PerlBill Manual

Logging In

To log into the staff area the administrator must have created a staff login in the help desk section of the perlbill admin area. The username and password is defined by the administrator - passwords can be updated in the profile section of the staff area after succssful login.

Call Listing Overview

At the top you can specify whether to view Unresolved or Resolved requests, the tickets listed will only be those which are within your access criteria defined by the administrator. Resolved Requests will only display calls closed by you personally.

Each Ticket row will have an icon indicating the submission method, this is how the client logged the call into the system and can be one of three methods: Help Desk, E-mail Submission or Staff Call-Center. A legend indicating which is which is presented at the bottom of this page.

Managing Tickets

In the staff area you can conrtrol the flow of tickets in your company or departments. This includes changing the status of a ticket, responding and resolving and assigning tickets to other areas or personnel.

To manage the status and responses of a ticket click the respond button at the bottom of the view ticket pages. This will display a section where all administrative tasks can be carried out on the ticket.

Deleting Tickets

Tickets can be deleted by clicking the remove link at the top of a view ticket page, this only applies if the administrator has enabled the staff deletion access.

Responding to a ticket

Please see 'Managing Tickets' above

Contacting a User

When viewing a ticket logged by a user within the system there will be a user profile icon under the submission information, simply click this icon to be taken to the users contact details.

Notifications

A vital part of the help desk is the staff notification system, in your staff profile you have the ability to receive notifications when a new ticket is logged in your department. This is especially usefull if you are not constantly logged into your help desk.

Open A New Request

Staff members can log tickets through the staff area, to do this simply click the link at the bottom of the staff area. Calls logged from the staff area will be represented with a phone icon.

Logging a request through the staff area is essentially the same process as an end-user would go through, with the added ability of being able to log tickets on behalf of users and specify contact information.

Assigning a Request Internally

If a ticket is incorrectly assigned to a department or needs to be transferred to an alternate department you can do so from the staff area. When viewing a ticket simply click the 'Assign Internal' link - you will then be presented with the assign screen where you can specify the department and/or the staff member you are assigning the request to.

After a ticket has been assigned the ticket will be moved to that department, if you do not have access to that department you will no longer receive update or response notifications for that ticket unless it is assigned back to you.

Knowledge Base Management

A time saving implementation in the user area is a knowledge base, this is where you can outline common problems/solutions that you deal with to reduce the volume of incoming tickets. You will often here the Knowledge Based referred to as KB throughout PerlBill.

The Knowledge Base management screen can be accessed from the bottom of the staff area, simply click the link - you will then be taken to the KB Staff page where you can add/edit/remove knowledge base departments and articles.

You can also create a KB article when closing a support ticket, to do this, click 'Add To KB' when closing a ticket - you may then modify the ticket (if neccesary, to exclude private information) and add it to the Knowledge Base where other clients can read it.