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Service Desk quick start guide
Service Desk quick start guide

A quick start guide to set up important functionalities in the Service Desk module

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Written by Manu Varghese
Updated over a week ago

Introduction

This guide is intended for new companies evaluating Pulseway PSA as well as companies needing assistance with the initial setup for the Service Desk module and Time and Material billing. It’s designed to help you navigate through the most common activities in the solution. Following these steps will allow you to quickly manage your service desk operations. Other advanced features are available in separate knowledge base articles.

Setting up Locations

  1. Go to Admin Module > My Company > Locations > Edit Main Location.

  2. Update the Location Data tab.

    • Set Time zone to your main location’s Time Zone. Default is Central Time zone.

    • Select Date format desired

    • Select Time format desired

  3. Click the Save button.

  4. Click Address Tab.

    • Update Shipping Contact Address details.

  5. Click Billing Contact Tab.

    • Click Copy from Shipping (if address the same). Address will auto-populate from shipping tab. If address is different, fill out address information.

  6. Click Working Hours Tab.

    • Update your main location's working hours. (These are used in SLA business hours calculations.)

  7. Click the Save button.

  8. If you have additional locations, click New button to add those additional locations following the same steps as above.

Updating Company Settings

  1. Go to Admin Module > My Company > Company Settings > General tab.

    • Upload your business logo in the Header Logo, Report Logo, and Log In Dialog Logo fields.

  2. Click the Save button.

  3. Click Time Sheet tab.

    • Update the Round Time Logs. This is used in billing to round your time entry logs up/down/round for billing purposes.

  4. Navigate to Admin > Service Desk > Ticket Configuration page.

  5. Select the appropriate Ticket Number Format from the dropdown. There are four options to choose from.

    • COUNTMMDDYYYY – Each day the ticket count starts over incrementing by 1 adding the US date format at the end.

    • COUNTDDMMYYYY – Each day the ticket count starts over incrementing by 1 adding the non-US date format at the end.

    • YYYYMMDD-COUNT – Each day the ticket count starts over incrementing by 1, with the date as the primary sort with this method.

    • COUNT – Numbers only, starting with the number you choose (Ticket Starting Number)

      There are many other options in the Ticket Configuration page that can be selected that is not part of this guide. This guide focuses only on the required items to get up and running quickly. For more information, see Ticket Configuration.

  6. Click the Save button.

Updating Outbound Email

  1. Go to Admin Module > My Company > Outbound Email.

  2. Update the outgoing Business Email.

    • Most common practice is to use your service desk email address that your customers use.

    • If you have more than one outbound email address (customers email you via different support email addresses), use the main service desk email address here. For the custom email addresses for unique customers, you can set that up in email templates.

  3. Leave Custom SMTP Settings as No. This will use Pulseway's email relay to send and receive the emails with PSA.

  4. If you would like to use Customer SMTP Settings, follow the steps outlined in SMTP settings for the Gmail.

Adding time entry roles for employees

  1. Go to Admin Module > Finance > Roles.

  2. Click New.

  3. Fill in information in all required fields that are indicated by *. The billing rate is your retail rate for that role. Customers would have different rates based upon their contracts.

  4. Click the Save button. Create all your roles needed for service desk time entry.

Adding an employee

  1. Go to Admin Module > HR > Employees > New.

  2. Fill in information in all required fields that are indicated by *.

    • Job Title, Department and Security Roles will use the default provided values. For service desk technicians, use Service Desk Manager.

    • User Type = Employee

  3. Click Save. PSA will automatically send an email with login credentials to the new user.

Adding employee roles to an employee

  1. Go to Admin > HR > Employees. (Open an employee record.)

  2. Check the role(s) this employee will utilize.

  3. Set the Default Role. (This role will default when the employee enters time on ticket or task.)

    Note: You can change role rate if you need to charge another client a different rate for Time and Material work. You create a new Time and Material Contract in the Finance module. No need to create too many roles.

  4. Click Save.

Updating Email Templates

  1. Go to Admin > Business Process > Email Templates.

  2. Edit each email template (click paper and pencil icon). Update from email address to the same email address.

  3. Click Save. Update each email template with the same email address. These email templates are used in workflow.

Updating Service Desk workflows

(If automation is desired)

  1. Go to Admin > Business Process > Workflow.

  2. Edit the following three workflows to make them active following step 3 & 4.

    • Notify Client When new Note is Added

    • Notify Client Ticket Closed

    • Ticket Created Notify Client

  3. Click Active under Status.

  4. Click Save.

  5. Edit the Ticket Created Notify Resources workflow.

  6. Update the Notifications tab.

    • Resources -- Assigned Queues = Yes

  7. Update the Status to Active.

  8. Click Save. Once these four workflows are turned on, you will have automated emails for Service Desk.

Configuring a Service Desk email parser

(Incoming Emails)

  1. Go to Admin > Service Desk > Email Parser.

  2. Click New.

  3. Fill in information in all required fields that are indicated by * for header and Defaults tab.

  4. Click IMAP Settings tab. Fill in information in all required fields that are indicated by *. Additional information can be found here for Office 365, Gmail and Google: Incoming Email Parser Guide.

  5. Click the Save button.

    NOTE: Once you click save, the system will test the connection. When successfully connected emails will be read into your service desk and create tickets from this email address. Nothing else is required at this point.

  6. If additional configuration is desired, click this link for the additional tabs Incoming Email Parser Guide.

Creating an account in the CRM module

In order to create contracts and open support tickets and manage projects for our customers, you need to enter those customers into the CRM Module.

  1. Go to CRM > Accounts. Click the New button.

  2. Fill in information in all required fields that are indicated by *.

  3. Click the Email Domains tab. Click Add.

  4. Update Email Domain in Add/Edit Account Email Domains dialog box.

  5. Save the account. Click Save.

    NOTE: You can add the address information at any time, but for quick start purposes, you have enough information now to use this account.

Adding a contact in the CRM module

Now that we have created an account, let’s add a contact to this client record.

  • You can open tickets for contacts when customers call looking for support.

  • Contact then sends emails to support@yourcompany.com.

  • Email notifications are auto sent to contacts (example – close a ticket).

  • Quotes and invoices are sent to contacts.

  1. Go to CRM > Accounts. Open the account you just created. (Example here is Kevin_Test.)

  2. Look at the lower section of Account. Click Account Contacts. Click the Add button.

  3. Fill in information in all required fields that are indicated by *.

    • Primary Phone and Primary Email are required fields.


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  4. Click Save. Now that you have your accounts in the system, you can start creating tickets and manage your Service Desk operations.

Creating a new ticket in the Service Desk module

Tickets are used to capture a customer issue. It is assigned to the appropriate employee(s) to work and resolve that issue.

The PSA solution allows you to create service tickets in a number of ways:

  • Emails sent to Support@yourcompany.com → create tickets

  • Client Portal submissions → create tickets

  • Clicking a new ticket if you take a support call

To set the Service Desk tickets to New View

  1. Click your name in the upper right hand side of the screen and select My Settings.

  2. Click the Preferences tab.

  3. Click the dropdown for Service Desk Preference and select New View.

  4. Click Save Changes.

Creating a new ticket using the New View

  1. Go to Service Desk > Tickets > New.

  2. Fill in information in all required fields that are indicated by *.

  3. Click Save. The ticket is numbered and saved in the system for further updates.

Accessing tickets and entering time and notes

When tickets are created in the PSA, a Service Desk Manager will see and have access to all tickets in the Service Desk module via:

  • Service Desk Dashboard

  • Tickets folder

  • Recurring Master Tickets (when configured)

  • Service Calls

Your employees will find tickets assigned to them in their Home module.

  1. Go to Home > My Tickets. Click a ticket number to open a ticket.

  2. When the ticket is open, you can see some tabs towards the bottom (Activities, Expenses & Charges etc). Click the tiny clock icon for adding time and the note icon for adding ticket notes. (See the highlighted area in the image below.)

  3. After you click the Add Time icon, the following screen will appear. Fill in information in all required fields that are indicated by *.

    Note: Notes are public facing. They will be sent through the workflow. Internal notes are seen by employees and not clients.

  4. Click Save. This time entry has updated many forms including:

    • Time will now be captured on the ticket

    • The employee’s time sheet will be updated.

    • You can review the labor entry in the Finance module to create an invoice.

  5. Time entry will be added under Activities and Total Time Spent updated on the ticket.

Running Service Desk reports

Pulseway PSA comes with reports for each module.

  1. Go to Reports > Service Desk. Click the module you want to run a report for. (Service Desk is selected in this example.)

  2. Click the name of the report you want to generate. In our case, we are running Average Tickets and Time Per Account.

  3. If a report has a filter, the filter will pop-up. Modify parameters (if needed) and click OK to run.

  4. The report will run. Select which export options are desired and export report.

Billing Process: approve and post process (step 1 - Billing Review) – Finance module

The time entered on tickets are now saved in the Finance module ready to go through the approve and post process.

  1. Go to Finance > Billing Review > Labor Hours. You can use the search function to filter the data. Date range is selected in the below example.

  2. Click Search, and you will see the results below.


    In this example, we see two time entries made by employees:
    - The first line record is time posted against Ticket 1 (3 hours @ $100)
    - The second line record is time we posted against Ticket 2 (12 hours @ $100).
    You can adjust the Hours to Bill and Billing Rate as needed.

  3. To approve and post, check the boxes next to the entry and click on the Post button.

Billing Process (step 2 - billing)

After reviewing labor hours and approving the time entries, these items have moved into the Billing folder. Here you can combine these labor hours with other items you may wish to invoice:

  • Expenses added to a ticket or project

  • Recurring Service Contracts

  • Fixed Price Contract Milestones (ex – deposit or final project payment)

  • Retainer Hour Contracts (some call them block hours)

  1. Go to Finance > Billing. You can use the search function to filter the data.

  2. Click Search, and you will see the results below.

    The customers are listed in the gray bar. We have four different customers listed and all posted hours are shown below for those customers.

  3. Check the boxes next to the entry to be billed and click Generate Invoice.

Note: You can unpost these records if you see an error. It will place them back in the Billing Review folder where you can make adjustments and walk through process again

Billing Process (step 3 – invoices)

All the items that have been reviewed, approved, and generated are now saved in the Invoice folder with the status New. When we moved the items from Billing to the Invoice folder, it assigns the next invoice number in line (example INV_15002). You can now make adjustments before creating the final Invoice and sending it to your client or transferring it to QuickBooks:

  • Add additional information to line items or a note on invoice

  • Adjust quantity or unit price

  • Apply a discount – a dollar or percentage amount

  • Attach receipts (that flowed through system to final invoice)

  • Add any additional attachments

  1. Go to Finance > Invoices. Click invoice number or the edit icon.

  2. After you open the invoice, click Generate along the top.

  3. After clicking Generate, you can select an invoice template.
    Template Type = Classic
    Using the standard Classic invoice templates, select the template. (In our example, we have selected the Detailed Invoice.) Click Generate.

    Your invoice buttons along the top will now include more options.

    The status of your Invoice is now Ready to Send.
    - You can regenerate the invoice and use a different template.
    - You can preview your Invoice.
    - You can send it to your customer.
    - You can void the invoice if necessary which places items back into Billing Review to reapprove and repost.

NOTE: All invoices with Ready to Send or Sent statuses are available to be exported into QuickBooks Online or Desktop (if configured).


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