OSTicket Help
OSTicket is the Marketing and Communications main ticketing system. It allows us to, both manually and automatically, create and track assignable tasks.
OSTicket Agent URL: https://www.plu.edu/osticket/scp/
OSTicket Client URL: https://www.plu.edu/osticket/
We are currently not using the “Client” portion of OSTicket, because we are using Form Assembly to create new tickets.
Related help:
This page lists all the open tickets that are available to you.
When you click on one of the tickets, you will be taken to its main page. From here you can edit the ticket, add information to the ticket, reassign the ticket to another user, ask the submitter for more information or close the ticket once it has been completed.
You can easily assign an unassigned ticket to yourself.
Ticket assignment can be passed back and forth many times. When you have taken a ticket as far as you can, you can pass it to the next person to complete their part.
You can ask the user for more information.
When the user replies, OSTicket should notify you via email. The reply will also be stored in the ticket. Keeping all communication inside of OSTicket is a good way to make sure that we retain all of the information necessary to complete the task correctly. It also allows for other people to jump in and when the ticket owner is unavailable.
Posting internal notes are a great way to add additional information to the ticket, keep track of ticket progress, discuss the ticket internally and keep all files and documents pertinent to the ticket together.
You can use the OSTickets WYSIWYG (What You See Is What You Get) editor to add images.
You can also attach files to internal notes.
You can edit various parts of a ticket. This might include the name/description, the priority or due date.
OSTicket has both a simple and advanced search.
Advanced search allows you to search on several different criteria at the same time.
If an advanced search is successful, click on the “view” link to see the results. The results of advanced searches are cached/stored by OSTicket so that means you cannot save/bookmark advanced searches because you will end up with old results.
Manually creating new tickets is easy!
You can create tickets on behalf of outside clients or yourself.
The required fields for new tickets are:
Help Topic – What kind of ticket is this.
Issue Summary – A nice name for this ticket.
Issue Details – A thorough description of this task/problem.
When all the work has been completed, its time to finish out the ticket.
General
OSTicket – A free and open-source ticketing system.
Ticketing System – A system for the management and tracking of tickets.
Tickets – A useful grouping of data that pertain to a specific task or problem that must be completed or solved. They group and track important information so that the required data needed to finish a job doesn’t, necessarily, have to be scattered to the four winds.
Agents – The folks (in the system) who work on the tickets.
Clients – Users (potentially outside the system) whom tickets are initiated for.
Department – Part of the organizational hierarchy. For us this includes groups like the web team, design team and customer service.
Teams – A grouping of agents. Currently we are more reliant on departments for the various automated rule based assignments and workflows. However, if we need more flexibility in the future, we could take more advantage of these groups.
Agent Panel – A dashboard for the agents in the system that allows for the management of their tickets.
Ticket Properties
Ticket Source – We are not currently using this, but it is a required field in OSTicket. This would apply more if OSTicket was open to the general public to access and create new tickets. We could create some new sources like “Form Assembly” or “Internal” but, for the time being, the default value for this is fine.
SLA Plan – Service Level Agreement. We can set up relative deadlines and expected timelines. For instance, we can say that one type of ticket is considered to be overdue if it takes more than 48 hours to complete. Then, after 48 hours, OSTicket will start to send notifications letting folks know. Currently we do not set any SLAs by default.
Due Date – An explicit deadline for a specific date.
Assign To – The agent or team that a ticket is assigned to. This could be the person doing the actual work, or it could be the point person for the project. Different styles might work better for different groups and different tasks. Future releases of OSTicket will include a feature that will allow you to create tasks within a ticket and assign those tasks to the person responsible for that part of the work.
Issue Summary – A concise, fairly unique and descriptive name for the ticket.
Issue Details – Description of the ticket. The more detail the better. OSTicket provides a WYSIWYG (What You See Is What You Get) editor, so these descriptions can include formatting, images, hyperlinks and so forth. You can also attach files to the ticket near the Issue Details area.
Priority Level – How important this ticket is and how quickly it needs to be completed. Emergency, High, Normal, Low. Most tickets can be left with the default normal.
Ticket Status – The current status of this ticket. Currently tickets can either be Open, Resolved or Closed. Open means that it has not been completed yet. Resolved is typically the one we want to use for when we have successfully completed a ticket. Closed is also used for denoting that a ticket is finished, but can be used to imply that it could be more of a “wont fix” kind of resolution.
Tickets by Due Date
Tickets appear on their due date.
Different text colors denote different priorities.
Example of a Simple Ticket Form
We can create a simplified version of the new ticket form.
This example just has:
- Title -> Ticket subject
- Description -> Ticket summary
- File Upload -> An attached file
- Assign to -> Initial assigned agent
Simple ticket has been created and assigned.
Attached file image has been embedded and linked in ticket summary.
Upload the image.
Click on the image and click “Annotate.”
Annotation has different types of objects/shapes you can add.
Add some shapes.
Post the reply (goes to submitter and collaborators) or internal note.
Annotated image in the ticket thread.
Team View
You can view all team members at one time.
Staff members are sorted alphabetically.
Tickets are sorted by priority.
Ticket colors denote ticket priority.
You can switch the view to a vertical list by clicking the “List View” checkbox.
