Private Message Management?

[Bitruder]

I'm wondering Cerb4 will have better management tools for private messages?

Namely:
1) Ability to search through them.
2) Ability to bin them into different folders.
3) Ability to create threaded discussions?

Thanks

[jstanden]

Hey there!

We haven't put any thought into private messages yet, but it would be incredibly simple to do with the new platform.

Out of curiosity, is your organization anti-IM?

[todd999]

it would be nice if the new IM/chat system could also work for PM and you could connect an internal conversation to the ticket it is regarding.... to be viewed like a comment by other staff.. Chat to an offline Agent could look like a PM to them...


We want to ban Meebo so staff do not chat with outside friends but we do want them to be able to use chat with other staff members. IF the new Chat system supports this it would be a good replacement for PM

-Todd

[Bitruder]

Just wondering where you are on private messages in Cerberus 4?

The people who use the helpdesk are all scattered around the world, and it's nice to have all business related comments stored in a central location, so we used Cerberus 3.x's private messages for that and now miss it in 4.

Thanks

[Hildy]

It's not really on the radar at all at this time. It's not something that's requested very much.

Just out of curiosity, what is it that you need private messages to do that the current Notes / Comments can't do?

[Bitruder]

Generally, PMs were used for items not specific to any one ticket.

[jstanden]

Makes sense. I'll keep it in mind when we flesh out the teamwork area with some of the other suggestions (Todd's Calendar, etc.)

[pk4]

It's not really on the radar at all at this time. It's not something that's requested very much.

Just out of curiosity, what is it that you need private messages to do that the current Notes / Comments can't do?

We're interested in private messaging as well. It would be useful whether or not it is attached to a ticket.

The main reason for us is to call one person's attention to a ticket. The comments/notes aren't directed as at a person - so it's not very useful for saying "Bob - talk to Joanne about this and get it resolved before lunch". Unfortunately in our shop, a person could have dozens of open tickets and would be likely to miss a comment like that.
The other occasion is when a ticket requires action by more than one worker. We need the ability to attach directed internal communication without mixing it into the customer thread. The "next action" mechanism is pretty inconvenient when you need a lengthy back/forth between workers.

But we are open to suggestions?

[Hildy]

For calling attention to a ticket, you may want to look at the assignment notifications Jeff put in last night (479, I think). Though that still doesn't specifically address the multiple-worker scenario. That might be best handled through tasks. If a ticket requires Worker A to do X and Worker B to do Y, then you could create Task X and assign it to Worker A and Task Y and assign it to Worker B... The more I think about it, the more it sounds like the "directed internal communication" attached to a ticket is along the lines of Tasks, because a PM system wouldn't be something that would necessarily tie PMs to tickets.

[pk4]

I agree that the tasks do handle the "calling attention to"

What about the "lengthy back/forth between workers" ?

[Hildy]

Well, you've got me on that one... cause I don't see the comments working too terribly well for that (unless / until there's email notification of comments).

I assume the reason a regular email or IM dialog won't work for this is that you want it stored in Cerberus?

[pk4]

Couple of reasons:
1. we need it stored in Cerberus
2. the main reason we moved to Cerb was to get our employees to stop managing work in their inboxes. Now that we've gotten people away from that, their response time (or noticing) on email has dropped to "very slow" at best. One of our consultants here still gets a thousand emails/day, so it is no longer an "alert" mechanism (it's safe to say he "polls" his email :).

One way to understand this - we're looking for a place to put the "how should we handle this ticket?" discussion.

Another thought: the related ticket idea (here (http://www.cerb4.com/forums/showthread.php?t=837)) could form a solution to this. In that case, we could have another ticket with the discussion in it. For this to work really well, it would need to better address the situation where a requestor is a worker (so you could have an efficient worker-worker ticket).

[joegeck]

Hey everyone!

I admit this is an old thread but I want to make sure anyone still interested in us developing the private messaging system, starts following the feature request I created today:

http://www.wgmdev.com/jira/browse/CHD-804

I tried to summarize any unique ideas presented in this thread as bullet points over in our tracking portal, JIRA. For any new suggestions please add them as comments at that tracking page. As I've said before it makes things easier on our developers if customer feedback is detailed in one centralized location, and also helps you guys track our progress as features like this are developed.