Six ways to create helpdesk tickets

This article describes the six main ways to create a helpdesk ticket through Atera.

Manual ticket creation

To create a ticket manually:

1. Click the New button (at the top, left) and select Ticket from the dropdown menu.

The New Ticket page appears.

2. Enter the ticket creation details using the dropdowns. An * indicates a mandatory field:

• Customer - Select a customer.
• *Contact - Start typing and autocomplete will help you out.
•  Contract - the dropdown list of contracts will populate based on the selected customer/contact.
• *Ticket Title - Give the ticket a title or name (i.e. 'Print Issues').
• Assign Technician - Assign a technician to work on the ticket.
• Ticket Priority - You can select the ticket priority level (Low, Medium, High or Critical).
• Ticket Impact - You can select the ticket impact (No Impact, Minor, Major, Site Down, Server Issue, Crisis).
• Ticket Type - You can select the ticket type (Incident, Problem, Request or Change).

3. Enter a Ticket Description.

4. Add any supporting Attachments by clicking Choose Files.

Note: You can schedule the ticket to go live at a later time, or even create recurring tickets by checking the Scheduled Ticket box. Learn more

5. The Register Ticket Creation Time counter tracks the time it took to create the ticket, and counts it towards work performed on the ticket. To disable tracking, uncheck the box.

6. Click Add. The Tickets page will update, and your new ticket will be displayed.

Email ticket creation

You can set up your support email to automatically create tickets in Atera. When a customer will send an email to the selected email address, a ticket will be automatically created in Atera. The articles below will show you how to set up email forwarding in Atera for automatic ticket creation.

• Forward Email for Automatic Ticket Creation in Atera
• Set up o365 email forward
• Automatically forward Gmail messages to another account

Alert ticket creation

You can manually create a ticket from an alert. Additionally, you can set alerts to automatically create tickets. 

Customer portal ticket creation

In order for this to work the Customer Portal must be activated. See Configure the Customer Support Portal. Once the customer portal has been set up, your customers can use it to create tickets.

To create a ticket via the Customer Portal:

1. From the Customer Portal, click + New Ticket on the sidebar. 

The Add Ticket page appears

2. Enter the ticket creation details using the dropdowns. An * indicates a mandatory field:

• *Ticket Title - Give the ticket a title or name (i.e. 'Server Down').
• Ticket Priority - You can select the ticket priority level (Low, Medium, High or Critical).
• Ticket Impact - You can select the ticket impact (No Impact, Minor, Major, Site Down, Server Issue, Crisis).
• Ticket Type - You can select the ticket type (Incident, Problem, Request, or Change).
• Product Family - This field is determined by the custom fields set up in the Atera instance.

Note: It is possible that only some of the above fields will appear for Customers in the Customer Portal. An Atera admin can customize which fields are editable, visible, and mandatory within the Customer Portal by modifying the settings within Atera under Admin > Custom Fields > Tickets.

3. Once all the details have been filled in, click Save. The ticket will appear on the Tickets page in Atera. 

Helpdesk Agent ticket creation

Your customer can create a ticket using the Helpdesk agent, or by pressing the hotkey combination CTR+F12. In order for this to work the Helpdesk Agent must be activated (see Activate Helpdesk Agent). 

To create a ticket via the helpdesk:

1. From the Icon tray, right click on the Helpdesk agent.

2. Click on the Create New ticket option, this will open the Customer portal, where a new ticket can be created.

Note: After installing the Helpdesk Agent, the customer must complete a short confirmation form to authenticate the Helpdesk Agent, the first time they use it. This is for the purpose of securely confirming the customer is associated with the correct company.

Chat session ticket creation

A ticket can automatically be generated from a chat session. After two minutes of conversation, a ticket is automatically created. By default, the new ticket name appears as follows: 'New Ticket Opened from Chat'. At the end of the chat session, you can edit the name of the ticket. Learn more about the chat feature.