Finding Freedom: From All Those Tickets: Issues and Sub-Types

Dec 6

Finding Clarity with Issues and Sub-Types

Welcome back, Autotask Warriors. I am so glad that you are here, hopefully rested up and ready to finish the year out strong.

For those celebrating American Football, I hope that your teams gave you something to be thankful for. (Ed. Note – Thankful for the Detroit Lions and Michigan Wolverines bringing it!)

To those of you stressed out and not feeling very thankful, we see you. While many of you came back on Monday, chatted with the team, and got back to it, too many worked on Thanksgiving, missed family dinners, saw no football games, and came back on Monday exhausted and overwhelmed.

This just isn’t right.

You may not believe me, but it is absolutely possible to run or manage an MSP without needing daily therapy or working 100-hour weeks. In fact, you can even go on that 10-day cruise without a laptop. (Really!)

How? Well, first, if you’re feeling burned out, please read this. You’re no good to anyone if you’re not healthy. Second, we use the Autotask software and PSAutomation to automate your operations and the Advanced Global processes to train and empower your team to be Service Delivery Gladiators. Third, by training the Team to do Service Delivery in the right way, everyone knows what to work on next, how to handle each step of the Client engagement, and you have happy Techs and raving fan Clients.

I know the last thing you want to think about right now, with 247 open tickets is Autotask. We get it - running an MSP takes a lot. If you don’t make time to keep up on things, it’s easy to get behind and miss out on some of the new, cool things in Autotask. In no time at all, you’re so overloaded with work, tickets, HR things, and everything else, you don’t have time to do anything with Autotask but use it for basic out of the box ticketing, or if you are lucky, that expensive onboarding you got from AT’s Professional services many moons ago. 

We work with lots of MSPs. One constant is that most MSPs are using out of the box Autotask/Datto RMM and/or don’t have the fundamentals down. This means we have to spend a lot of time fixing and teaching the basics – time that could be better spent helping MSP teams grow their business, earn raving fan clients, and being able to take that long family vacation or off the grid weekend. 

So, we’re running an MSP Fundamentals Boot Camp series right here in this blog because the Advanced Global team have talked to so many burned out MSP leaders experiencing apparent mental health issues. This is not right, and we are taking a stand.

“Okay,” you say. “Where’s the beef?” “Show me the money!”

Here you go:

Take Control 

As an Owner, you can hopefully control the Sales Process, which Clients you choose to work with, which products you sell, etc. But what can your Techs control? The Service Delivery process. 

We start with the Intake process. Our experience shows that 80% of Chaos can be driven out of the work environment with a good intake process. That is why many of our articles focus on the Service Coordinator role as they are the core of the Service Delivery Team. They should be your 4th hire.  

If you are a one-man band or just have a couple Techs, then someone still should be designated during your working hours to handle ticket triage. The Owner can do it if they have the time, or you can split the day among your techs. The important thing is that everyone knows who has intake duty for that time block and that is on the schedule. Every business hour needs a designated Intake person. 

Fundamentals – Issue Types and Sub-types

This series started at the beginning, covering the Service Delivery process. We started with entering a ticket. 

In week 1, I gave an overview of the Triage process. This is taking a new, raw ticket, distilling it to the just the facts, classifying it, and sending it on its way. Please see that for the fundamentals of what to do when a ticket comes in.  

In Weeks 2 – 6, we went through the stuff your Autotask needs to have to properly enter a ticket.

In Week 7, we briefly interrupted our ticket entry to kindly ask you to stop killing your Service Coordinators and explained why they are so vital to a healthy, thriving MSP.

Last week, we essentially completed the hypothetical ticket our dispatcher took over the phone and your homework was to create your speed code/Forms Template for ticket entering either from the Autotask documentation or the YouTube link I gave (yes, we’re on YouTube – about time, I know). You were also supposed to go over the series with your Service Coordinator or trained triage folks.

Last week, I also mentioned ticket types and sub-types. I said, “Based on the ticket description you will either enter an appropriate issue/sub-issue type or you will enter “other” and “other” as it’s really the Techs job to figure it out. If you’re a Tech assigned to triage, then take a swing at it, otherwise other/other or TBD/TBD (my favorite) is the way to go.

One of the many questions MSPs ask all the time is what replaces TBD/TBD when the tech works the ticket and understands the issue. The correct answer is, “whatever makes sense to that MSP.” But if you go out on Reddit or other Internet hangouts, you will lots of MSPs asking the same questions.

Many find what comes out of the box with Autotask is good enough to get by and then they can refine as they grow. Others obsess over having the perfect set. Frankly, it doesn’t matter much unless you are going to search by problem or use widgets and reports to track issues. Unless you are looking at reports, every ticket could be a “computer” problem.

Now, I DO want you to start using reports and widgets and being able to track your problems for proactive resolutions, and I do NOT want you spending weeks obsessing over your issue types. After all, you need to be setting up 2025 for growth. So, I asked an MSP that has grown their list over time and experience to share, and they graciously agreed.

Account

Documentation

E-Mail

E-Waste

Expense Management

Onsite Visit

Procurement

TBR Meeting

Training

Application

2FA/MFA

Accounting Software

AV/Endpoint security

E-Mail

File Sync & Share

Internet Browser

LOB Software

MS Office

MS OneDrive

MS SharePoint

Mobile App

MSP Tools

Other

Password Manager

PDF/E-Signature

Softphone

Video Conferencing

Webapp/website

Cloud

Backup

DMARC/SPF/DKIM

Domain Names

Dropbox

Google Workspace

Microsoft 365

MS Azure

MS Entra

Hosted Infrastructure

Other

SSL Certificates

Computer

Backup

Connectivity

File System

Hardware

Performance

Other

Internal

Billing

Conference

Consulting

Documentation

Meeting

Peer Group Meeting

Training

Vendor Meeting

Network

Cabling/Rack Work

Firewall/gateway

Other

Performance

Switch

Wireless Network

Other

Bar Code Scanners

Other

PBX/VOIP System

Point of Sale

Printer/Copier/Scanner

Security Event

Security System

Tablet

Server

Azure Virtual Desktop

Backup

Deployment

File System

Hardware

IIS/Web Server

OS (DHCP/config)/Virtual Servers

Other

Performance

Remote Desktop Server

SQL/Database

User

Access

E-Mail Quarantine Restore

Key fob request

Migration

Off-Board

On-Board

Password Reset

Spam/Phish Block Request

Training

Out of Country Travel

Update

So, there you have it. A clean, easy to use, and understand listing of sub-types put together over time.

Note that there aren’t a ton of Types or Sub-types, and most of the sub-types are generic. This is intentional as your Techs aren’t going to spend more than 30 seconds hunting before they randomly pick something. And they want the list to stay the same – so having to change the list every time you make a stack change is not going to work well.

Why set something like this up now if you’re a small or new MSP? Simple: when you are ready to start reporting on the data, you will have it. Even without Live Reports, you can run simple ticket searches or use widgets to quickly get a rough idea of where more of your issues are.

Next question you likely have is how you work the above list using ITIL (we talked about this early in the series). Simple: in Autotask, you set the ticket as an Incident or a Service request, then select the appropriate type/sub-type. Rather than having a set for each or a generic MAC type, you can now leverage the PSAutomation of Autotask to keep it simple and still have powerful issue tracking and reporting. I talked about this earlier in the series, but you could even use Ticket Types to create 3 level deep issue tracking to mirror the ConnectWise and TechTribe suggested lists that have been floating around out there.

Also, I am supposed to give a shout out to Chartec. I am told the idea for moving much of the sub-types into “User” came from an operations webinar they did.

Summary

You may not believe me, but it is absolutely possible to run or manage an MSP without needing daily therapy or working 100-hour weeks. In fact, you (yes, even a Service Coordinator) can even go on that 10-day cruise without a laptop. (Really!)

The foundation of a successful MSP, small or large, is the fundamentals - and not killing your employees. So, we’re going back to the basics to make sure we’re all on the same page. Your homework for next week is to schedule a meeting with your Tech Team and Service Coordinators and see what they think. Does the list above make sense for you? How can you tweak it or your current list to make them work for you?

Please drop me a line if you have any questions or disagreements. Next week, I’m going to show you how to leverage more PSAutomation and get those emails into Autotask.

See you next week! Same Bat time, same Bat Channel!

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Need Service Coordinator Training? Just want another pair of eyes on your Autotask PSA Software to see if YOU are fully using it? We can complete an evaluation that will tell you exactly what you need to fix or improve.

Talk to us: info@agmspcoaching.com

Stephen & Co

Resources: 