Ticketing System Software

An IT help desk ticketing system works by first creating a ticket, which is simply a document recording all actionable information pertaining to the issue at hand. Capturing and recording requests is critical to any ticketing system. Requests can come from a wide range of sources, including email, phone, social media, an RMM tool, the network or server, and even the occasional employee walk-by at your desk.

Once converted into tickets, an automated ticketing system will then allow you to track the request throughout its lifecycle, from creation to resolution. When converting these requests into tickets, a help desk ticketing system should automatically capture as much information as possible, such as the source email, phone number, and device name. This reduces the chance of errors and omissions that can easily occur with human data entry.

A comprehensive service desk ticketing system can also separate incoming tickets into more manageable categories, also known as “buckets.” Separating tickets into these buckets allows IT technicians to address tickets more efficiently, organizing them by team, priority, source, or user. Any number of combinations—or buckets—can be created so the best IT technician is assigned the right tickets at the right time. For example, you wouldn’t want your desktop team to receive tickets for server problems and vice versa. Assigning tickets properly makes sure you’re using all resources as efficiently as possible. Dividing tickets in this way can also allow you or your team to focus on higher priority tickets without the noise of less important tickets.

Service desk ticketing systems help streamline, centralize, and manage support tickets, saving time and manual effort for the help desk team and improving help desk agent productivity. 

IT ticketing software can provide insight into ticket status, such as who is responsible for a job and how long a ticket has been sitting in a system, as well as help with many of the tasks involved in effective ticket management, including alerting, responses to end users, and reporting.

Who receives alerts is just as important as how they get alerted. A properly configured ticketing system only needs to alert the technicians that need to be alerted. For example, when a new ticket arrives and hasn’t been responded to, a ticketing system can provide relevant, timely alerts to those involved without too much excess information and noise, so they have all the information they need to quickly resolve the issue.

Alerts are also valued by the end user. Technicians can leverage service desk ticketing systems to update tickets and add notes to generate responses back to end users, keeping them informed, but not flooded, with updates.

IT technicians should also consider a ticket management system for its reporting capabilities. The right tool will offer a built-in reporting engine to monitor technician performance, ticket status, customer satisfaction, and other relevant key performance metrics. It should even be able to track customer support needs by location, real-time billing data, and incidence frequency.

Help desk ticket software helps you capture and organize service requests from your customers, employees, servers, networks, and more to help ensure greater end-user satisfaction and efficiency. With an IT help desk system, you can ensure the right IT technician is addressing the right ticket, allowing you to leverage your team’s skillsets and resources more effectively.

Ticket management systems also allow you to track the status of your tickets. Knowing who is responsible for a job and how long a ticket has been sitting in the system are critical for accountability. A help desk ticketing system will enable you to see exactly where a ticket is in its lifecycle—whether it’s new, awaiting user response, blocked, or even closed. Knowing how long a ticket has been in a certain status is often a trigger for action and important when considering Service Level Agreements (SLAs). When a combination of priority and time elapsed threatens to breach the agreement, tickets that could negatively affect SLA will require immediate action be taken. Tracking ticket status using a help desk ticketing system allows you to calculate SLA status automatically. The system can notify you when an SLA breach is approaching, empowering you to set date-specific SLA reminders. This further allows your team to focus on the most impactful work, without having to worry about manually having to prioritize tickets.

SolarWinds Web Help Desk ticketing system works by capturing all service requests and issues as tickets. You can even leverage its integration with SolarWinds network management and system management software to convert node performance issues directly into service tickets, streamlining the entire ticketing process. Regardless of where your request originates—whether it’s from the phone, social media, an RMM tool, or in-person—WHD is built to easily convert the issue into a ticket. 

SolarWinds Web Help Desk can help provide deeper visibility by tracking tickets from creation all the way through resolution. Once a ticket has been created, Web Help Desk is designed to evaluate the ticket, route it to the appropriate technician, and categorize the ticket based on the type of issue, priority-level, and source. This automation saves you the manual labor of having to sift through hundreds of tickets and utilizes your resources more effectively and efficiently. 

The platform further helps streamline time to resolution with its built-in and configurable knowledge base feature, which not only includes the ability to create and maintain an external knowledge base to help reduce the overall number of inbound tickets by promoting self-resolution by end users but can also house shared learnings for internal use by help desk technicians as well.