Ticket Organization

• All tickets have a status that is one of the following: Awaiting Tech, Awaiting User and Closed. These statuses are the most basic way DeskPRO organizes tickets.
• Categories
  are the first customizable way of organizing tickets in DeskPRO, and probably the most widely used.
  • Each technician has a set of permissions that control which categories they have access to. So you can create some categories that only some techs can manage.
  • Each technician can choose to ignore some categories if they don't have any interest in them. Note however that any tickets assigned to them will still appear throughout the system, even if the category is ignored.
  • You can create categories that only registered members can choose, or even ones that no end-user can choose at all. These kinds of categories can only be accessed by a tech (by creating a new ticket, or by editing an existing ticket) or by an escalation routine.
  • If you have multiple languages, then you can specify translations for the category titles for each of them.
• Priorities
  offer a second level of organization.
  • You can define a color to associate this priority with. Ticket that have a priority with a color will have the table cell shaded in that color, so a tech can easily distinguish that a ticket is an 'Emergency' for example.
  • You can create priorities that only registered members can choose, or even ones that no end-user can choose at all. These kinds of priorities can only be accessed by a tech (by creating a new ticket, or by editing an existing ticket) or by an escalation routine.
• Workflows
  are the third level of organization DeskPRO offers you. Workflows are designed to indicate the current state of a ticket.

Technicians

• Creating a tech
  is as easy as submitting a form. You can even choose to base one tech off of one already in the system so all of their permissions are the same.
• DeskPRO can handle any number of technicians.
• Techs are presented with a quickstart guide
  the first time they log in. This will ensure the tech knows exactly how the system works and can start using the system efficiently right away.
• Almost all aspects of the tech interface can be restricted by setting permissions
  . You can even limit the categories a tech can view.
• Any tech can also be made an administrator to gain access to the admin interface.
• Tech activity is tracked and is viewing as time reports
  . You can even view active technicians
  that are online at any given time and what page they are viewing.

Abuse Prevention

• Banning
  • You can ban email addresses
    by entering specific addresses, or entire groups of emails using wildcards. For example, joe@example.com and *@example.com are two ways you can ban emails.
  • You can also ban via IP address
    to deny access to the helpdesk. IP bans can also use wildcards.
• DeskPRO has anti-spam measures in place to ensure tickets sent to your email gateways are real. The best anti-spam measure you can take is to require email validation. No tickets created by an unvalidated user will show up in the tech interface using the default set of search options (you can of course still search for them if you need to).
  
  The second way is via spam filters
  . You can define words or regular expressions that when matched, will mark a message as junk or just delete it right away.

Email Users

• You can send emails to any number of users at once, be it one or all.
• Create a mailing list of users by entering search terms. You can limit on ID range, username, email address, date registration etcetera. Before your email is sent, you can review the users that were returned.
• Use variables in your email so it appears personalized.

Escalations and Rules

• Escalations
  are time-based triggers that perform actions. For example, if a user has been waiting for a response for more then 24 hours, set the priority to a tech-only 'Very High' priority. Then you might have techs that only handle these cases.
  • The time trigger can be the time the user has been waiting for a response, or the time a ticket has been open.
  • You can set specific criteria for each escalation.
  • You can set multiple actions per escalation:
    • Email or private message the assigned tech
    • Change the priority, category or workflow
    • Assign the ticket to another tech
    • Email or private message specific techs
  • You can change the way repeats are handled. Can the same escalation be run twice on the same ticket? Can other escalations be run on this ticket?
• Rules
  let you organize a ticket as it actually enters the system. Depending on certain customizable criteria you can automatically assign a tech or set a workflow depending on what category or priority the user chose for the ticket.

Payments

• Track billable and non-billable time spent on a ticket.
• Track additional charges like one-time fees.
• Completely disable the payments system if it is not needed.