SmarterTrack Help
Community Knowledge Base

Departments

A department is the second level of the SmarterTrack organizational structure. Each brand will be broken down into departments. For example, a brand may have Sales, Support and Human Resources departments. Typically, each department will have its own email address, such as support@example.com or sales@example.com. This section lists all of the departments that are currently available to your organization and provides administrators with the ability to add new departments or edit/delete existing departments.

To access this section, log into the management interface with an administrator account. Select Settings from the Navigator, then click on Departments in the navigation pane. Any departments associated to your company will load in the content pane. Generally, default departments are available on installation, and system administrators can add to, or change, departments during the installation and set up process. However, departments can be managed as often as needed, even post installation.

In general, the following columns are available:

  • Checkbox - Use these boxes to select multiple departments. Departments must be selected before choosing an action from the toolbar.
  • Department - The name of the department. For example, Sales, Support, Billing, etc.
  • Email Importing - The POP email address being used to import tickets into SmarterTrack for the department. If a dash is present for a department, then POP importing is not configured for that department.
  • Agents - The number of agents assigned to the department.
  • Active Tickets - The number of active tickets within the department.
  • Active Live Chats - The number of active live chats within the department.

The following options are available from the content pane toolbar:

  • New - Creates a new department. When creating a new Department, both the Department Name and Front Line Group are required. The Front Line Group is the first group to which tickets and live chats for the Department will be assigned. SmarterTrack will automatically create the Front Line Group after you have completed and saved these settings. All other configuration settings are optional. However, if you are using SmarterTrack's branding feature, you will also need to configure the appropriate Brand name setting. In addition, if you are supporting multiple languages, you will need to configure the appropriate language setting.
  • Edit - Allows the administrator to make changes to a department's settings.
  • Clone - Rather than creating a department from scratch, administrators can clone an existing department and modify settings for the new department as needed.
  • Delete - Permanently deletes the selected department(s). When deleting a Department you'll need to choose the action to take for items that belong to this Department. This includes how to handle ticket, live chat, call log and call log agent assignments. Generally, these will need to be handed off to another Department, if at all possible. Otherwise, information may be deleted.

To view the settings for a specific department, simply double-click the department. Alternatively, you can select a department and click the Edit button in the content pane toolbar. The department settings will load in the content pane and the following tabs will be available:

Jump to:

Options

  • Brand - The brand to which the department belongs.
  • Department Name - The name of the department.
  • Front Line Group - The default group that gets assigned tickets and live chats for the department. If groups are available, they will appear as a dropdown. If no group is available, you can type the name of the group in the box and it will be saved and added on the Groups page, and automatically assigned to the brand and department. (NOTE: A department can only have one front line group.)
  • SMTP Account - SmarterTrack does not have an internal SMTP server for sending replies to tickets. Instead, it uses an existing email account that's already been configured on an existing mail server or email service, and preferably an account that's already associated with the department that's being set up. The options available in the dropdown list are based on the SMTP Accounts configured in Email settings. If the necessary account is not listed in the dropdown, it is possible to add one by clicking the Add SMTP Account button. Once clicked, a modal window will display the following options:
    • Server - The outgoing SMTP server name.
    • Email Address - The email address from which department messages are sent.
    • Display Name - The name used to identify the mail server. This field is optional but recommended.
    • Encryption - Select the level of security used for sending emails: None, SSL, or TLS.
    • Server Port - The port used to connect to the SMTP Server. By default, the SMTP Server port is 25. Note: If SSL or TLS is used, this port will need to change to match the security setting.
    • SMTP Auth Username - The identifier used to authenticate with the SMTP server. This field is optional.
    • SMTP Auth Password - The corresponding password used to authenticate with the SMTP server. This field is optional.
  • Preferred Language - The default language for the department.
  • Allow all agents to find items in this department using advanced search - Frequently, agents may need to access tickets in a department that they don't belong to in order to respond to customer inquiries. Enable this setting to mark a department as having their ticket contents visible to all agents. Agents can then find those items and see them in a read-only manner when using Advanced Search. Managers are allowed to modify any item found this way, while agents are allowed to add comments only.
  • Allow managers outside of this Department to view its contents. By default, only Employees with the Manager role can see the tickets in all Groups within a given Department. However, there are times with Managers in other Departments need to see tickets. This is especially true if 2 Departments work closely together, such as Sales and Support Departments. With this checked, Managers from ANY other Department can view the tickets within the Department being edited.
  • Mark Time Logs as billable by default - Enabling this means that SmarterTrack will mark any time logs created for the department, whether automated or manual, as billable. Billable time logs take an agent's "Hourly Cost for Reporting" into account.

Tickets

  • New Tickets in Portal - The role required to submit a ticket via the portal. For more information, see Roles. NOTE: When set to "Nobody", this department will not show up in the Departments dropdown when tickets are submitted from the portal.
  • Custom Field Template - The custom field template used when submitting tickets from the portal. The ticket template specifies which fields the user should complete when submitting a ticket. For more information, see Custom Fields.
  • Survey to Offer When Closed - To automatically offer a survey to customers after a ticket status has been changed to "closed" or "closed and locked", select the appropriate survey from the list. For more information, see Surveys.
  • Auto-Close After - The number of hours after which a ticket assigned to the department and marked as "waiting" will automatically close. The default setting is 168 hours. NOTE: If any action is performed on a ticket, such as transferring it to another agent or group or even commenting the ticket, the waiting time will reset.
  • Auto-Lock After - The number of hours after which tickets assigned to the department and marked as "closed" will automatically lock. (Locked tickets do not automatically reopen when a customer sends a reply.) The default setting is 322 hours.
  • Auto-Delete After - The number of days after which tickets assigned to the department with a "closed" or "closed and locked" status will automatically be deleted. The default setting is 365 days.NOTE: Tickets that are "Related" to another item (e.g., a call log, another ticket, etc.) and/or tickets that have a Resolution are NOT automatically deleted.
  • Require resolution to close tickets - Checking this box will require agents to add a resolution to a ticket before they are able to close it.
  • Require all tasks to be completed to close tickets - Checking this box will require agents to complete any tasks associated to a ticket before the ticket can be closed.
  • Send notification to customer when tickets are auto-closed - Checking this box sends an email notification to the customer when a ticket is auto-closed. For more information, see Templates section of Email.

Call Logs

  • Custom Field Template - The custom field template used to create a call log. The call log template specifies which fields the agent should complete when logging a call. For more information, see Custom Fields.
  • Auto-Delete After - The number of days after which call logs assigned to the department will automatically be deleted.

Business Hours

Use this tab to specify the days and times the organization operates and when staffing is available. A department's business hours can be inherited from the brand by checking the box next to "Inherit business hours from Brand." In order to configure business hours for the department separately, this box should remain unchecked. For example, a Support Department may run 24 x 7 while other departments follow the brand's business hours. To edit or remove a day, select the desired day and click Edit in the content pane toolbar. To remove a day from your business hours, delete the start and end times and save your changes. This will deselect that day and remove it from the brand's available business hours. That day will then be displayed as Closed.

Note: Business hours follow the default time zone that is set for the installation. For more information on the default time zone, see Language and Locale.

Holidays

Use this tab to specify company holidays. A department's holidays can be inherited from the Brand or configured separately. To add a holiday if holidays are not inherited from the brand, click Add in the content pane toolbar.

Note: Live chat will automatically be disabled (offline) on holidays.

Custom Messages

Use this tab to create custom messages to be displayed on the ticket submission page of portal. Messages can be configured by Department, so that after the user selects the Department from the dropdown, the Message is displayed along the right sidebar. Custom Messages can include HTML formatted information such as additional contact details, the Department's business hours, etc.

  • Before Ticket Submission - The text that is displayed on the ticket submission form immediately after the Department is selected.
  • After Ticket Submission - The text that is displayed after a ticket is successfully submitted from the portal.
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