useful. Whilst we ship NHD with sensible action buttons, the functionality can be edited and adapted as needed. Here are some standard action buttons we ship: Most action buttons will produce action screens, where you can add notes, and capture internal information easily. Some don t have to, but we will come to that later. Here is an example of an action screen: Net Help Desk Limited Page 1 of 6
All action screens, if set to appear, will display: 1) Rich text formatting tools banner 2) Ability to send e-mails or not. 3) Add attachments. 4) Insert canned text that has been predefined, to populate text in 5) quickly. 5) Rich text action notes, with spell check in your chosen language. 6) An area to capture internal data and make changes to the ticket as well. WHEN CAN ACTION BUTTONS BE MADE AVAILABLE? These action buttons can then be made available: a) All the time, regardless of the ticket type being used. b) Only on certain request types and not others (e.g. sales team request types can have different action buttons to the support team request types, etc.) c) Appear whether there is a workflow in place or not. d) Appear as part of a workflow, in sequential steps, in the order that your process dictates. So, an action button or action buttons will only appear once other steps in the sequence have been completed, and so on. WHAT DEFAULT VALUES FOR ACTIONS ARE AVAILABLE? You can also set a host of options of default values at the action button level: Action Description for audit. Action Label for ease of use, unique image and hotkey shortcut. Status of ticket after Action is completed. A default charge rate for the action button s time. Service Level Agreement timing is on hold following action s completion. SLA timing is released following an action s completion. Start an Approval Process following an action s completion. Whether the email function is turned on for that button, or not. Which e-mail template that action button would use when sending out. Set a colour for the action line in the action grid, to differentiate from others. Default canned text that can be auto-populated for you. Default billable and non-billable hours for that action button. Capture customised information by default. Set a default Section (team of agents), Agent, or Request Type. Net Help Desk Limited Page 2 of 6
Auto include CC e-mails or To Emails on the action. Force the assignment of a ticket to an agent, if this is made available. Control the built-in or custom fields available on the action screen. Do not show screen Hides the action screen, and just sets action defaults as predefined. You don t have to set these defaults. As you see, there are lots of choice available for you. You can keep these simple, or make them complex as you need to. The other setting is whether the action button is available to all workflows or if deselected, only available on the workflows you specify them in. HIGH LEVEL OVERVIEW OF WORKFLOW SETUP A high level overview of the workflow steps are as follows:: 1) Create action buttons and set defaults of those action buttons first. 2) Decide whether an action screen will follow after the action button is clicked, or not. 3) On the action button you want to make a part of the sequence on a workflow, untick the Available in All Workflows checkbox on the action defaults. This will allow the restriction of action buttons appearance to a specific workflow sequential step only. PLEASE NOTE: These three steps must be completed before moving on to creating a workflow process. Otherwise, there will be no actions to specify in the workflow sequences. 4) Create a Workflow, specifying sequential steps of the process 5) Choose which action buttons will be available in which steps of the workflows(s). 6) Choose an existing or create a new Ticket Type, where this workflow will be activated. 7) If you intend to use Ticket Templates, then make sure the Ticket Type of the template matches the same as the Ticket Type selected to instigate this workflow. If you don t, the template s ticket type will override the ticket s default value when selected, and remove any workflows associated with the previous ticket type. So, to create the action buttons you need, and set their defaults (steps 1 and 2) using the Action Button Guide. Once they are ready, the workflow can be configured (step 3). Should you have any questions regarding any steps in this guide, please speak with the NetHelpDesk Support Team. nethelpdesk.com/contact - Document Continued - Net Help Desk Limited Page 3 of 6
CREATE A WORKFLOW To define a workflow, specifying steps and which action buttons will appear: 1) Go to N > Setup > Main Configuration > Workflows 2) Click Add to create the workflow. 3) Give the Workflow a sensible name to differentiate from others. 4) The notes section is there to put details of why you created the workflow, to assist you later on, or your colleagues. 5) You can now start Adding Steps. Click Add Step to create a step, again giving it a specific name that differentiates the step from others. 6) Specify a sequence number, from the integer 1 and upwards. The default is 10, and this can be overridden. 7) Add as many steps as you like, the minimum being one (1). 8) Select a step, so that it becomes highlighted in blue. 9) Click View Step Actions. - Document Continued - Net Help Desk Limited Page 4 of 6
10) Select the action buttons you wish to appear in that step. You can add more than 1. 11) Click OK when you are finished with setting up the workflow steps. 12) Now that the workflow is completed, you will need to choose the ticket type(s) that the workflow will be activated on. To do this, go to N > Setup > Main Configuration > Tickets. If Net Help Desk Limited Page 5 of 6
you have renamed tickets in the initial interview, the Tickets option will be renamed in the main configuration area, to the name that you specified at that time. This can be changed whenever you like, going to N > Setup > Initial Setup Wizard. 13) Any action buttons that left as Available for All Workflows will be available at all times, whether the workflow is activated or not. 14) Once you have set the workflow to start on a Request Type(s) of your choice, create a new ticket of that type, and add a Summary as a minimum. (You may have other mandatory elements of these ticket types, but Summary is the only mandatory option from initial setup.) 15) Once the ticket has been added to the database, and assigned a ticket number, the workflow will begin straight away. The first step of the sequence for that workflow s action button(s) will appear on the ticket. Unless you have specified Do Not Show Screen option on the action defaults, the action screen will appear when you click it. When clicking Save, the workflow assumes that the action is completed, and moves onto the next step in the sequence. If an action button is available, whether the workflow is active or not, you can use this as many times as you like, without moving the sequence steps forward. It is only action buttons specified in the workflow sequential steps that move the workflow forward. Should you have any questions regarding any steps in this guide, please speak with the NetHelpDesk Support Team. nethelpdesk.com/contact - END OF DOCUMENT - Net Help Desk Limited Page 6 of 6