Departments Using Email Instead of Ticketing System
Posted by LukeCH2015@reddit | talesfromtechsupport | View on Reddit | 5 comments
I’m in my second job in IT, and thankfully I’ve become comfortable with both the ticketing systems each company has used.
One problem that’s been present at both jobs however is other departments in the companies that flatly refuse/d to use a ticketing system, and instead pretty much conduct all of their business in Outlook.
At my last job it was HR that refused to join the new ticketing system IT was transitioning to. This was a company with TONS of part-timers and very high turnover. The head of HR had a PST file in excess of 60GB. We -hated- this person for this. It was a source of many problems and tied up IT labor often, and we had no institutional clout to force change on their part.
In my current job it’s our accounting department, however I believe the senior person who was resistant to tickets is on their way out and hopefully the team will transition to a ticketing system soon.
Has anyone else ever dealt with this? Has anyone been successful at forcing compliance with a ticketing system on a resistant group?
tinySparkOf_Chaos@reddit
Our IT just makes tickets from emails. Emails to IT auto generate a ticket.
It's really that simple.
Users aren't lost trying to figure out how to file tickets, and IT gets to use their ticket system. Everyone's happy.
It fairly seamless. Updates to tickets autogenerate an email with the update (and not an annoying "your ticket has been updated" with no details). Email replies auto populate as comments into the correct ticket. And all emails have a link to the ticket itself at the bottem.
LukeCH2015@reddit (OP)
yes our ticketing system does that too,
perhaps I wasn’t super clear, (apologies)
the problem here is that these different departments didn’t implement ticketing systems of their own, when perhaps they should have, and instead operate gargantuan email archives that become cumbersome to support
pupperoni42@reddit
It's up to the manager of the IT department. I've seen CEOs forced to use the ticketing system because no one from IT responds to help requests that aren't in the ticketing system.
But if the IT manager won't hold the line and insist that HR/Accounting must go through ticketing, then an individual within the department won't be able to accomplish much.
If it directly impacts your reviews or pay, that would be worth pushing back hard on.
Otherwise, you need to follow your departments de facto standard. But you can send HR the link to the ticketing system as your first reply and maybe them ask a couple times before you respond. Maybe one of them will eventually get the hint and put in a ticket. If they do, jump right on it and give them great service and a big thanks for using the ticketing system. Positive reinforcement leads to repeat behavior.
RantyITguy@reddit
Limited success. We could create tickets for them when they email or call but all updates and replies would be in the ticket. Or just saying "create a ticket" or "did you put in a ticket" Stubborn users won't do it until they are forced.
harrywwc@reddit
this is a manglement, uh, 'management' problem.
your manager needs to articulate to the other manglers the benefits of using the ticketing system, and strongly discourage the other contact methods.
alternately, if they insist on using email, then have that published email address divert to the ticketing system. have your manager approve your team forwarding any messages to their 'personal' address to the ticketing system, allowing the system to have the user assigned the ticket and any responses.