Finding Freedom: From All Those Tickets - Automating Ticket Creation

Written By Cassidy Stier

Welcome back Autotask Warriors. I am so glad that you are here and, hopefully, working on a strong finish to 2024 and an amazing start to 2025!

While many of our Clients are getting things in place for orderly growth in 2025 and looking forward to a relaxing couple of weeks to enjoy Christmas and celebrate the New Year, we hear from so many MSPs on prospect calls, at conferences, and social media (yes, I’m on Reddit), that this is far from your world.

To those of you freaking out that it’s the end of the year and you’re working 12-hour days just to keep the train on the track - we see you. As well as those of you who have no idea how you are going to get that new employee, grow the company, pay the bills, service the Clients, and keep the Techs from revolting.

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. 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 347 open tickets is Autotask. We get it - running an MSP takes a lot. 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 must 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.

Football has training camps where they cover the basics and so do we. That’s what we have been doing the last several weeks. The basics are so you can have some breathing room and be able to move to the next level. “Next Level MSP.” I like it – sounds like a game show.

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. In Week 8, we essentially completed the hypothetical ticket our dispatcher took over the phone and in Week 9 we went over one of the best sets of Issue Types and Sub-Types I’ve seen.

All of that was a lot of work to set up.

And so worth it.

Why? Because not only will phone calls and texts be dramatically quicker and easier to accurately enter, but you can use all of that for other ways to enter a ticket. Faster and more efficient ways.

Let’s talk about email. If your techs are copying and pasting emails into tickets, they are wasting their time and your money.

You need to make sure that Client requests are actually going into Autotask. We are DONE with emails going to the owner, Techs, or a support mailbox that your staff checks occasionally. All tickets need to go into Autotask either automatically via email or Client Portal, or entered by your intake Tech or office admin from phone or chat. All tickets.

Incoming Email Processing

Let’s cover the basics of Incoming Email Processing first.

According to Autotask help page, Incoming Email Processing is, “An Autotask feature that searches the Subject line and Body text of incoming emails for special text (see Email Indicator). This text is used to create tickets and ticket time entries, and to add notes to tickets, tasks, and projects.”

Autotask recommends “that you set up at least one mailbox and redirect or forward the emails coming into your local organization's support inbox to it. Autotask will automatically convert these emails into tickets.”

Sounds pretty useful, doesn’t it? Especially if you are still using an RMM that emails you tickets.

Here’s how you setup up the two parts that MSPs fins most useful. The Autotask help page is here if you wish to follow along: About Incoming Email Processing. Note that I have recorded a video on this that you can watch here. I cover the basic setup until 8 minutes and then I talk about workflow rules and notification templates which we aren’t ready to talk about yet (unless you are an overachiever and like to skip ahead).

Here we go:

Open Autotask, go to the admin section, select the Automation tab, select “Email Notifications & Surveys” and then “Incoming Email Processing.” Click new and name the mailbox to match the email address client’s will be sending their tickets to. Many MSPs use “help@” or support@. Type the same into the “Mailbox Email” blank. Your support address will show up under the blank. Take note of that.

You can leave the defaults for the rest, but we recommend you set the minimum and maximum heights in the attachment section to 300 and check the box to include the original email and append the email header information.

Now, move to the Ticket tab and click both “enable” check boxes under General. In the Ticket Client section make sure your MSP name is listed.

For the rest, we suggest the following: Status of new, Priority: Medium, Queue: Triage, Source: email, Issue Type TBD, sub-issue type: TBC, Work Type: Remote Support or Managed Services, Ticket Category: Standard. Check the box to enable Additional Contact Handling and set your Service Coordinator and a manager to get failure notifications. Do NOT send failure or success notifications to your clients.

The last step is handled by your mail server administrator.  You will need to Redirect or forward emails that arrive in your local organization's Support inbox to the Autotask Incoming Email mailbox. The format will be mailboxname.yourdomainname@email.autotask.net. Pro Tip: Don’t use a distribution group. Use a real mailbox on the server so that if there is ever an issue, you have the original mailbox to fall back on.  DO NOT give the Autotask address to your Clients!  Also, M365 users may need to disable a default block on external email forwarding if you have a newer tenant.

So, there you have it. Emails sent in by Clients will now automatically be converted to tickets, which your triage person can then use the same skills we used putting in the phone ticket to triage and send to the best Tech for the job.

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 (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 implement email processing. Next week, we are going to build a basic workflow rule and notification Template to let that Client know you received their ticket and show you how to get their replies to that into Autotask Auto(task)magically.

 

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 or Datto RMM 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: 

 

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