Using Teams
Once Teams are configured, it affects the Assignees field throughout BMC FootPrints Service Core, including on the Create and Edit Issue pages, the Search and Report pages, and the Escalation page. Agents are now organized by Team in those dialogs and Issues can be assigned to both Teams and individual users.
Some Features of Teams
- Viewing Issues—Users can view the Issues assigned to their Team from the Display drop-down on the Homepage. If a user belongs to multiple Teams, an option for each Team is available.
- Permission within Team—Users can be confined to viewing Issues, taking Issues, editing Issues, based on their Team membership via user roles. Refer to User Roles and How Roles and Teams Work Together for more information.
- Email Notification—When an Issue is assigned to a Team (refer to Assignments with Teams below), if the option is configured to send email to Team members, all users receive an email.
- Taking—When a user takes an Issue that is assigned to the Team, the Team can still be assigned. Although the user is responsible for working on the Issue, the Issue also shows up on reports and searches for the whole Team.
- Multiple Teams—Users can be members of multiple Teams.
- Searches and Reports—When Teams are configured, you can search and report on Issues by Team or by user. Refer to Advanced Searches and Reports for more information.
- Assignment and Teams—Refer to Assignments with Teams below.
Assignment with Teams
To assign an Issue to a Team or user when Teams are enabled:
- On the Create Issue page, each Team is listed in the Workspace Members field. Select a Team to expand it. The first option is always to Assign Team. All Team members are listed under this option.
- To assign the Issue:
- only to the Team, select Assign Team and click the right arrow. The Team name is now listed under Assignees.
to a user from the Team, select the user's name and click the right arrow. Notice that the Team name is now listed under Assignees and the user's name is listed, indented, under the Team name.
- To assign users from another Team, click the Team name again in the left field to shrink the list, then select another Team to expand it and assign users from the new Team.
In addition to being listed under their Teams, all Workspace members are listed under the heading of Individual Users. Assign a user from this heading when you want to assign an Issue without it showing up as an assignment for a Team. Users who are not members of any Team are also listed here.
While a user can belong to multiple Teams, he can only be assigned to an Issue individually once.
Other Assignment Options
In addition to the manual assignment described above, a number of options are available for assignment of Issues to Teams and Users:
- Default Assignment—This determines who is initially assigned when an Agent first opens a new Issue. This option can be overridden manually by the user or automatically by the system. This is configured on the Administration | Workspace | Auto Assign page. Options include assignment to the Issue creator, assignment to the creator's Team, assignment to the creator's Team and the creator, assignment to none, and assign to all. Refer to Auto-Assign for more information.
Team Assignment Options—Default options can also be set on the Create/Edit Team page. These options include leaving the Issue assigned to Team only, assign to one or more individual members (Example, assign new Issues for the Team to the manager) assign all members, and round-robin.
- Auto Assign—Teams and users can also be assigned to Issues automatically by the system using the Auto Assign feature, configured under Administration | Workspace | Auto Assign. This allows you to assign an Issue automatically to a Team or user based on the value selected in a drop-down field. For example, if Problem Type is Hardware, assign the Hardware Team. Auto-assignment occurs dynamically on the Create Issue page when the user selects the value from the drop-down. Refer to Auto-Assign for more information.
- Escalation—For more complex assignment rules involving multiple criteria, Escalation rules can be used. A Team or user can be assigned to an Issue based on any combination of criteria, including Status, Priority, Contact and Workspace fields, and so on. Escalation rules are applied at the time the Issue is submitted (for instant Escalations) or after a specified period of time (for time-based Escalations). Refer to Escalation for more information.