Creating and managing technicians

Key features and considerations

The following key features and considerations are relevant when you create and manage technicians:

• You cannot create a technician and a group with the same name in Track-It!.
• To log in to Track-It!, a technician must be an active user and a member of at least one group.
• Depending on the permissions assigned to the technicians, they can perform the following actions:
  • View, create, resolve, and close tickets and assignments linked to a ticket
  • Add audit notes to keep track of the actions performed on a ticket or an assignment. For more information, see Creating-and-managing-activity-codes.
  • Create, edit, and delete solutions
  • Link solutions to tickets and assignments
  • View, edit, design, schedule, and generate reports
  • Change their profile settings and login passwords. For more information, see Managing-a-user-profile.
  • Create and update requestors
  • Perform system administrator tasks
• Warning messages are displayed when you try to delete or mark as inactive a technician who is the default support specialist for at least one category. In such cases, the technician is neither deleted nor marked as inactive. For more information about support specialists, see Configuring-support-specialists.

• If all the named licenses assigned to technicians are consumed because of the overallocation of licenses through the License Update page, then the technicians with a named license cannot log in to Track-It!. If a technician with a named license tries to log in, then the following error message is displayed on the Track-It! login screen:
  Unable to log on. There are more named license users than the system is licensed for. Contact your Track-It! administrator.

  Assume that your Track-It! installation has five named licenses assigned to five technicians. When one of these technicians tries to log in to Track-It!, an error message is displayed on the Track-It! login screen and the technician cannot log in.
  

• If all the named licenses assigned to technicians are consumed because of the overallocation of licenses through the License Update page, then only system administrators with a named license can log in to Track-It! provided that they unassign an appropriate number of named licenses after logging in. For more information, see Managing named licenses in Track-It! (2020 Release 03).
  

To create a technician

1. On the header bar, expand the hamburger menu  and select Configuration.
2. Click Application  Settings > Technicians.
3. On the Technicians page, click New.

4. In the New Technician dialog box, complete the following fields:

   Field name	Action
   Last Name	Enter the last name of the technician.
   First Name	Enter the first name of the technician.
   Login ID	Assign a unique login ID to the technician. This must be in capital letters. You cannot modify the Login ID after the technician is created.
   Password Never Expires	To override the password policy for a technician, select this check box. For example, if you do not want the password of a technician to expire irrespective of your organization's password policy, you can select this check box. By default, the password expires after 90 days. For more information, see Configuring-a-user-password-policy.
   Use Windows Authentication	To enable WIA for a technician, select the check box. (2020 Release 02) Selecting this check box automatically enables the Pass-through Authentication for technicians.
   Windows User ID	Enter the technician's Windows account details. The accepted formats for entering Windows User ID for WIA are: domainName\userName serverName\WindowslocalAccount (2020 Release 02) The accepted format for entering Windows User ID for Pass-through Authentication is domainName\userName.
   Hourly Rate	Enter the hourly rate for the technician's work.
   Title	Enter the technician's title in the organization.
   Use Named License	Named license gives exclusive login permission to a technician. To allow a technician to consume a named license, select this check box. By default, a technician gets a concurrent license and this check box is not selected. Only a System Administrator can apply for licenses.
   Mark as Inactive	To prevent a technician from logging in to Track-It!, select the check box. Marking a technician as inactive blocks their access to the Track-It! application and that technician is not available to create tickets, assignments, or Business Rules. When you mark a technician as inactive, if they have a named license, it is freed even if the Use Named License check box is selected.
   Phone	Enter an office phone number. Enter the extension number in the second text box provided for this field.
   Alternate Phone	To contact a technician when they are not available on the office phone number, enter another phone number.
   Email Address	Enter the email address of the technician.
   Time Zone	Select a time zone for the technician.
   Work Schedule	Select a work schedule for the technician. Track-It! provides an out-of-the-box 40-hour workweek schedule as the default.
   Escalate To	To escalate a ticket to other technicians when the ticket is overdue as per SLA, select a technician from the list. For example, if a ticket with Critical priority is not resolved within the specified time period, it has to be escalated to a higher-level technician. You can also build Business Rules by using Escalate to technician in the rule conditions.

5. Click Save.
6. To assign a group to the technician, in the Groups section, click Assign.
7. In the Select From Groups dialog box, select a group and click OK.
8. (Optional) To assign more groups to the technician, repeat steps 6 and 7.
9. Click Save.

Assigning permissions to a technician

After you create a technician, based on your organization's requirements, you can configure permissions for the technician.

Key considerations

Consider the following points before you assign permissions to a technician:

• Technicians that are part of a group inherit the group permissions.
• If a technician belongs to multiple groups, they can have different permissions depending on the groups to which they belong.
  For example, a technician can belong to both the Help Desk and System Administration groups and have different permissions for each group.
• If a technician belongs to multiple groups, the permissions are applied based on the group that the technician selects when logging in.
• You can assign individual permissions to a technician and these individual permissions always override the group permissions.
  For example, the Finance group might not have permission to close a ticket, but a technician of that group can be assigned this permission.
• The Advanced Permissions for a technician cannot exceed those assigned to the group to which the technician belongs.
  For example, if the Group does not have permission to create solutions, the technicians belonging to that group cannot create solutions even if the individual technician has permission.
• In the out-of-the-box Ticket form, the Create/Update requestor option  allows technicians who are not system administrators to create or update requestors, provided that they have the create or update permissions for the Requestor module.

To assign permissions to a technician

1. Navigate to the Technicians page (from the hamburger menu  > Configurations > Application Settings > Technicians).
2. On the Technicians page, select a technician to manage permissions.
3. Click More Actions , and then click Technician Permissions.
4. In the Technician Permissions for technicianName dialog box, in the Groups list, select a group for which you want to override the technician's permissions.
   The Groups field shows the group name for which the permissions are displayed.
5. Click the Permissions tab and assign appropriate permissions to the technician.
   You can change the permissions for closing tickets and assignments. If you select System Administrator permissions, technicians have permissions to all the modules in the system.
6. Click the Advanced Permissions tab and select the appropriate permissions for each module.
7. Select or clear check boxes for View, Create, Edit, or Delete permissions for different modules.
8. Click Save.

To reset the password for a technician

When a System Administrator disables WIA for a technician, the password is reset to default. For technicians who use Windows accounts, the Reset Password option is disabled. Technicians need to change their password when they log in after their password is reset. The technicians can change their password from their Profile Settings.

1. Navigate to the Technicians page (from the Hamburger menu > Configurations > Application Settings > Technicians).
2. On the Technicians page, select a technician to manage permissions.
3. Click More Actions , and then click Reset Password.
4. On the Reset Password dialog box, click Yes.
   The technician's password is reset to the default password.

To set a technician's unavailability

1. Navigate to the Technicians page (from the Hamburger menu > Configurations > Application Settings > Technicians).
2. On the Technicians page, select the required technician.
3. Click More Actions , and then click Technician Availability.
4. To mark the technician as unavailable, in the Technician Availability dialog box, select the Unavailable check box and perform the following steps:
   

1. 
   
   1. In the From Date and To Date fields, select the dates during which the technician is unavailable.
   2. (Optional) In the Reason field, enter a reason for unavailability.
   3. To route the tickets and assignments to another technician during this period of unavailability, select a technician from the In absence, direct tickets and assignments to list.
2. Click Save.
   The technician is marked as unavailable for the set duration and these changes are reflected in the technician's profile settings.

To edit or delete a technician

You can edit a technician's information or delete a technician from the Technicians page. Before deleting a technician, we recommend that you reassign all the records assigned to that technician, to some other technician. Otherwise, all those records are reassigned to the technician's group.

1. Navigate to the Technicians page (from the hamburger menu, select Configuration > Application  Settings > Technicians).

2. Perform one of the following actions:

   Action	Steps
   To edit the technician	Select the technician whose details you want to modify and then click Edit . In the Technician: technicianName dialog box, edit the required fields. Click Save.
   To delete the technician	Select the technician whose record you want to delete and then click Delete . In the Delete Record dialog box, click Yes.

To log out a technician

1. Navigate to the Technicians page (from the hamburger menu > Configurations > Application Settings > Technicians).

   All logged-in technicians have a tick mark in the Is logged in column on the Technicians page.

2. On the Technicians page, select the technician that you want to log out. You can select multiple technicians from the list.
3. Click Log Out Technician .
4. In the Log Out Technician dialog box, click Yes.
   The selected technicians are logged out and the Concurrent license count is updated on the License Update page.