Follow-ups and Reminders on Tickets

With this release (AR 8048), authorized users can now add Follow-ups to a Ticket, and set up Follow-up reminders. See Setup for required permissions.

Working with Follow-ups on a Ticket

The Tickets InfoCenter has a new tab for viewing/adding Follow-ups. From the InfoCenter tab, you can view existing Follow-ups and add a new Follow-up. Clicking on a Follow-up in the InfoCenter takes you to a more detailed view of the Follow-up on the Follow-up page where you can view, add and manage Follow-ups for the Ticket.

You can also open the Follow-ups page by clicking the Follow-up icon in the action bar (upper right corner).

Adding a Follow-up Via the Infocenter

To add a Follow-up from this view, begin by entering the Follow-up Description. This displays the other fields for entering a Follow-up.

Type	Select from the drop-down list.
Status	Select from the drop-down list.
Assign To	Specify the person or group responsible for working this Follow-up

Description	Describe the purpose of this Follow-up
Date	Date and time the person/group assigned to this follow-up needs to take action on this follow-up.

Follow-up Page

In addition to viewing and adding Follow-ups, the Follow-ups page lets you edit or close a Follow-up, and add reminders for assigned users to alert them to the approaching due date/time.

Selecting a Follow-up from the list at the left displays additional details in the right pane, and provides icons for adding, editing closing, and adding/removing a reminder.

Managing the Follow-ups List

If you open the page by clicking the Follow-up icon in the action bar, all Follow-ups are listed by default. You can choose to view a specific Follow-up by using the search fields. Enter a Follow-up ID, Type or Status, or click More Options for additional search criteria.

If you open this page by selecting a Follow-up in the InfoCenter, only that Follow-up will be listed by default. You can expand the list to show all Follow-ups for the Ticket by clicking the Remove this filter link.

Follow-up Tabs

The right side of this page provides two tabs for viewing Follow-up information:

Description (default view)
Journals

A third Additional Information tab is available when applicable.

Adding a Follow-up

Click + to add a new Follow-up, and use the resulting view to enter the Follow-up information.

Editing a Follow-up

Click the Edit (pencil) icon to display a dialog for editing the selected Follow-up.

Closing a Follow-up

Click the Close icon to close the selected Follow-up.

The Close dialog displays a warning that the Follow-up cannot be modified once it’s closed, and provides a drop down to specify the status once the Follow-up is closed.

Note:
If a Follow-up is closed before a reminder is due to be sent, the reminder will not be sent.

You can cancel out of the Close action if needed.

Working with Reminders

A reminder sends an email to the assigned user/group to alert them when the due date/time is near. You can set the reminder to be sent n days or hours before the due date/time.

Reminder functionality must be enabled in your system as described in Setup. Enabling creates a recurring trigger with a Send Follow-up Reminder action, and makes the Add/Remove Reminder icon available, as applicable, in the Follow-up Details view.

The Add Reminder icon (bell with green +) is available if the functionality has been enabled, the due date/time is in the future, and the Ticket does not yet have a reminder scheduled. Clicking the Add Reminder icon displays the dialog for specifying when the reminder should be sent. You can specify the interval to send the reminder as n hours or days before the follow-up is due. The interval defaults to one (1) day. The recurring trigger runs hourly to check for eligible reminders to send.

The presence of a reminder on a Follow-up is indicated by a blue bell. Hover text for the bell icon provides details of when the reminder will be sent. Also, the Add Reminder icon will change to Remove mode (red X).

Clicking the Remove Reminder icon displays a warning that lets you confirm the removal (YES) or cancel NO).

Note:
Reminders are automatically removed once the email has been sent.

Considerations for reminders:

A follow-up can only have one unsent reminder. The option to add a reminder is not available when there is already an unsent reminder on the follow-up.
There is no option to edit a reminder. To change a reminder, first remove and then add a new reminder.
Follow-ups with a follow-up date in the past cannot have a reminder added. You can change the date to be in the future, and then add a reminder.
Once the reminder is sent, the bell no longer appears on the follow-up. A new reminder can be added if the follow-up date is in the future.
Reminders do not account for weekends or holidays.
Reminder emails that have been sent are viewable only in the Communications module. There is no history of them in Tickets.
If a follow-up is closed before a reminder is due to be sent, the reminder will not be sent.

Reminder Email

When the current date/time reaches the reminder interval, the email is sent to the email address of the assigned to user. Both SaaS Security users and CostGuard user groups are supported.

Note:
If for some reason the user or user group does not have an email address configured, a reminder will not be sent. There is no indication that the email address is not available.

From Address: from alias and address that is configured in Workflow trigger
To Address: email address of the assigned user on the follow-up
Subject: Reminder: <Follow-up type> due in <n hours/days> (Follow-up ######)
Body: contains the follow-up id (as a hyperlink to the follow-up), the follow-up date, follow-up type and follow-up status.

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Setup

Permissions

Adding/Editing Follow-ups requires the new Add/Edit Follow-Ups permission. This permission has been added to the Tickets Support Desk and Tickets Technician delivered roles.

Enabling/disabling reminders requires Manage Configurations permission.

Reminder Setup

Communications

Communications must be configured for the environment to support reminders.

Mailbox Configuration

A new entry has been added in the Mailbox Configuration in Admin Console for Reminders – Data Management > Mailbox Configuration

This entry contains the from email address for reminders. No action is required for this setting, unless you require a different value for alias or local address.

New Tickets Setting

A new setting is available via MANAGE > Settings to enable reminder functionality in Tickets. The setting is disabled by default. No reminder functionality is available until the setting is enabled. Toggling this setting requires Manage Configurations permission.

Note:
This setting is only available if Communications is configured for the environment.

Enabling the setting adds a Recurring Workflow Trigger with the Send Follow-up Reminder action, and makes the Add/Remove Reminder icon available on the Follow-up Details view. Disabling Reminders removes the Trigger and icon.

Workflow

The Recurring Workflow trigger will run hourly to send eligible reminders.

Interval Offset: This value is set to 1 hour, and is used in the selection criteria for eligible reminders. Reminders will be selected and sent up to 1 hour before they are due to be sent.
From Alias: This value is set from the Mailbox Configuration entry for Reminders. It is used as the email alias on the from address for reminder emails.
From Address: This is used as the from email address on reminder emails. This is populated from the local address on the Mailbox Configuration for reminders combined with the subdomain and domain from Communications configuration.

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