osTicket Part 2: Create Departments, Roles, Agents, Users, SLAs, and Manage Ticketing Lifecycle

Introduction

This is the second part of exploring the web-based ticketing system — osTicket. Completing the first part is a prerequisite to participating in this second part.

What you will learn:

1. Creating Departments and Roles
2. Creating Agents and Teams
3. Creating Help Topics, SLAs and Users
4. Managing Ticketing Lifecycle

A Quick Refresh

In the first part of the osTicket exercise, we launched a virtual machine on the Azure portal and successfully launched the web-based osTicket application. We went further to create an Admin account that we will use to access the osTicket platform (Helpdesk).

Here are two important links you will need for this exercise:

http://localhost/osTicket //For creating new tickets

http://localhost/osticket/scp/login.php //To login as admin or agent

Creating Departments and Roles

You can view Departments as containers that allow you to organize Agents. Roles are permissions that define what action an Agent can carry out.

Login as admin using the link above and supplying your username or email and password.

Ensure you are in the Admin panel. If the top-right menu bar says “Agent Panel,” you are in the “Admin panel”. You can toggle the same option to switch to “Agent Panel” as needed.

• Steps for Creating Departments
  - Select the “Agents” tab under the “Admin Panel” > Departments > Add New Department
  - Name: System Administrators
  - Select Create Department

• Steps for Creating Roles
  - Select the “Agents” tab > Roles > Add New Role
  - Name: GlobalAdminAccess
  - Select the “Permissions” tab and check every box under the “Tickets,” “Tasks,” and “Knowledgebase” sections. This gives full control to the Agent that will assume the role.
  - Select Add Role

Creating Agents and Teams

Agents are individuals with permission to respond and resolve tickets. Teams allow you to pull Agents from different Departments and organize them to handle a specific issue.

• Steps for Creating Agents
  - Select the Agent tab > Add New Agents
  - Name: Pat Henshaw
  - Email: phenshaw@helpesk.com
  - Username: phenshaw
  - Click Set Password > Uncheck the box “Send the Agent a Password Reset Email”
  - Create a password for the Agent
  - Uncheck “Require Password Change at Next Login” //Don’t do this in the real world!
  - Select “set”
  - Select the Access tab > Select the Department dropdown menu > System Administrators
  - Select the Role dropdown menu > GlobalAdminAccess
  - Extended Access > Select Department > Support > Add > GlobalAdminAccess

Follow the same steps to create another Agent named “Jerry Moore” with the details in the screenshot below.

Here is a table showing all the agents:

. Steps for Creating Teams
- Select the “Agents” tab > Teams > Add New Team
- Name: Level II Support // Since we already have a default Level I support
- Navigate to the “Members” tab and select Pat Henshaw and your Admin account in the “Select Agent” dropdown menu
- Select Create Team

Navigate to the Teams tab > double-click on the default Level I Support team and add Jerry Moore as a member.

Creating Help Topics, SLAs and Users

Help Topics are simple captions for categorizing issues. Users are ticket owners. Service Level Agreement (SLA) is the expected time (in hours) in which an opened ticket is expected to be closed. If tickets are not closed within the stipulated time, they are considered overdue.

• Steps for Creating Help Topics
  - Select the Manage tab > Help Topics > Add New Help Topic
  - Topic: Business Critical failure

Follow the same steps to create some more topics like the ones below

• Personal Computer Issues
• Password Reset

• Steps for Creating SLAs
  - Select the Manage tab > SLA > Add New SLA Plan
  - Name: Priority 1
  - Grace Period: 1
  - Schedule dropdown menu: 24/7
  - Select Add Plan

Repeat the same steps to create SLAs with priorities 2 and 3

• Steps for Creating Users
  - Ensure you are in the agent tab by toggling the “Agent Panel” tab
  - Select the Users tab to create a user
  - Email Address: hjones@helpdesk.com
  - Full Name: Henry Jones
  - Select Add User

Repeat the same steps to create 2 more users as shown in the User Directory below:

• Allow Anyone to Create Tickets:
  - Select Settings > User Settings
  - Ensure to uncheck the box that says:
  Registration Required: Require registration and login to create tickets

Managing Ticketing Lifecycle Stages

A ticket may go through different stages in its lifecycle. The status can be set and updated either manually by an agent or automatically based on business rules. Here are the stages we will demonstrate in this exercise:

1. New — Creating a Ticket
2. Open—Assignment and Communication
3. Working on the issue
4. Solved — Resolution
5. Closed — Automated

New — Creating a Ticket

Depending on the setting of your Helpdesk, newly created tickets can be set to open manually by an agent or automatically set to open (in our case). You will create 3 tickets using the information for the 3 users you created previously.

• Steps for Creating a New Ticket
  - Navigate to http://localhost/osticket
  - Select Open a New Ticket
  - Email Address: hjones@helpdesk.com
  - Name: Henry Jones
  - Help Topic Dropdown Menu: Business Critical failure
  - Issue Summary: E-commerce Website Down
  - Details: Users reported items not displaying when they initiate a search on the shopping panel.
  - Create Ticket

Repeat the same steps to create 2 more tickets for the remaining 2 users, using the details in the screenshot below:

Open—Assignment and Communication

• Login as Admin
  - Navigate to http://localhost/osticket/scp and login using the credentials of an Agent in the System Administration department. We will use Pat Henshaw’s.

Once you are logged in, toggle the panel to “Agent Panel” > Open > You should see all the open tickets as an Admin.

• Assign the Most Critical Ticket
  - At a glance, we can tell that there’s a ticket involving critical infrastructure and we have to give priority to it.
  - Double-click on ticket #218301 with the subject name “E-commerce website down” and update it as follows:
  - Priority: Emergency.
  - Assigned to: Pat Henshaw // A level II support Team member in the sys. Admin. Department.
  - SLA Plan: Priority 1 // Highest priority — for business revenue impacting reasons
  - Department: System Administrator // Responsible for critical business infrastructure
  - Response text box: Ticket transferred to the Sys. Admin Dept, liaising with Admins to resolve issues.
  - Select Post Reply

• Assign Others based on relative importance
  - Repeat the same steps to update the other two tickets as shown below:

Working on the issue

• E-commerce Website Issue:
  - Agent goes to work with the System Administration team (both Network and Database Administrators)
  - Determine the root cause and take necessary action to resolve the failure.
• Password reset issue assigned to self:
  - Admin goes to the Active Directory
  - Carries out a password reset
  - Configures it to require the user to reset the password on the first login attempt.
• PC issue assigned to Jerry Moore in the Support Dept:
  - He logs in and checks tickets assigned to him
  - communicates with the user to let them know he is working to resolve the ticket
  - Goes to query the user’s computer to see if they have multiple programs running on the computer. He also checks if there are large files in the recycle bin or temporary files of no significance
  - Closes multiple programs if any, and deletes large and insignificant files to free up storage space.

Solved — Resolution

Once the issues are resolved, the agents head back to the ticket and update the end users.

• E-commerce Website Resolved:
  - Response text box: The Database team found that the primary Db failed, so they promoted the secondary (standby) Db to handle queries from users.
  - Ticket Status: Resolved
  - Select Post Reply

• Password Reset Issue Resolved
  -Response text box: Password reset carried out, user is required to reset the password on the first login attempt.
  - Ticket Status: Resolved
  - Select Post Reply

• Slow PC Resolved
  - Response text box: Multiple programs running on the user’s computer have been closed and large files deleted to free up space. The user’s computer now performs optimally.
  - Ticket Status: Resolved
  - Select Post Reply

Closed — Automated

Once the ticket status is set to “Resolved” and posted, they automatically display as closed tickets.

Conclusion

Quite a lot accomplished! You created Departments, Agents, SLAs, Help Topics, and Users. You went on to manage the lifecycle of a ticket from creating new tickets to closing them bearing in mind the relative urgency and priorities of different tickets.

Congratulations! Feel free to check out other posts by me on Active Directory, Office (Microsoft) 365, and more. See you in the next exercise.