Traktip: Holidays and Inclement Weather

It’s time for another Traktip!

The temperatures are dropping, and pumpkin spice everything is showing up on shelves. That can only mean one thing, “Winter is Coming!” With winter comes several holidays and potentials for inclement weather that close your business.

What is the best way to let your users and customer know you’re not available to respond to issues? Turns out there are several things you can do, so we asked our resident experts, the Issuetrak Support team. Here are a couple ways they keep our customers updated:

Add a display message to the login and home pages

We add messages that appears on both the login screen, and on the home screen. Putting a message on the login screen lets your users know before they put in their credentials. If they miss that message, or if you’re using Active Directory single sign-on, the message is duplicated on the home page.

To set up these messages, a user with the “Sys Admin” parameter should follow these steps:

1. Click the gear button in the upper right-hand corner of the screen to access the Settings Lightbox
2. Select "Site Appearance" under the System header
3. Add your message text to both the Home Screen and Login Screen fields
4. Format with any HTML if desired or necessary
5. Click Update

The messages display to users the next time they see the login or home pages. Just remember to follow these same steps and remove the messages once your business reopens.

Create a workflow for new issues

You’ll also want to alert users that don’t log in, but instead send emails to you. Since those emails create issues, you can set up a workflow (previously known as escalation rules) that adds a note to that issue. The conditions you set up ultimately depend on how you’re managing your issues. For our Support team, issues coming in via email are unassigned until an agent picks it up. Another option is to use substatus to control your issue acknowledgement.

To set up a workflow, a user with the “Can Administrate” permission follows these steps:

1. Click the gear button in the upper right-hand corner of the screen to access the Settings Lightbox
2. Select "Workflows" under the Automation header
3. Click "Add" in the quick menu on the right-hand side of the screen
4. Set your interval (Our team uses 2 minutes after Last Activity)
5. Set the conditions of the issue when it comes in, for example, using Assignment Status “Unassigned”, or Substatus “Pending Assignment”
6. Set the Actions for when the workflow runs. Primarily, you’ll want to put your notification message in the Note field. This will add your alert via note when it runs. You can also change the assignment to a group or specific user, or you can change the substatus. Changing the criteria makes sure the rule runs only once per issue.
7. Give the workflow a name and a low process order so it runs first against the issue
8. Make sure the Active checkbox is marked
9. Click Save

When you return to work, simply edit the rule, and uncheck the Active checkbox. This will let you keep the workflow for future use, but not have it run against any new issues. The next time you need to use it, edit and reactivate it, tweaking the message in the note field if necessary. Just remember that workflows run during the hours you've specified within your Issuetrak site. Do you need to set up after-hours workflows? See: About Workflows

These options make sure your users stay in-the-know while you sit back and sip that pumpkin spice latte!

As always, if you have questions or would like to see this in action via a quick demo, don’t hesitate to contact your Account Manager. We’re happy to help!