Support Groups

Support Groups denote the classification of your help desk team, so that the incoming requests are categorized and based on the technicians expertise, the requests are distributed.

By configuring support groups, multiple support teams can be managed by classifying them into individual groups with e-mail settings for each group. So when an e-mail is sent to a group mail ID, the request is fetched and automatically sent to the group.

Say for instance, you are managing two support groups - hardware and network with the email IDs hardware@domain.com and network@domain.com respectively. The two mail IDs are linked to a single mail account that is fetched by ServiceDesk Plus. So on configuring the group mail IDs, e-mails sent to hardware@domain.com are automatically assigned to the hardware group and the conversation threads possesses the group mail ID in the address field.

Further, you can restrict technicians to view requests in their Group alone. This can be done by creating a Role "All in group & assigned to him" and assigning this role to the technician to restrict his view. Refer Roles to know more.

You can also enable notifications to be sent to the technicians on receiving a new request and if a request is left unpicked. The configured groups are listed in the Groups drop-down menu in the New Request form.

To open the Group configuration page

Click the Admin tab in the header pane.
In the MSP Details block, click Support Groups. The available support groups are listed. From this page you can add, edit and delete groups.

Add Support Group

Click Add New Group link available at the right top corner of the Group list page.
In the Add Support Group form, enter the group name in the Name field. This is mandatory field.
Select the Business Impact caused by this support group on other CIs.
Select the technicians that you wish to group under this Support Group from the Available Technicians list box and click >> button to move them to Technicians interested in this Group.
You can choose the technicians of the Group to whom you wish to notify for a new request creation in the Group. To do this,

Select the check box Send notification to Group technician(s) when a new request is added to this Group.
Click Choose button. The technicians under the group are listed in a pop-up window.
Select the technicians to notify and click OK.

To choose the technicians to send notification for unpicked requests in the Group,

Select the check box Send notification to technician(s) when a request in this Group is left unpicked.
Click Choose button. The complete list of technicians available in your help desk appears in a pop-up window.
Select the technicians from the list box and click OK. The technicians get listed in the field provided.
Enter the time period, from the creation of the request in Group, after which the notification of unpicked requests will be sent to the selected technicians.

If you wish to describe the Group in detail enter the same in the Description text box.
If you wish to automatically assign the incoming tickets to the group, enter the Group E-mail ID. Each support group can possess multiple e-mail IDs which should be unique and separated by commas or semi colon.

Note: Please note that the group e-mail IDs should be aliased to a mail account which is fetched by ServiceDesk Plus.
Specify the Sender's Name and the Sender's E-mail in the given text field. The senders name will be specified while sending e-mails.
Click Save. The new Group is added to the support group list.

At any point, if you decide not to add the new Support Group, then click Cancel to get back to the Group list. Clicking the View List link on the top right corner of the add Group form will also take you to the Group list view.

Note: Enabling the check boxes while adding Group does not ensure that the notification will be sent. This setting is just to choose the technicians to whom the notification needs to be sent and the time frame after which the unpicked request notification is to be sent. To actually send the notification, you need to enable the corresponding setting under the Notification Rules under the Admin tasks, which are:

Notify Group technician by mail when request is added to Group.
Notify technician by mail when request is unpicked in Group.

Edit Support Group

To edit an existing Support Group

In the Support Group List page, click the edit iconbeside the group name to edit.
In the Edit Support Group form, you can modify the name of the Group, the technicians belonging to the Groups, the notification settings, and description.
Click Save to save the changes. At any point, if you wish to cancel the operation that you are performing, click Cancel.

Even while editing a Group, if you wish to add a new Group, then click Save and add new button instead of clicking Save button after making the changes.

Delete Support Group

Active and Inactive Groups

Active group includes all the support groups that are currently in use. An active support group will become Inactive, if an active group that is being used by other modules is deleted. Only an active group that is not being used by any module can be deleted.

Inactive group(s) can be moved to active state by selecting the required groups and clicking the 'Mark as Active' option.

Note

If a support group from a default site is 'Marked as Deleted', then their copy site(s) which use the support group will also be 'Marked as Deleted'. If the support group in a default site which is 'Marked as Deleted' is reverted back as active, then their copy site(s) which use the support group will also become active group(s).

Steps to delete a support group:

In the Support Group List page, enable the check box beside the active group name to delete.
Click Delete button. A dialog box confirming the delete operation appears.
Click OK to proceed with the deletion. If you do not want to delete the Group, then click Cancel. An active group which is used by other groups cannot be deleted. It will be moved to Inactive groups on deletion.