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Your company's help desk

Use this page to set up the help desk where your stores raise issues with your head office.

Who can do this: corporate administrators.

Know what the help desk is for

Your help desk lets a franchisee or store raise an issue with your company. A store owner reports a problem, and the right person at head office hears about it.

Your support options decide three things:

  • the categories people choose from, such as Store Operations or Hardware;
  • the types within them, such as Error or Add Users;
  • who each category and type goes to: one person for each pair.

The person filing never picks who gets the ticket. The category and type decide that.

Fran-Trak keeps its own set of support options, the Fran-Trak defaults. Every category in them goes to Fran-Trak Support.

  • Without your own options, your users' Support tickets come straight to Fran-Trak.
  • With your own options, they come to your help desk. You can still send some categories to Fran-Trak Support.

Either way, every user keeps Get help from Fran-Trak in their menu. Those tickets always reach Fran-Trak. See Opening a support ticket.

Saving options moves your users' tickets

As soon as you save support options, your users' Support tickets go to your help desk, not to Fran-Trak. Make sure each category and type has an assignee before you save. Or start from the Fran-Trak defaults, below.

Open Support Options

  1. Click Administer, then Support Options.

The page heading is Create Support Options the first time, and Update Support Options after that. It has four tabs: Support Basics, Severity Definition, Assignment and 3P Integration.

Start from the Fran-Trak defaults

This is the quickest way to set up. You get the Fran-Trak categories and types, all pointed at Fran-Trak Support. Then you hand the ones you want to your own people.

  1. Open Support Options.
  2. On the Support Basics tab, click Start from the Fran-Trak defaults.
  3. Read the message and click OK. If your company already has options, they are replaced.
  4. The portal says The Fran-Trak defaults were copied.
  5. Open the Assignment tab. Change the assignee for each category and type your own people should handle.

Note

The copy replaces your categories, types and assignments. Every category starts out going to Fran-Trak Support until you change it.

Did you set up your business with Getting Started? Its Getting help step may already have done this. See Getting Started.

Set the categories and types

  1. Open Support Options.
  2. On the Support Basics tab, type your categories in Categories (one per line).
  3. Type your types in Types (one per line).
  4. Click Save Options. If you already have options, the button says Update Options.

Every type can go with every category. A category and type only appear on the ticket form once they have an assignee. See the next task.

Choose who gets each kind of ticket

  1. Open Support Options and click the Assignment tab.
  2. In an empty row, choose a Category, a Type and an Assignee.
  3. Click the green save button at the end of the row. The portal says Record Saved.
  4. To add another row, click Add Another.
  5. To remove a row, click the red delete button at the end of it.

The Assignee list shows your company's active users. It also lists Fran-Trak staff, including Fran-Trak Support.

If an assignee's account is later switched off or deleted, their rows show (inactive or removed). Choose someone new for those rows.

Set a default assignee

The Support Basics tab has a Default assignee field. It catches tickets whose assignee is switched off or deleted.

  1. On the Support Basics tab, choose a Default assignee.
  2. Click Update Options.

If nobody can take a ticket, it arrives unassigned. Check Where tickets go to avoid that.

Check where tickets go

The Assignment tab opens with a Where tickets go panel. It checks your saved options and assignments.

  1. Open the Assignment tab.
  2. Read the panel. Click Check again after you make changes.

The panel can tell you:

  • Every category and type pair goes to someone who can take tickets. Nothing to fix.
  • Some category and type pairs have no assignment. They are not offered on the new-ticket form. Add an assignment to offer one.
  • Some assignments point at someone who cannot take tickets. Choose a new assignee for each.
  • Some assignments name a category or type that is no longer in the lists. Delete them, or add the name back on Support Basics.
  • Some pairs have more than one assignment. Tickets use the newest one. Delete the others.

Set the severity definitions

The ticket form has a question mark next to Severity. It shows the severity definitions you choose here.

  1. Open Support Options and click the Severity Definition tab.
  2. In Use Standard Definition, choose Yes to use the standard P0 to P4 definitions.
  3. Or choose No. An editor opens. Write your own definitions in Severity Definition.
  4. Click Update Options.

Fill in the other basics

The Support Basics tab has a few more fields. Each drop-down needs a choice before you can save.

Field What it does
Support URL Your portal address, such as https://yourbrand.fran-trak.com/. Links in ticket emails start with it.
Include Admins on Tickets Choose No or Yes. It does not change who gets tickets today.
Show Request for Professional Services Yes adds a Request For Professional Services button to the first screen of the ticket form.
Show License A Module Yes adds a Licensing A New Module button. List the modules in Module Names (one per line).
Require Approvers?, Show Facilities?, 3p Integration? Special setups. The Fran-Trak defaults leave them at No.

Requests made with the professional services or licensing buttons go to your Default assignee. Without one, they arrive unassigned.

Choose the address ticket emails come from

Ticket emails from your help desk come from your company's support email address. That address also gets a copy of ticket emails.

  1. Click Administer, then Email & Subscriptions, then Email Identities.
  2. Create an email identity with Purpose set to Support & Ticketing.

Without one, ticket emails come from a Fran-Trak no-reply address. Ask Fran-Trak support if you need help with the mail server details.

Work the tickets

Click your name at the top right, then Support. Your Open list shows every ticket you are allowed to see.

These people can manage a ticket on your help desk. They can change its status, severity, category, type, assignee and due date:

  • the person it is assigned to;
  • corporate and concept administrators, for every ticket in your company;
  • franchisee administrators and franchisee business managers, for tickets from their franchisee or their stores.

Store owners, store managers and users can manage a ticket only when it is assigned to them.

To work a ticket:

  1. Open it from the Open list.
  2. Reply on the Correspondence tab.
  3. Change Status, Assigned To or the other fields on the left.
  4. Click Update.

Use the statuses like this:

  • A status starting with Pending - Response from when you are waiting for an answer. When the person who opened the ticket replies, it comes back to you.
  • Resolved when the fix is done. The ticket closes by itself 24 hours later, unless the person who opened it replies or reopens it.
  • Closed to close it straight away.

Emails the assignee gets

In these subjects, N is the ticket number.

  • New Ticket Assigned To You when a new ticket is routed to you.
  • Ticket #N assigned to you when someone hands you a ticket.
  • Support Ticket N Updated when someone else changes or replies to your ticket.
  • Ticket #N reassigned to a colleague's name, when a ticket moves from you to someone else.

These emails are sent even when a profile's Allow Emails? is set to No. To follow due dates, assignees can also turn on the Tickets Due alert. See Alerts and subscriptions.

Follow Fran-Trak tickets from your users

Your users can also open tickets with Fran-Trak, through Get help from Fran-Trak.

  • Corporate and concept administrators can see and reply to those tickets.
  • Fran-Trak support decides their status, severity and assignee.