Implementation concept for support center

[ArielRauch]

Hi,
I am new to OTRS. I am running a service center providing different customers maintenance and availability services for their IT infrastructure (including application level).
For that purpose I installed OTRS:ITSM. My approach for the different entities is as follows:
I have thought of the following concept:
1. the company is my customerid.
2. The companies' employees are my customers (OTRS language)
3. For each company I create a group with the name of the company
4. For each company I create a queue with the name of the company (the concept may be extended to sub-queue per company)
5. For each company I create specific services according to their infrastructure/application environment (mail, active directory, time system, and so on)
6. Those services are now connected directly to each customer of the company (I know this is not elegant)
7. Now I am defining SLAs according to my companies offering (Platinium, Gold, Silver) with differnt response times.
8. The last step is to connect services to the relevant SLA.

What do you think - does it make sense?

For this concept to be complete I need a way to pre-set queue (=customerid) and SLA for each customer opened ticket.

Thanks

Ariel

[crythias]

Hi,
I am new to OTRS. I am running a service center providing different customers maintenance and availability services for their IT infrastructure (including application level).
For that purpose I installed OTRS:ITSM. My approach for the different entities is as follows:
I have thought of the following concept:
1. the company is my customerid.

yes

2. The companies' employees are my customers (OTRS language)

yes

3. For each company I create a group with the name of the company

you don't need to do this, but you can.

4. For each company I create a queue with the name of the company (the concept may be extended to sub-queue per company)

Usually, you'll create a queue for the type of work an agent is able to do, not so much whom he'll provide service for. Queues never disappear, so a per company queue isn't usually relevant to OTRS, and *usually* isn't relevant to the customer side. That isn't to say that you won't want to restrict queues that a customer can see, but queues are group specific, not customer specific.

5. For each company I create specific services according to their infrastructure/application environment (mail, active directory, time system, and so on)

services are tied to customers (individuals) unfortunately.

6. Those services are now connected directly to each customer of the company (I know this is not elegant)

correct.

7. Now I am defining SLAs according to my companies offering (Platinium, Gold, Silver) with differnt response times.

each sla gets tied to a service.

8. The last step is to connect services to the relevant SLA.

yes

What do you think - does it make sense?

For this concept to be complete I need a way to pre-set queue (=customerid) and SLA for each customer opened ticket.

SLA assignment might be tricky, but queue assignment can be based on several different methods, including the email address you give for the customer to send tickets.

[ArielRauch]

I appreciate the time you give me very much!!!

I am using queue per group per customer in order to differentiate between the different customers and their specific treatment. The permission system of OTRS also suports this. Nevertheless, I will spend some more thoughts on it.

Thanks you very much.

Ariel

[ArielRauch]

Hi,
After spending some more thoughts on it I would like to make some changes to the concept.
My service center is built of three tiers which seem to be perfectly suitable for the queue concept (Queue per Tier). Now for each customer there is one so-called account manager who should be able to see all the tickets that are opened and treated for the customers he is responsible for.

Is there a way to convince the permission model to implement this?

Thanks

Ariel

[crythias]

by default, agents are configured to handle queues by way of group membership. Customers can be restricted to certain queues by way of group membership.

There have been discussions in the forums about restricting agents to customers, but the open source version of OTRS may not implement it as you desire.

Can you restrict customers to certain queues? Yes: http://forums.otrs.org/viewtopic.php?f=60&t=7138

[ArielRauch]

Thank you.
I will try to get along without it.


Ariel

[ferrosti]

crythias is giving good hints, but I disagree in one point: In a scenario of this size you should not set agents permissions on groups/queues, but agents on roles and roles on groups/queues. In case you have 30 queues and many agents you´d have to set every agents permission on every single queue. This is why you should work with roles. Think of roles like 'working permissions' on groups.

One way to go would be to filter all incoming mail to their own company queue. Have a roles for mail dispatch for your account managers, who will pass all mails to 2nd / 3rd level support queues.

[crythias]

Thanks, ferrosti. I agree with you on that. Here's a good post about roles and groups: http://forums.otrs.org/viewtopic.php?f=53&t=6357