For organizations that provide services and support to other companies, it is crucial that they stay on top of their client’s requests. When they charge for their time spent, it becomes even more critical to track work accurately. By using a helpdesk, requests coming in can be standardized and more easily managed. But sometimes the scope of work goes beyond a single, simple ask, spurring the creation of a project that now has to be managed as well. Trying to keep track of both kinds of work can be challenging, and without a tool to give them visibility and the means to act quickly on changes, one client looked to us for answers.
Our client is a credit management software company based in South Africa. They provide utility and revenue management solutions, in particular credit control and debt collection software for local governments. Their driving motivation is to support their clients and provide them with good service, but as they do not currently have a tool to help them manage this work, they have identified a need in their toolset. Specifically, they want to track communications with their clients, schedule implementations, provide their clients with a service desk, manage their development work, adhere to their SLAs, and report on productivity. Knowing that OneDesk has both helpdesk and project management tooling, they hope our tools can address their requirements.
Helpdesk and project management to suit whatever needs
At its heart, our helpdesk and project management software both rely on a simple hierarchy of projects, portfolios, and folders to organize work. Where helpdesk tickets and project tasks are similar in the level of detail they contain and encapsulate, they differ in how the work can be planned and managed. Where tickets are generally one-time requests, project tasks can be planned into schedules and have dependencies linking them. With our Gantt view, this can be shown and managed easily. Both tickets and tasks have workflows that can be customized to accurately reflect the different stages an item of work goes through. One key feature that makes OneDesk adaptable to any need is the ability to define custom fields for both tickets and tasks. With no limits on the number of custom fields that can be defined, our client is able to ensure all relevant information and details are associated with the work. Using custom fields that can contain numerical or text information, processes can be introduced such as approvals or billing. We also support multiple-choice custom fields which allows our client to limit the set of possible values entered in a field.
Tracking time spent on a ticket
Time tracking was an area highlighted by our client as being pivotal to their management of work in order to track progress and identify billable time. In OneDesk, there is built-in time tracking functionality with two options our client’s team can use to log their time. By using our timer feature, anyone who works on a ticket can track their time in OneDesk itself, without having to use any other software. For users who might forget to use the timer or prefer to use a secondary time tracking software, OneDesk can also import timesheets. These timesheet entries contain information on whether the time was billable or not, any updates in the status of the ticket, start and finish dates, hours worked, and the percentage of the work now completed. Multiple users can create timesheet entries, and denote information specific to the time they spent on the ticket. For our client, this was crucial as they outlined instances where work from certain members of their team might be billable, while time spent by others would not be.
Using automations to stay sharp and not miss a step
Our client has service level agreements (SLAs) that set expectations for how quickly they must provide their clients with service and support. In order to adhere to these agreements, our client wondered if there were mechanisms in OneDesk to help stay on top of things. Using a system of trigger conditions and subsequent actions, our workflow automations can be used to do exactly that. Our client highlighted an approval workflow they have for supervisors to review timesheets and approve them once a ticket is complete. By creating a workflow automation to trigger when a ticket’s completion reaches 100%, the action taken automatically can assign the ticket to the supervisor. In terms of SLAs, workflow automations can also be set up based on the SLAs our client defines in OneDesk. When a ticket breaches an SLA, an action can be triggered to change the status or send a message to the supervisor to address. The flexibility of workflow automations allow them to be created to suit any need and requirement.
Reporting on productivity
OneDesk’s helpdesk and project management tools bring a full range of possibilities for how to deal with work and take action when it is needed. Our client noted a distinct need to actively monitor work so they can identify areas of concern to build plans around. Although we have many views—available by default—for digging into tickets and tasks, we also support customized views. Using filters and grouping, our client can create views to show them how productive their team is, enabling them to pinpoint bottlenecks early. These views also can be turned into reports that can then be shared. An example of a report our client wants to see is one that shows them all overdue items for the past week. This can be done in OneDesk by reporting on all tickets that are not in the “Closed” status that have a last modified date of being within the last 7 days. Custom fields can also be used for reporting, which opens up all kinds of possibilities for data and metrics to track. Reports made in OneDesk are available to other users, but they can also be exported and shared with people outside of the team, which is a great way for our client to share progress with their clients.
With our full range of features and functionality, OneDesk is a robust solution for helpdesk and project management needs, no matter how separate or inter-related those are. From time tracking to automated workflows, our software is able to keep our client aware of all of the activity their team is engaged in to get their work done. The level of flexibility and customization that we offer creates an experience that can be adapted to any organization, no matter where they are located or how big or small they are. On top of what we already offer, we’re continuously working on new features to help our clients manage every aspect of their work, whether support- or project-based.