Finding Freedom: Provided by Our Heroes

Nov 15

Did you thank a Veteran?

Hello Autotask User Community. Welcome Back!

For those of you new to this little place I sometimes call Mr. Buyze’s Neighborhood, I call Autotask users Warriors, and those of you in our Service Delivery Community, Gladiators.

Why? Because day in and day out, you Owners, Ops Managers, Service Managers, Service Coordinators, Techs, and even sales folks are fighting the good fight and winning (hopefully) battles using the Autotask software.

Speaking of battles, Monday we paused to honor the brave men and women of the United States military who have selflessly served our nation. Their dedication, courage, and sacrifice have safeguarded our freedoms and upheld the values we hold dear. We owe you a debt of gratitude that can never be fully repaid. Those of us at Advanced Global extend our heartfelt thanks to all Veterans. We honor your commitment and the countless sacrifices you and your families have made. May we always remember and appreciate the heroes among us.

Heroes come in many shapes and sizes. Running an MSP takes a lot. If you don’t make the time to keep up, 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 actually helping the MSP team grow the business, earn raving fan clients, and being able to take that long family vacation or off the grid weekend.

So this series is about literally running an MSP Fundamentals Boot Camp series right here. Why, when we could do this for $5000 in weekly online training? 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. This may be the only time we give it away, but this series is all about helping the MSP community. By the way, If you’re feeling burned out, please read this. You’re no good to anyone if you’re not healthy.

Let’s get going. Of course, DattoCon and CMIT are now over and you’ve likely ended up with a whole bunch of new software and great ideas. So maybe, you’ll look at your Autotask next year….when you have some time. No! You need to stay focused 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.

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. 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 amongst your techs. The important thing is that everyone knows who has the intake duty for that time block and that is on the schedule. And that every business hour has a designated Intake person.

Fundamentals – Ticket 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 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 to send 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.

In Week 4, 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. So, we gave away our secret sauce for dividing incidents and MACs into 11 workflows and how to enter them into Autotask.

In Week 5 we learned how to use Work Types which “track and categorize time your resources spend working on tickets or projects.” 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.

Last week we talked about Estimated Hours and Queues. Autotask queues, “bring together tickets that have something in common, and resources who are assigned to monitor the queue and resolve the tickets placed into it. They are an essential ticket management feature.”  

The Support Ticket

Now, back to the support ticket we’ve been 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 and then assigned the Work Type. We put in 30 minutes for an estimated time and add it to the Triage Queue.

Now what? Well, we next would be entering our Ticket Type.

However, we interrupt this blog post to circle back on the Ticket Category which many MSPs want to know about. The Ticket Category is located at the top of the ticket right next to Ticket Type. You can read about it in Autotask’s documentation 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.  

Buy why? And how?

The sole reason for creating Ticket Categories was to provide different views for different folks.  For myself, coming from a project coordination perspective, the fields used by Break/Fix are meaningless to me, and the fields I needed most were either buried at the bottom of the ticket or non-existent.  For example, Issue and Sub-Issue are critical for Incidents, but meaningless for Projects.  What’s critical for Projects is a link to the Opportunity, which is meaningless to reactive work.  And the list goes on and on. 

But the different views for different folks doesn’t end there.  Moves/Adds/Changes may need a different view if over 4 estimated hours. Also, monitoring alerts, preventative maintenance, procurement, and sales if you use tickets to track sales. 

I used to think having a different view at each stage of the Client journey would be an advantage.  Such as Triage, Level I, II & III support and QC.  But having different views is more closely aligned with which of the 11 MSP procedural workflows the Client requests are in than where the ticket is in the MSP engagement process.

7 Steps for a Collaborative Ticket Category Creation Meeting

It takes a collaboration process, and a meeting devoted just to Ticket Category creation, to know what’s right for any one MSP Service Delivery process.  Here are the steps to take in a collaborative Ticket Category creation meeting:

Have someone with System Administrator rights project their laptop to a big screen
Log into the Admin module, and navigate to the Service Desk -> Ticket Categories
Copy the Standard Ticket Category
Rename the Ticket Category to map to the corresponding workflow (Incident & small Service Requests, IMACS > 4hours, Projects, Preventative Maintenance, Procurement, Sales etc.)
Go through the General, Detail, and Insight tabs and discuss
1. Which fields are not used, and hide them
2. Which fields are used a little, move them to the bottom, if they’re a moveable field
3. Which fields used 1st, 2nd, 3rd, etc. and order them accordingly
Review the hidden fields to determine if any are needed
1. If so, move them into the visible area
2. And place them where needed in the engagement process workflow
Save, and check back in a week for improvement, consensus, and adaptation

Note: Be sure to stay on the workflow topic.  So many times, when Advanced Global is leading these discussions, someone will bring up needing a field when they are doing work in some other workflow.  Whoever is leading the discussion must be vigilant to remind everyone that the question applies to a different workflow. 

Since releasing the Ticket Category, Autotask has floated the idea of using the Ticket Category as a third-level Issue and Sub-Issue.  I'd argue there’s some merit to this idea.  In leveraging The Tech Tribe's recommended Issue and Sub-Issue list, which is based on a MSPs technology stack, it looks like this:

Ticket Category – Workflow
Issue – Family of Devices
Sub-Issue – Device

Once again, the Ticket Category follows the workflow.  By making the Sub-Issue level follow the Technology Stack Devices, the devices can come and go as the Industry, Technology, and MSP change, without needing a total Ticket Category and Issue level refresh.

There are 3 ways to update/change the Ticket Category field in an existing ticket:

Manually (best done when the tickets in Triage)
Workflow Rules (WFRs) based on fields modified in Triage
1. Assigned Resource
2. Queue
3. Issue/Sub-Issue
Specified within profile defaults

As a Project Coordinator, most of the tickets I created were for projects. I may have triaged thousands of tickets, but very seldom did I work the phones.  Most of my Triage coverage was picking up from the Incoming Email Processing.  So, for me, it was best to have my default Ticket Category set up in my profile as a Project Ticket Category.  As you can see, Ticket Category usage depends on the individual, team and MSP.  We’re grateful Autotask has the flexibility to accommodate all our unique situations!

While manually setting the Ticket Category is probably the best, we at Advanced Global detest manual processes when they can be automated.  To whom the ticket is assigned almost always requires critical thought during the Triage process, which means it can’t be automated.  Many have tried to automate the assignment of tickets, but we’re unaware of a viable MSP process that every MSP could use.  We don’t advocate the use of queues and opt instead for use of dashboards and widgets over queues – so using the queue field to automate the Ticket Category selection just doesn’t work in an Advanced Global world.

A combination of assigned resources and status should work. 

Summary

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

Ther 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 have a Ticket Category Creation meeting and see if Ticket Categories are for you. Then come back next week as we continue with Chapter 8 and talk Ticket Types.

Better hurry and develop a Triage Mindset before that next new tool shows up on the credit card. Those DattoCon/CMIT vendors are going to be calling. Not enough time? No worries - drop us a line, and we can help with our Service Delivery Fundamentals Improvement program or Small MSP Improvement Program.

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

And please, whether you are in the US, UK, Australia, New Zealand, or another country Advanced Global serves, go thank a Veteran.

Stephen & Co

Resources: 