Table Of Contents Frequently Asked Questions Can I merge duplicate tickets? Just click on the duplicate, click the merge ticket button and select the original ticket from the list, or search for it if it isnt listed. Can I assign tickets to specific queues? allows you to create queues for tickets that will automatically populate with the tickets that meet your requirements. Can I add a help desk only role? I dont want my help desk techs in the inventory section. You can choose Help Desk only as an option when adding a new admin. Can users submit screenshots in their ticket? Sure, your users can press a hot-key and have a screenshot taken and automatically added to a new email using programs such as . Why Should I Use The Help Desk? A help desk can help you manage your daily projects and user-requests. Spiceworks integrated help desk can simplify your work day tremendously. Keep your users informed: The help desk can keep them up-to-date on the status of their ticket leaving you free to work on the actual issue. Divvy up your work: You and your co-workers can work on tickets side by side and avoid doing the same job twice. Identify common issues: You can identify the machines and users that create the most work. This can help reduce your workload. Document your work: You can document everything you do in a day, which can help you show your boss where your time is allotted. How Does The Help Desk Work? A help desk can help make your user support process efficient. It can help take care of the details, letting you focus on the actual issues. Receive tickets by email or through Spiceworks: Your users can submit and keep track of the status of their tickets on their own. Now you dont have to spend your time sending updates. Ticket queues: You and your co-workers can work on your own tickets. You can also see each others tickets. This will help your team balance the workload. Built-in reporting: Built-in reports can tell you which machines or users create the most tickets. Now youll have the documentation you need to make the case for upgrades. Getting Started Receive help desk tickets: Decide if youre going to allow your users to via email or if you want them to use the Spiceworks user portal. Customize the user portal: Add helpful links (such as to your intranet or company website), notifications or warnings, and instructions for your users. See for more information. Consider adding custom attributes: You can add on tickets such as department, floor, or request type. Set up multiple techs: Decide which techs will be working tickets and set up for them. Get notified: Determine how you will be . Will you log-in to the help desk everyday or do you want to receive emails? Set up Ticket Rules & Views: Set up to automatically populate fields in the ticket and set up to organize your ticket queues. Work the Help Desk: Work the Help Desk, taking advantage of everything offered, from to CCd users. See for more information. Tracking Your Work Spiceworks gives you the ability to track the work that you do on a daily, weekly or monthly basis so you can show your boss how valuable you are. Create tickets anywhere in Spiceworks by clicking the new ticket icon in the Spiceworks status bar at the bottom of the screen. to show your boss where your time is spent. Keep track of upcoming renewals, tasks, and projects using the "Due Date" feature of the ticket. How Do My Users Submit Requests? To make it easy to get started, the help desk has very few requirements before users can submit tickets. You dont have to create accounts for your end-users in Spiceworks. You can submit tickets for your users. Just click Add Ticket from the toolbar and use the users email address in the user field. They will receive notifications from the help desk as you work on their request. This is a great way to help your users adopt the help desk. Users can submit tickets by visiting the User Portal at Read more in the section below. You can also set up Active Directory Authentication. Users can submit tickets by emailing the email address youve set up. Read more below in the configuring email section. If your company has CC rules that certain departments have to be CCd on certain issues or if you just want to prevent certain CCd addresses from being included on tickets, you can enter those addresses in the CC email filter setting found under Settings → Email Settings → Additional Settings. Enter the email addresses in the field for CC Email Filter. The CCd user will receive the initial email, but will not be CCd to the ticket to receive any ticket notifications. Configuring Email To use the email capability of Spiceworks youll need incoming and outgoing email servers. Spiceworks can work with IMAP, POP3, and Exchange for incoming email. Spiceworks supports SMTP and Exchange for outgoing email. Youll need a dedicated mailbox (such as helpdesk@yourcompany.com) that your users can email. Configure your . Configure to decide which email notifications are sent. The emails contain a link to the help desk so users can check the web portal. If youd like to change the hostname (for ex. to include the FQDN) then you can change the Email URL Hostname setting in . Configure email templates that the help desk sends by visiting Settings->HelpDesk Settings and clicking on the View/Edit link under Ticket Notification Templates. More info . By default, Spiceworks checks email every 300 seconds (5 minutes). You can change this by changing the Email Check Interval setting in . Ignore emails that you dont want to treat as tickets. You can configure Ignore Emails (Subject), Ignore Emails (Subject), Ignore Emails (Subject) in . Adding Columns To The Help Desk You can customize the layout of your Help Desk by adding and removing columns. You can set up custom views using then add whichever columns you deem important to that view. Column choices include your standard ticket attributes (status, , summary, creator, etc) as well as any custom attributes you have. Choosing columns to be displayed Navigate to your Help Desk. Click in the column heading row. Add check marks next to the attributes you want displayed; remove the check marks to remove the column from the display. Custom Attributes You can customize the help desk to meet the needs of your company. If you need to track specific information as part of a ticket (the department code, for example) you can add custom attributes. You can also allow users to enter custom attributes as part of ticket submission. Learn more about User Portal The user portal is another way for your users to submit and keep track of their tickets. You can customize the user portal with pictures, links, articles and instructions for your users. Accessing the user portal: To access the user portal from within Spiceworks, you can simply click User Portal from the Help Desk drop-down menu at the top of the page. Your end-users can access the portal by putting into their browser. Enable user authentication: by using the username and password credentials in your Active Directory on the user portal. Learn more about the User Portal . Reporting Spiceworks allows you to run reports against your help desk tickets.Track time spent on tickets, ticket status, and run reports to show your boss where youve spent your time. . Working A Ticket Spiceworks makes working the help desk a snap! Help desk tickets can be submitted by you from the Spiceworks desktop. Or, by anyone in the company using email or a web browser. You can create tickets from anywhere in the Spiceworks application by clicking the new ticket icon in the toolbar at the bottom of the page.Some of the things you can do with tickets are: Assign a ticket to you or your co-worker. CC additional users onto a ticket if you need other people to be informed about whats going on. Interact with the user by posting comments in the ticket which are sent automatically to the user. Post private notes for admins only. Use this to keep notes for yourself. Add purchase list items to tickets. Then you can manage all your purchases through the . Track the time spent on a ticket. This provides invaluable documentation on where you spend your time. Specify the category (maintenance, end user support, etc) to which a ticket belongs. You can also . Use the Tickets widget on the to see your tickets at a glance. Work your tickets from anywhere by adding to emails from the Help Desk.Learn more about Editing The Default Ticket Categories You can customize the ticket categories to have the organization level you want. This allows your users to choose which specific category their ticket falls under. Navigate to Settings → Advanced & International Options Under Standard Attributes, find the row headed by "Category" that applies to Tickets. Click the text in the "Default Value" column. The default text here is ",Maintenance, End User Support". Type in the categories you want displayed as choices for your users tickets, with commas separating the category names. Putting a comma before the first item, as is done in the default choices, creates a blank space at the top of the list. Another option is to put a phrase such as "Choose One:" instead of a leading comma. This will be what appears when a user writes a ticket and will encourage the user to select the proper category. Click anywhere else on the screen to save your entry. Deleting Multiple Tickets You can delete a sequential range of tickets by noting the range of ticket numbers you want to delete, then navigate to Settings → Help Desk Settings. Scroll down to the Bulk Ticket Delete area and enter the first and last ticket numbers of the range you want to delete. This will delete all tickets in that range. Make sure you really want to do this!Click Delete to begin the process. Note that this can take a few minutes depending on the number of tickets you are deleting. Tracking Time Spent Per Admin If youre an MSP, you might need to keep track of exactly how much time is being spent on each ticket, and by whom. That way you can properly charge for the ticket, based on your SLA. You can keep track of the amount of time each admin spends on a ticket and specify an hourly rate to each admin so you can properly charge your customers per ticket. Setting hourly rate per admin Navigate to Settings → Help Desk Settings. Scroll down to find the Labor Cost section. Set the hourly rate for each of your admins, then click Save. Adding time spent to the ticketThere are two ways to add time spent to a ticket: directly through the ticket, or Tickets Anywhere commands Through the ticket: When you have the ticket selected, click on the Labor tab. Enter the amount of time. For example: 2h, 3m, etc. Once you begin typing, a User field will be displayed. Choose the User to apply the time to. Then click Update.Through commands: When responding to the ticket use either the worked or add commands (these commands will not be visible to your end-users). worked 15m Ford add 2h fordp@hgttg.com Remote/Multiple Help Desks You can use Remote Collectors to set up unique help desks at each of your remote locations that feed back to your central installation. The setup for each Help Desk needs to be done on the remote install before it is configured to be a remote collector. Youll want to set up the , help desk settings, , and any . After the setup is complete, and connect it to your central installation. Now the tickets will come in branded with the site name of your remote collector, to be used in reports, queues, rules, etc. Rolling It Out To Your Users A key step in succeeding with the help desk is encouraging your users to adopt the it. If theyre used to stopping by your desk or calling you, it will take a little time and encouragement to move them to the help desk. In the long run it will be beneficial to them. Here are some tips from the user community on helping users adopt the help desk. Send an email inviting them to use the help desk. To get you started, . Create a shortcut to the web interface on the desktop. Tell users that requests logged in the help desk get the higher priority. When users do stop by, create a ticket for them but enter their email address in the User field. This will ensure they get an email from the help desk system about their ticket. . Tips And Advanced Tricks Here are some additional tips and tricks for you to use. Learn how you can filter out from the . Use the help desk to . to your help desk user portal. Use the help desk portal on your company intranet using iframes Use keyboard shortcuts to navigate the help desk quickly. The supported shortcuts are: n: new ticket t: check for new tickets (force email check) r: reply with comment on existing ticket u: show unassigned tickets o: show open tickets c: show closed tickets p: show past due tickets a: show all tickets m: show my tickets ↑ (arrow_up): previous ticket ↓ (arrow_down): next ticket Questions? Try for answers. Its very likely someone has already asked your question before. Post a question in the . Email support@spiceworks.com
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