Introduction

The Internal Tickets module helps the employees of your organization raise their issues and requests quickly. 

Employees can submit their requests and route them to the concerned departments with just a few clicks. This eliminates the need for a dedicated helpdesk. You can configure specialized SLAs based on the urgency of issues so that the employees are served on time. 
 

Feature Availability

Important Fields in Internal Tickets

Creating an Internal Ticket

You can create an internal ticket in three ways:

• From the Internal Tickets module
• From the Employee Portal
• Using Quick Create

From the internal tickets module

Vtiger provides you with two options:

• Create an internal ticket in the CRM
• Create an internal ticket in the CRM and send an email to the employee’s email address

Follow these steps to create an internal ticket:

1. Log in to your CRM account.
2. Click the Main Menu.
3. Go to Service Desk.
4. Click Internal Tickets. 
   • You will land on the List View of Internal Tickets.
5. Click +Add Internal Ticket. 
6. Click one of these tabs on the top: 
   • Add Internal Ticket - Create an internal ticket in the CRM 
   • Send Email - Create an internal ticket in the CRM and send an email to 

Add Internal Ticket

1. Enter the mandatory details.
2. Click View full form to fill out all the fields.
3. Click Save.

Send Email

1. Enter the employee’s email address in To address.
2. Enter the internal ticket title as the email subject.
3. Set the internal ticket Status.
4. Describe the issue in the email body.
5. Set the Priority of the issue - Urgent, High, Medium, or Low.
6. Click Add Internal Ticket and Send Email.

From the employee portal

The employee portal helps your employees raise an internal ticket easily and track its updates. This avoids the need for back and forth emails to report an issue and get it resolved.

While adding an employee, you must enable the Portal Employee checkbox to access the employee portal. 

Follow these steps to enable access to the employee portal:

1. Log in to your CRM account.
2. Click the Main Menu.
3. Go to Service Desk.
4. Click Employees.
5. Open an employee record.
6. Go to the Details tab on the right sidebar.
7. Look for the Portal Employee checkbox and enable it.
8. Press Enter.

The employee gets their portal credentials on the email address added as Primary Email in their user record.

To learn about configuring the employee portal, click here.

To learn about using the employee portal, click here.

Using quick create

With Quick Create, you can create records quickly by filling out only the necessary details. You can access this feature from any screen, which saves you a lot of time.

Follow these steps to create an internal ticket using Quick Create:

1. Log in to your CRM account.
2. Click the + icon located on the top of your CRM screen.
3. Click Show all to view all the modules you can create records in using Quick Create.
4. Search for Internal Ticket using the search bar.
5. Enter all the mandatory details.
6. Click Save.

To know more about Quick Create, click here.

Creating Internal Tickets via Mailroom

When an employee raises an issue via email, you can create an internal ticket from the email using Mailroom.If the employee's email address matches the employee record’s email address, then Vtiger links the internal ticket to the employee record.

For example, if you have an email address, say [email protected], that your employees use to raise complaints, you must set up auto-forwarding on the email address. You must then set up a mailroom rule to create internal tickets using emails that come into [email protected].

Follow these steps to set up a mailroom rule to create internal tickets:

1. Log in to your CRM account.
2. Click the Main Menu.
3. Click the Settings button.
   • You can access the Settings page only if you are an Admin user.
4. Select Mailroom under Automation.
5. Click See Default Actions.
6. Click Proceed to Actions.
   • You will perform steps 5 and 6 only when you are setting up mailroom for the first time.
7. Click +Add New Action.
8. Fill out the following details:

• Criteria - It defines when an internal ticket record must be created. For example, consider that helpdesk@vtgr.com is the contact email of your employee grievance cell. You can set up the criteria as ‘If Email Recipient contains helpdesk@vtgr.com’, Then, Mailroom creates internal ticket records from the emails that are sent to this email address.

• Action - It defines what must be done when the criteria set up in the previous step is true. 
  1. Select Create/Update Internal Tickets.
  2. Check Create Employee as well if you want to create an employee record using the details in the email. (This step is optional)
  3. Assign the internal ticket to a group/team using Assign to Group.
  4. Assign the internal ticket to an individual (who is a CRM user) using Assign to User.
  5. Assign an SLA to the internal ticket using Assign to SLA.
  6. Enable Autofill values from Email body to map the text in the email body to CRM fields. 
  7. Choose a delimiter. For example, if the email body contains ‘Issue: I received a damaged laptop, then, the ‘issue’ is copied to the Summary field in Internal Tickets. In this case, ‘:’ (colon) is the delimiter.
  8. Enter a sample email body. For example, if you enter ‘Issue: I received a damaged laptop.
  9. Click Click here to find values from email body.
  10. Map the values entered the email body to CRM fields. For example, you can map ‘Issue’ to the Summary field and email subject to the Internal Ticket Title field.

9. Click Save.

Your Mailroom will be configured after performing the steps above. You must then set up auto-forwarding in your email client.

Setting up auto-forwarding

When you set up auto-forwarding in your email client, any email received in your email client will be forwarded to the mailroom. 

If you consider the example of the employee grievance cell takenpreviously, then you must set up auto-forwarding for the email address helpdesk@grasspods.com.

Follow these steps to set up auto-forwarding in Gmail:

1. Log in to the Gmail account that you have set up as a mailbox in Vtiger CRM.
2. Go to your Gmail.
3. Click the settings icon located on the top right.
4. Select Settings.
5. Click the Forwarding and Pop/IMAP tab.
6. Click the Add a Forwarding Address button under the Forwarding section.
7. Enter your mailroom address in the textbox. You can find your mailroom address above the mailroom rules under Settings > Automation > Mailroom.
8. Click Next > Proceed > OK. A verification email will be sent to the mailroom (Settings > Automation > Mailroom). 
9. Click the verification in the email and click Confirm.
10. Go back to Settings in Gmail.
11. Select Forward a copy of incoming mail to and select the forwarding address (vtiger mailroom address) and fill out other details.
12. Click Save Changes.

To stop auto-forwarding your emails, select Disable Forwarding in the Forwarding section.

To learn more about auto-forwarding, click here.

SLAs for Internal Tickets

For example, the internal SLA policy in an organization may state that infrastructure-related issues must be resolved within one week and pay-related issues within two days. 

To learn more about SLA Policies in Vtiger CRM, click here.
 

Assigning an SLA to an internal ticket

The SLA Name field in internal tickets allows you to pick an SLA and assign it to an internal ticket.

Follow these steps to assign an SLA for an internal ticket:

1. Log in to your CRM account.
2. Click the Main Menu.
3. Go to Service Desk.
4. Click Internal Tickets.
5. Open an internal ticket.
6. Go to the Details tab on the right sidebar.
   • You can view all the SLA details under the SLA Information section in the Details tab.
7. Look for the SLA Name field.
8. Enter an SLA in the SLA Name field.
9. Press Enter.

SLA Information block 

The SLA Information block has all the details about the SLA policy that an internal ticket adheres to.

Receiving Notifications about Internal Tickets

When you create an internal ticket and want to receive notifications whenever there is an update on it, you can enable or set up alerts under Actions.

Follow these steps to enable alerts on internal tickets:

1. Log in to your CRM account.
2. Click the Main Menu.
3. Go to Essentials.
4. Click Actions.
5. Click the Configuration icon on the top-right corner of the page.
6. Click +Add Rule.
7. Choose Activity Alerts or Smart alerts from the Select Alert drop-down.
8. Select Internal Tickets from the Module drop-down.
9. Set up the conditions for receiving alerts. For example, you may want to receive an alert when the status of the internal ticket changes.
10. Click Save.

You will receive alerts about internal tickets based on the conditions that you set up.
 

Timelogs for Internal Tickets

Timelogs allow you to track the time spent on an internal ticket. All timelogs related to an internal ticket are shown under the Timelogs tab on the right sidebar.

To view all your timelogs or create a new timelog, go to Main Menu > Projects > Timelogs.
 

Creating a timelog for an internal ticket

Follow these steps to create a timelog for an internal ticket:

1. Log in to your CRM account.
2. Click the Main Menu.
3. Go to Service Desk.
4. Select Internal Tickets.
5. Open an internal ticket.
6. Click the One View tab on the right sidebar.  
7. Click the Start timer icon in the Timelog block. 

A timelog starts, and the timelog record gets created in Working state for the internal ticket. You can view it under the Timelogs tab on the right sidebar.

Using timelogs

Here are simple steps to guide you on how creating, pausing, and stopping a timelog on an internal ticket:

1. To start a timer, go to the internal ticket’s One View tab and click the Start timer icon in the Timelog block. You can see the timer running on top of your CRM screen.

2. You can pause or stop the timer in two ways:
   • By clicking the timer on top of your CRM screen
   • By clicking the Pause timer icon under the internal ticket’s One View tab 

3. You can resume the timer from the top of your CRM screen or from the One View tab in the internal ticket record, the same way as you pause the timer. 

4. The total time spent on an internal ticket is available in the internal ticket’s One View tab. The total time is calculated by adding the values of all the timelogs in Paused and Completed states, created on the internal ticket.

Workflows for Internal Tickets

Workflows help automate tasks in a module. Vtiger CRM has two default workflows set up on the Internal Tickets module.

1. Update Internal Ticket status to Closed: This workflow closes an internal ticket if it was resolved more than 15 days ago. 
2. Default Satisfaction Survey: This workflow sends a survey email to an employee when their internal ticket is resolved. The email intends to take the employee’s feedback on the resolution.

To learn more about workflows, click here.