The inability for a user to be a member of more than one skill group is a severe limitation on the effective management of a multi customer multi skill team.  The requirement for the queue manager to be a member of the skill group and being limited to being a member of only one skill group means that I cannot have service level managers managing multiple queues. 

When setting up a user I would like to be able to select which skill groups they are members of to provide flexibility in the management of teams.

Hi John, thanks for the suggestion.

Staff belonging to multiple skillgroups is a popular idea. Currently HelpMaster Pro only allows staff members to belong to one skillgroup, and the current architecture of HelpMaster Pro has been designed around this premise, so changing it would be an involved task. I would be very interested to hear how other people feel about this, and hear any ideas about how you might see such a feature implemented in HelpMaster Pro.

Here's some initial thoughts on having staff belonging to multiple skillgroups.

1. Currently HMP tracks the Skillgroup that a staff member belongs to whenever they log a job, close a job or simple action a job. If the staff member belongs to multiple skillgroups, then we lose the precision on which "Skillgroup" did the work. This affects the Field Chooser columns, reporting, the Job Finder etc.

2. The Helpdesk Explorer may get a little crowded if you expand the Skillgroups section. You would see the same staff member appear under each skillgroup in which they belong. I guess that the point really. Not really a big issue here.

3. Belonging to multiple skillgroups would give visibility into a much wider range of jobs. Currently you can limit the visibility of a staff member to only the skillgroup to which they belong. If staff belong to multiple skillgroups, then they'll be able to see a lot more.

I'm wondering if visibility of jobs is the main issue here, or is it something else? Anyone else?

Best regards,

Rod

Today I tried to solve a problem using a new skillgroup, here's what I found...

We recently implemented a new email filtering system, and asked our clients to forward any spam emails not blocked to our IT inbox, duly sucked up by HMP e-mail manager, so we can do some tuning/analysis. We expected an early rise in the number of jobs this generates, and our clients do not expect a response to these jobs, only for the volume of spam to decrease!

We currently have one skill group set up, and the jobs land in the unassigned bucked. We want to ship these jobs somewhere so they can be trawled in a group fashion. For example selecting a whole bunch of jobs and doing an add-action to them all, nicely shipping them out of unassigned, trawled for clues, then closed. I wanted to avoid each staff member acknowledging and assigning to themselves, hoping it would be easier to manage. Could use job searching or reporting based on the job issue to do this, but each job would need to be actioned individually, and didn't seem neat, some thoughts around this at the end.

Tried a fake skill group first:
Set up a new skill group [name of new system], created an action-template that would assign them to the skill group. On the desktop system under the 'option' in helpdesk explorer, added the option to view the new skill group. The jobs are there in the the new skill group under 'open jobs' but so are all the other open jobs from the other skill group. Could toggle the skill groups under options, but not really ideal. 

Scrapped the fake skill group, and created a new staff member in our original skill group: 
Simple really, new staff member with a name of the new system, created an aciton-template that assignes the jobs to the staff member, everone can have a look at the jobs under the other people pane. Allows us to see per day how many emails have been sent by clients. This is what we're using..

Quickest fix I know of, any ideas?

Also prompted me to think if there is a way to bulk assign a job to an issue, as ours are initially set to a standard code 'unallocated' we set up for jobs that the HMP email filter isn't going to try and work out what type of issue it is. I'd like to be able to do that during the action-template we're using to move to the fake staff member.

Hi Peter,

Thanks for the post.  Sounds like you're really workin' the system.  Spam control is a worthy endevour, and a really great use of the Email Manager.

The "fake staff member" is one good approach.  It offers separation, visibility and good for reporting.  It also allows you to control who can see the queue, by the fact that this person must also belong to a skillgroup, which in turn has visibility rights.  There are many clients using HelpMaster Pro that also use the "fake staff member" to isolate job queues and control visibility.  We use it here ourselves extensively.

I think you've hit upon one of the best solutions.  An alternative may be to create "Saved searches" to expose the jobs in this category.

In order to make this effective, you will need to do the following:

1. You'll need to a way to uniquely identify these jobs.  You could do this via
   • Job type code
   • Issue code
   • Who they are assigned to (your current implementation)
   • Keywords
   • Custom code
   • Client that they are logged by
2. Set up a "Saved search" that will target these jobs
3. Get each person to also use this saved search.

A benefit of having some sort of unique identifier is that you can then use this identifier in Priority Manager profiles.  You can use the Priority Manager to "look for" jobs that match a particular criteria and then do something with them.  The Priority Manager can execute custom SQL, which can be used to bulk re-classify jobs to another code (or reassign, action etc).

One of the ideas we've come up with as a future feature would be to have the action screen be able to do more to the underlying job upon completion.  One possibility would be to execute a custom script - either VB script or SQL, or possibly some sort of "HelpMaster Pro script".  This script could be written so that it will do anything to a job, or possibly other entities whenever the action is completed.  Thus, when you use an action template of a particular sort, it may be configured to do the following:

1. Reassign the job
2. Change the status
3. Add notes
4. Update custom fields on the job
5. Change the Issue classification of the job
6. ...or anything else a script or SQL can do

Is this getting close to what you have in mind?

A while ago I posted some information about bulk re-classifying jobs via SQL.  Check it out here.

http://www.helpmasterpro.com/Commun...fault.aspx

Let us know how you go.

Best regards,

Rod

Tried to bulk update the job issue using sql, all looked good until every job has been update, even though I checked using the helpdesk job finder that the correct jobs would be updated. Perhaps I missed somthing.

In light I think the feature to update issue in bulk as an option in the Priority Manager would be good!

Hi Rod,

Ah yes, step 1 read the manual!  I didn't use: Where tblHelpdeskJobs.PKID = <>

I took on face value the meaning of wording under: Priority schedule > Actions to perform: "Execute this SQL, for each job found", presumed it would use the update sql on jobs retrieved in the 'Priority definition', not all jobs retrieved by the sql.

So to be sure, if I entered: update tblhelpdeskjobs set issuelink = 456 where tblHelpdeskJobs.PKID = <> I'd be dandy, it'll use the job tag to associate with what is retireved on the priority definition.

Peter, Rod

Although the discussion thus far is interfesting I do not believe that it addreses the original problem.  For security reasons we have to have separation between skill groups, that is we do not want members of certain skill groups, ie subcontractors, to be able to see jobs other than those aloocated to them.  However we then have queue managers that manage multiple queues over multiple skill gropus.  What I need to be able to do is to have a queue manager belong to a set of skill groups so they can manage the queues.  Ideally when I set up a resolver I would like to be able to select what skill groups they belong to.

Regards

John

Posted By Rod Weir on 13 Jan 2009 10:15 PM
please let us know the good, the bad and the ugly side of how they may have implemented multiple skillgroup functionality.

Scotty :)

Hope we havent missed the boat on this.

We are definitely interested in being able to have users be a member of multiple skill groups. A couple of features we would really like to fit in nicely with this are:

1. When restricting users to be able to view only their own queue or only their skillgroup's, allow them to also see their own jobs that they have logged that are assigned to other skillgroups/staff. I guess we are being difficult in that we dont just use our helpdesk for IT support. We also use it for tracking customer feedback etc which means our clients need access into the helpdesk. If we restrict their access so they only see their own skill group and they log a job for IT because their PC dies they cant log in and see the status of their own job or make updates etc as it is not assigned to them or their skillgroup

2. When restricting users to be able to view only their own queue etc allow the access to be more granular. Possibly Read, write and both per skillgroup. So a user could have access to Read and Write to their own queue but on another departments they can only read so they can still view updates etc that may be applicable.

3. (the tough one) Separate priorities, issues, statuses etc per skill group. Once again, granular and adjustable. We currently use subscriptions to limit templates etc for the users to keep only what they use, but being able to do this at the access level would be a lot easier. If separate priorities could also be used for different job types (different priority options for different job templates is where i am going with this) then this would be a huge win

Hopefully some other Helpdesk users will have similar needs so we can maybe get something incorporated into HMP

Adam

Hi Adam,

Thanks for your input, and no, you haven't missed the boat on this one, in fact, quite the contrary - you're just in time.  The initial phase of multiple skillgroups development has been completed and I'll soon be posting some screen-shots and ideas for further comment and review - stay tuned.

Regarding your comments.

1. Skillgroup security.
The version 9 release of HelpMaster Pro improved the security model quite a bit and the granularity of permissions is something that is becoming increasingly required in many organizations.  The next phase of our multiple skill-group development is to improve the security and visibility of jobs with reference to the new skillgroup arrangements.  Your ideas here will be factored into this development.

2. Separate priority, issue and status codes etc.

These are good ideas,and have been considered previously.  Having this kind of filtering / visibility would create tremendous power and flexibility with workflow.   Internally we use HelpMaster Pro for support, sales and software development.  Each of these 3 distinct roles has their own set of codes.  It would be great to isolate each part.

For the upcoming 9.1 release, we'll be concentrating on just the multiple skillgroups functionality.  I'll put this idea forth as a possible contender for a future release.

Thanks for adding to the discussion Adam.

Best regards,

Rod

Quick update on this one.  If you've been following us on Twitter, you'll know that we've been using HelpMaster Pro v9.1 internally here at PRD Software.  Here's a quick snapshot of the new features regarding multiple skillgroups.

This is the Workgroup Explorer screen.

So far, we've been really liking the way this is turning out.  What do you think?

Rod

Rod,

What we see so far looks ok.  Notwithstanding that, can I make a single person the Q manager of every skill group to which they belong?  Or if I wish only make them Q manager for some of the skill groups to which they belong?

Regards

John

Hi John,

Thanks for the feedback.  Here's a screen snap of the new skillgroup administration screen.

For each skillgroup you can set one of the staff members belonging to that skillgroup as the skillgroup administrator.  A staff member can belong to multiple skillgroups, as well as being the skillgroup supervisor for one or more skillgroups.

I hope this answers your question.  We are currently working on the security model for this new arrangement, which I suspect is the basis of your question.  If you have any ideas as to how you see the security / visibility working for this model, please let us know your thoughts.

Best regards,

Rod

Thanks Rod that looks good.  Looking forward to getting our hands on it

Rod

Had an opportunity to look at the solution in the beta release the other day and it looks exactly great.

Thanks a lot makes life much easier.

Regards

John