The thing is, logging jobs via a template is the best way to get more functionality and efficiency out of HelpMaster, so we figured that by making the largest button the template button, it will encourage best-practice. Both templates, and workflow are core concepts that will receive a lot of attention in future releases so we're keen to promote these concepts via the UI.

The big button can still log a blank job if there is no default template set.

I can only talk on behalf of how we use HMP here and at the moment.

We dug ourselves in to a hole with Job Templates (in concert with a general lack of ownership and maintenance for HMP over a long period). Our jobs logged per day was down around 10 - a fraction of what our 13 staff do; this made reports nearly useless and that was compounded by the issues structure being archaic and bloated and we didn't recognise the problem because the templates were pre-populating these important fields.

We've just gone through a process of culling Job Templates (had 50+) and rebuilding based on our actual needs. (We've also redesigned the Issues and made a fresh management-driven push to "log everything" but that's off-topic). In order to rebuild the templates we have been using Blank Job by default and once we see evidence for the need of a template, we create it. So far we have identified 4 Job Templates and I expect we may get to ~10. It is a matter of diminishing returns. Those 4 templates are covering about 50% of jobs by volume and, again, I expect we may get to 75% by volume.

I (now) regard it as essential to the health of the system that all staff understand how to log a Blank Job and do so with some frequency. Without that, how can they understand what a template does on their behalf? And as an administrator, without a true accounting of jobs, I can't make informed decisions about creating or maintaining Job Templates. This goes to why I find Blank Job so important.

And as I mentioned in the original post, we have found that neither the helpdesk roles or second level support will frequently log the same type of job back-to-back. That means neither the Last Template or User Preference jobs will be used much. I can imagine some situations where they will be useful to us and other organisational structures, so I welcome the buttons, but I'm really very interested in Blank Job.

Just in closing, the proposed design is a step forward in terms of the way we want to use Helpmaster, so even as-is I'm happy.