Process automation

The Automation section (Settings > Automation > Permissions) provides several settings related to the help desk process automation:

• Agent and Customer permissions
• Ticket ID generation,
• Email-to-ticket utility,
• Canned replies, and
• Ticket tags.

Permissions

The Permissions section (Settings > Automation > Permissions) allows setting the general users' permissions related to ticket operation. The permissions are divided to:

• Agent permissions, and
• Customer permissions.

Agent permissions

Click the toogle switch to enable or disable the following agents' permissions:

• Manually change ticket status: Allow agents to manually change ticket status in the internal Note action. Otherwise, the ticket status is changed automatically.
• Enable self-assignment: Enable/disable ticket self-assignment option in the agent Reply action area, if the ticket is not assigned.
• Default billable time: Enter default billable time for all agents' actions. The value is used for Analytic reporting.

Customer permissions

Click the toogle switch to enable or disable the following customers' permissions:

• Close ticket: Allow customers to close tickets. Otherwise, only agents are able to close them.
• Reopen closed ticket: Allow customers to reopen closed tickets. Otherwise, only agents are able to reopen those closed.
• Rate agent replies: Allow customers to rate agents' replies and choose rate from 1 to 5. This represents a scale describing how quickly users received a response to a ticket, or how quickly a posted question is answered. The information is used for Analytic reporting.

Click the Apply Changes button to make the changes active.

Info

A user must logout and log-in again to make the changes active.

Ticket ID format

The ticket's identification number - ID is displayed to users across the entire SympoQ account for each ticket and acts as a unique reference for the ticket. The identification number is automatically assigned to ticket in one of two available ways:

• Custom, using reference codes to users instead of ticket ID. A reference code is a string of numbers and letters that uniquely identifies a ticket, but isn't assigned sequentially. You can set the reference code format to include information about the time the ticket was created; ticket reference 2024-07-21-FE971 is more meaningful than ticket ID 24912.
• Sequence, starting with [1], [2], [3], and so on. This way you reveal the total number of tickets you have on your account.

If you choose the Custom format, you can enter the desired ID format as a string of placeholders, surrounded by square brackets. For example, [YEAR]-[MONTH]-[A]-[RRR] would give you IDs such as 2024-05-Z-Q9E. Anything you enter that isn't in square brackets will be the same in every code.

Here are the available placeholders:

Placeholder	Result	Example
[A]	Random letter	W
[9]	Random number (one digit)	7
[RRR]	3-chars random string of letters or numbers	T4E
[YEAR]	Current year as a four-digit number	2022
[MONTH]	Current month as a two-digit number	07
[DAY]	Current day as a two-digit number	21
[HOUR]	Current hour in 24-hour format	13
[MIN]	Current minute as a two-digit number	57
[SEC]	Current second as a two-digit number	44

Email to ticket conversion

The inbound email option available in the Email to ticket conversion section shows email addresses that accept email messages and convert them to:

• New requests and tickets
• Ticket replies
• Ticket actions in case the email message body contains email commands.

The inbound email address provides a baseline for two-way email ticketing feature that allows customers and agents to submit requests and reply to tickets by a common email service without using the agent or customer portal.

There are two additional settings available to control the system behaviour once the email message arrives:

• Accept messages from unregistered senders - Enable/disable email-to-ticket conversion for email messages received from unregistered (anonymous) customers. If disabled, only messages from Users > Customers list will be accepted
• Default Topic - Select a topic that will be altered to a new ticket.

Email forwarding

To enable email conversion for messages received in your original company's email inbox (e.g. support@acme.net), you need to:

1. Set up email forwarding on your own email server/account. The set up depends on the server's email system. Here are the sample tutorials:

   • Google Email
   • Microsoft Exchange Server
   • cPanel

2. Afterward, enter the original/forwarded address in the Forwarded from field and click the Update Forwarded from button.

This way, the SympoQ will recognize your original email address and convert each received message into a new ticket or append the reply message to existing ticket.

Note

In case the incoming email message contains the Custom submission fields, the Default Topic is overridden by the Form ID from the Conversion placeholders settings. The Form ID can be obtained from the "Conversion placeholders" button in Settings > Forms > Submission forms.

Canned replies

Canned replies or predefined replies allow agents to insert frequently repeated text into the ticket Reply text box, making it easier to respond to requests.

The Canned replies list is available in the Settings > Automation > Processing option, within the Canned replies section. To edit the list, click Edit button.

To add a new canned reply:

1. Click Add Row button
2. Enter the following values:
   • Title: shorten description of canned reply. The title appears in the - Canned reply - select list in the agent Reply action
   • Text: the reply content that is loaded into the reply box and modified as required.
3. Click Save button.

Repeat steps above to add more canned replies.

To delete a canned reply, click the Actions menu icon in front of the value you wish to delete, choose Delete Row from the action list and click Save button.

Ticket tags

When a request is initially recorded, the best that the analyst can typically do is to identify and categorize the request. For the purpose of further ticket processing, SympoQ provides such additional classification tag where the root cause can be documented and subsequently recorded and reported.

The internal tags or labels enable classification and categorization of support requests and tickets with one or more keywords. Support agent or queue manager can classify a ticket using the Tag action in one of the following predefined ticket actions:

• Single ticket Tag
• Bulk ticket Tag.

As the result, support agents are able to:

• Search for a specific tag in the Ticket list, e.g. "assistance"
• Review the ticket summary report aggregated by tags.

You can add tags and edit the list according to your internal classification scheme.

The Tags list is available in the Settings > Automation > Processing option, within the Tags section. To edit the list, click Edit button.

To add a new tag:

1. Click Add Row button
2. Enter the following values:
   • Tag name
   • Color: select the Tag style color from the list
3. Click Save button.

Repeat steps above to add more tags.

To delete a tag, click the Actions menu icon in front of the value you wish to delete, choose Delete Row from the action list and click Save button.

Info

The deleted Tags are still available to search for in the Ticket list and in the Tickets summary report.