If you don’t want to have the agents answer out of a queue, simply remove the empty answer off that queue. No answer – no mail. You could as well fiddle around with ACLs and stuff, but I guess this would be the simplest opion. Move them into 2^nd level queues and back when solved.

I had a system running where we used the split option. This was practical for a scenario where the customer never had to be informed about the outcome of a 2^nd level task. 1^st level took care about the customer – 2^nd level solved the reported bug/error.

Greets

Daniel

Von: otrs-bounces@otrs.org [mailto:otrs-bounces@otrs.org] Im Auftrag von Christian Weiß
Gesendet: Freitag, 16. Januar 2009 09:13
An: otrs@otrs.org
Betreff: [otrs] how to handle internal tickets? 2nd level may not communicate with end customers?

Hello,

we are using OTRS for the communication with our end customers (Helpdesk = 1st Level Support) as well as for our internal communications (“Accounting”, “Websites”, … = 2nd Level Support).

Consider the following scenario:

-       An end customer sends a request to our „Helpdesk“. (Example: “I get an error XYZ on the web page”)

-       The helpdesk agent cannot answer this request and has to pass this problem to the 2nd Level Queue “Websites”.

-       The “Websites” agent is not allowed to communicate directly to the end customer! He may only answer back to the “Helpdesk” agent.

-       So the “Websites” agent reports to the helpdesk agent when the problem is marked as solved

-       The helpdesk agent sends an info to the end customer

So this is my question:

How can I setup the OTRS system in a way, that only 1^st level support agents are allowed to communicate with end customers. If there’s a need for escalation to 2^nd level support, the agent from this queue must not communicate directly with the end customer. He may only communicate with the 1^st level support agent.

I tried following approaches:

1.) Move tickets

=========================

The helpdesk agent “moves” the ticket to the 2^nd level queue and attaches a note with additional infos. The 2^nd level agent answers to the 1^st level by moving the ticket back to the 1^st level queue and attaching a note.

Positive:

all the communication is in one ticket.

Negative:

if the 2^nd level agent (unintentionally) clicks on “Answer”, he communicates with the end customer. But this must not happen!

Also, you can’t clearly see in the ticket, which notes were written by 1st level and which by 2nd level.

2.) Split tickets

=========================

The helpdesk agent “splits” the ticket and sets his own personal email address as “sender”. he selects the 2^nd level queue as target queue and modifies the body. The 2^nd level now gets a new ticket and communicate only with the helpdesk agent.

Positive:

2nd level is not able to communicate with end customers.

Negative:

The 1^st level agent sees the ticket as a child ticket in his 1^st level ticket. But he is not allowed to see the details of the ticket, unless I give the helpdesk complete read access to the 2^nd level.

The 1^st level agent has to communicate with the 2^nd level through his mail client because he set his own email address as sender. So the helpdesk has to use two different systems (otrs and personal mail account)

1^st level agent has to manually change the sender-address in the “split ticket view”. If he forgets this, the end customer is set as the sender of the new ticket.

And some other annoying problems.

I’m not happy with both approaches. (neither is my boss *g*) How do you handle this scenario? Thanks for any hints and tricks!

With best regards,
Christian Weiss