Finding Freedom From: All Those Tickets: Roles & Work Types
Hello, Autotask Warriors!
Welcome back to my little corner of the Internet, where my Advanced Global Team works hard to coach MSPs on having an amazing Service Delivery experience while growing, being profitable, and not going insane or working yourself to death to do it.
You may not believe me, but it is absolutely possible to run or manage an MSP without needing daily therapy or working 100-hour work week. 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.
Out of the box, Autotask has basic functionality, but it isn’t optimized for your MSP. Any PSA worth its salt isn’t going to be cheap and is going to need configured. And this could take years.
Our experience with numerous MSPs shows that most use Autotask/Datto RMM out-of-the-box 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 actually helping MSP teams grow their business, earn raving fan clients, and take that long family vacation.
One of our programs is the Small MSP Improvement Program (SMIP). We’ve been looking at creating version 2.0 to make it more effective and more affordable. I talked about this a couple weeks ago, so I won’t go into it again, other than to say it’s prompted us to look all the way back to the core fundamentals of being an MSP.
So, a new book seemed to be in order that covered those fundamentals. And then we looked at the calendar and saw DattoCon was coming, with all those vendors hawking their shiny new tools - tools that MSP owners, already buried in tickets and Service Delivery Chaos, would buy, further distracting them from the fundamentals of MSP Service Delivery and profitability. So, we are giving you this series instead of selling you a book.
And now DattoCon is over and you likely came home with a whole bunch of new software and great ideas. So, try and focus on the ball and not be distracted by the shiny – you need an optimized PSA and all of the Service Delivery Fundamentals in place to be positioned to have a great 2025. MSPs need to start those fundamentals now – so call this pre-season training camp.
Think I’m nuts? Tony Dungy said, “It's not necessarily who has the most talent but what team sticks together and executes their fundamentals the best.” So, borrowing a phrase from Beetlejuice, “It’s showtime!”
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 the Chaos can be driven out of the work environment with a good intake process, which 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 amongst your techs. The important thing is that everyone knows who is responsible for the intake duty for each time block and every business hour has a designated Intake person.
Fundamentals – Roles and Work Types
This series began covering the Service Delivery process, starting with entering a ticket.
In week 1, I gave an overview of the Triage process. Taking a new, raw ticket, distilling it to 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 week 2, we covered the needs for an accurate Autotask database of all your Clients and their Contacts. A fundamental of Autotask, or any PSA, is having all your Clients and Contacts in the system. (If you don’t, you can watch this video on how to export what you have and send it to your clients so they can correct.)
In week 3, we not only talked about the importance of Ticket Statuses, but gave you the list that we coach our Clients to use. Status is important to maintain an accurate SLA clock in Autotask and also so that Management, Techs, and Clients all know the Status of a Ticket without having to bug the Tech. If you’re not familiar with SLA events and ITIL in Autotask, you should stop and read Week 3.
Last Week, we talked about the next thing the Tech or triage person needs to know when entering a ticket: The Priority. From our experience, the best way to identify, categorize, and guide customer requests into the right workflows is by using the Autotask Priority Field. Once the customer request is prioritized, the Support Team knows what is expected, the software can see the difference between one customer request and another, and automation can kick in and help. So, we gave away our secret sauce for dividing incidents and M/A/Cs into 11 workflows and how to enter them into Autotask.
Back to the support ticket we are entering. We started from the left side of the Autotask ticket entry window and went down. We have the Account name, the Contact, and Status (new). We then utilized our priority matrix to assign a medium priority to the ticket.
Now, here is where it can get a little different. If you noticed at the top of the ticket, there is something called a “Ticket Category. You can read about it here. This allows an Autotask admin to change the layout and options on a ticket in that category. So, while the default “Standard” category is just fine to stay in, many MSPs will adjust the ticket layout from the default section next in our ticket from “Assignment” to “Ticket Information.” Many Service Coordinators like to have “Ticket information” next, as that is what they need when entering a ticket from a client phone call.
We’re assuming you have the default layout, so we are going to skip assigning a resource and enter the Work Type next. Work Types “track and categorize time your resources spend working on tickets or projects. They are generally assigned at the ticket or task level, but resources with the required security level permissions can also modify them on individual time entries.” As the Autotask help article continues to say, “Work Types play a key role in calculating the charges for labor…They also play an important role in the billing process and reporting:” Autotask best practice is to make Work Types required for all ticket categories. TLDR – Work Types modify the role rate of your Tech to the particular situation/ticket type. Say this is an on-site and you have a minimum billing of 2 hours or a remote ticket with a minimum billing of $100. The Work Type will do this.
Before you can modify Roles with a Work Type, you need Roles. Autotask defines a Role as “a job description that determines the rate at which labor is billed.” You can read all about them here. Autotask has come along way since I started using it. Back in the days of dinosaurs, the Role was king. Then Work Types took over. If you’re “old school,” you may have a lot of Roles and a few Work Types. Current Autotask Best Practice is to set up the fewest number of Roles possible. They point out in the help article that you may be able to just have a single billing type and then use Work Types to modify it.
So, let’s navigate over to Admin > Features & Settings > Finance, Accounting & Invoicing > Roles. Make sure there is 1 Role Hourly Billing Rate for each of your Team positions. A Small MSP may just have “Technician,” while larger MSPs may add “Administration,” “Engineer,” “Project Manager,” etc. Then, add their rate. Note that if you charge $200 an hour for both a Tech and an Engineer, you don’t need separate listings. Usually, an Admin has a Role Rate of $0. Read the full AT docs here.
Great! We now have Tech Role Rates in the system that we can modify with Work Types, which will allow us to fill in that ticket blank. A caution from Autotask: before you begin setting up your Work Types, review Introduction to billing for labor.
We are going to navigate inside Autotask to Admin > Features & Settings > Finance, Accounting & Invoicing > Billing Codes.
You’ll want a Work Type for each way you bill support. This could be as few as “Managed Client Support” and “T&M Client Support” if you either include everything a MSA or bill everything. You might also have one for Administration, Remote and On-site support, one for non-billable, and one for Emergency After-hours support if you charge for that. Read the Autotask documentation for help. If you need help figuring out your billing rates and how to put them in Autotask, you can email me, or sign up for a free trial of the Service Delivery Gladiators, and post your question there or attend the Members-only calls.
Back to our ticket. Click the “Work Type” button, select the proper work type, and we’re done.
Unless you already had everything perfectly in place, you’ve just done a lot of work. Let’s take a break until next week, when I will give away a recommendation on Issue Types that some of our Clients have spent weeks, months, or even years developing.
Summary
The foundation of a successful MSP, small or large, is the fundamentals. 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 get your Roles and Work Types set up in Autotask, and come back next week as we continue with Chapter 6.
Go do it now. DattoCon is over, and you likely have a lot of shiny stuff to play with. Better hurry and develop a Triage Mindset before that new tool makes your life messier. Not enough time? No worries - drop us a line, and we can help with our Service Delivery Fundamentals Improvement program.
Talk to us: info@agmspcoaching.com
Stephen & Co
Resources:
NEW: Check out our YouTube channel
Service Delivery Gladiator’s Community: Home - The Service Delivery Gladiators (agmspcoaching.com)
Unshackled e-book: https://www.agmspcoaching.com/unshackled
(Learn how to apply the 6 keys to MSP Service Delivery Optimization)
“The Compound Effect” by Darren Hardy
“Think Ahead” by Craig Groeschel