Custom Fields, Knowledge Base, Queue View

[bcorrigan78]

Hey Folks,

In playing around with 4.0, I can't see how I set up:
* Custom Fields (this is huge fo us because we are required to classify tickets for auditing reasons)
* Knowledge Base - Its no longer a top level menu item, how do I add/remove/update articles and how does Fetch & Retrienve work?
* On the main MAIL tab, I don't see new mail that isn't being worked on by default.. How do tickets get assigned to agents? I'm probably missing something!

-Brian

[bcorrigan78]

The MAIL view no longer shows all the queues.. How do I turn that back on? This is VITAL to get agents to properly deal with messages in a timely manner.. The interface seems more organized around dealing with MY tickets rather than ALL tickets.

[giftculture]

We used the custom field types added to the tickets to add drop downs for things like trouble codes, solution codes, trunk group IDs, ticket referral fields, ticket status, priority, severity. Examples of trouble codes include things like "ring no answer", "post dial delay", "calls failing", "improper release codes", etc... We had text boxes for things like Trunk Group ID, Vendor Ticket Referrals, Customer ticket referrals, etc... For internal maintenance requests, we had fields like Date / Time, Window, Approval Status, Affected equipment, etc... We also had custom fields that we attached to Company and Contact records.

The reason we liked the custom fields is that it enforced consistency between tickets and allowed us to search, for example, all tickets within the last month from vendor X with a trouble code of Y. This also allowed us some degree of accounting / reporting. If the NOC staff have to type the information in, typos will reduce the effectiveness of reports and accounting. In addition, it was much faster and less error prone for the NOC staff to be able to select from drop down lists than to have to enter text by hand.

The fact that your ticketing system allowed for custom fields and for those fields to be edited easily was a major win and indeed one of the main reasons we picked your product - the fact that they don't seem to be available in the new release is really disappointing.

[bcorrigan78]

Agreed. Tagging is unfortunately not an appropriate solution when data integrity is an issue. Moreover, I never understood why Cerberus never incluided even custom data field by default. Just a user defined drop down field for CATEGORY would solve so many user requests..

[jstanden]

In playing around with 4.0, I can't see how I set up:
* Custom Fields (this is huge fo us because we are required to classify tickets for auditing reasons)
* Knowledge Base - Its no longer a top level menu item, how do I add/remove/update articles and how does Fetch & Retrienve work?
* On the main MAIL tab, I don't see new mail that isn't being worked on by default.. How do tickets get assigned to agents? I'm probably missing something!

Hey Brian,

Custom Fields: These haven't been reimplemented yet. I don't feel they belong in "core", but they will return as a plugin. To the people who enable it, it will be pretty much as seamless as it was before.

Knowledgebase: You manage articles as an editor, which is done through the public UI. Create a new KB community tool from the "Community" area, drop the provided index.php file somewhere (almost anywhere) and then point your browser at it.

F&R: Enough info on F&R to make you dizzy is in my recent post here:
http://www.cerb4.com/forums/showthread.php?p=121

Unassigned Tickets in Workspaces: At the moment, sort by "Last Action" or add the "Next Worker" column to the list from 'customize'. Some form of "quick assign" will likely return in a future update, as deemed necessary by you guys.

[jstanden]

The MAIL view no longer shows all the queues.. How do I turn that back on? This is VITAL to get agents to properly deal with messages in a timely manner.. The interface seems more organized around dealing with MY tickets rather than ALL tickets.

This is related to "Custom Dashboards", which will be making a comeback as a new plugin as well (not part of "core").

The process for using Group Workspaces is to make use of the Next Action and Next Worker fields. You can quickly thumb through groups by hitting "N" on your keyboard. Each Group will remember your preferences (selected buckets, etc.)

If you want to see every ticket just do a search. You can also turn that search into RSS and get notifications in any feed reader.

[jstanden]

...
The fact that your ticketing system allowed for custom fields and for those fields to be edited easily was a major win and indeed one of the main reasons we picked your product - the fact that they don't seem to be available in the new release is really disappointing.

They aren't part of "core", which is the fundamental part of Cerberus Helpdesk (team e-mail management). Custom fields will be back shortly as a plugin.

We just felt it was better to give you guys something sooner than later, rather than always promising the perfect solution was a couple weeks away.

[jstanden]

Agreed. Tagging is unfortunately not an appropriate solution when data integrity is an issue. Moreover, I never understood why Cerberus never incluided even custom data field by default. Just a user defined drop down field for CATEGORY would solve so many user requests..

We actually had the same thought. ;)

I can't count the number of times we almost added a hardcoded "Categorization" field, similar to custom statuses.

This isn't in 4.0 because of the "less is more" mantra. If something just seems like a good idea, but shouldn't be mandatory for everyone, it's not part of "core" -- it becomes an optional plugin.

One of the tests we did through 4.0 development was to use Cerb4 as our personal e-mail client (for webmail, gmail, etc). When the concepts started getting too cumbersome to use or explain for something that simple we rethought and refactored.

[giftculture]

They aren't part of "core", which is the fundamental part of Cerberus Helpdesk (team e-mail management). Custom fields will be back shortly as a plugin.

We just felt it was better to give you guys something sooner than later, rather than always promising the perfect solution was a couple weeks away.

Ok, that's good to know and understandable - thanks for the update