We have a ticketing system for user issues, but hav received a request for something to be setup for "urgent" requests. How do you deal with this at your org? Phone call?

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Emi_Be@reddit

To handle urgent requests, you can integrate your ticketing system with the alerting service SIGNL4. When an urgent ticket is created, SIGNL4 can be triggered to send immediate alerts to the help desk team. Using the "categories" feature, you can classify and prioritize alerts. For instance, "urgent" can be a category raised when certain keywords match it (like urgent, emergency etc.) with distinct alert tones. Additionally, with SIGNL4's Microsoft Teams integration, users can raise urgent requests directly from Teams.

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RitikaBramhe@reddit

As some have already pointed out, it might be helpful to first brainstorm what qualifies as an urgent issue before diving into this project. From there, you can establish a system that prioritizes and escalates tickets based on those criteria. For instance one of our MSP clients recently implemented an after-hours urgent alerting process. They brought in our solution, OnPage, alongside their existing ticketing system, Connectwise (CW). Their first step was defining clear guidelines for what qualifies as an urgent issue. With these criteria in place, they leveraged CW workflows, OnPage's keyword-based alert triggers, and the OnPage alerting +oncall management to effectively manage after hours tickets. They now have a dedicated number on which the client calls and leaves a voicemail describing their issue in detail which gets transcribed into text and opens up a ticket on CW. CW workflows and keyword-based triggers automatically determine whether this ticket qualifies as an urgent matter. For tickets that get qualified as urgent, they get delivered to the OnPage phone app as alert-until-read notifications. The bi-directional integration allows you to continue responding on the phone app without opening up CW.

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Western-Ad-5525@reddit

Within 6 months everything is an urgent phone call.

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rush2049@reddit

Emergency tickets for us send an email and text message to the on-call phone automatically. And post a summary message to our IT-Team teams chat channel automatically.

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noobtastic31373@reddit

Most ticketing systems support prioritizing tickets when they're submitted. Many also allow for automations based on event or ticket criteria. So you can set up urgent tickets to send a notification to your helpdesk techs by whatever method is appropriate. To make it work, you will need management support to hold people accountable if they repeatedly mark something urgent when it's not. Otherwise, prioritizing is worthless, and you might as well just have all calls go through a helpdesk phone number and triage all calls as they come in.

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Main-ITops77@reddit

Yes exactly, you can achieve this by adding a priority field in the ticket form and then using automation rules.

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overworkedpnw@reddit

Unless someone’s dying or there’s an imminent threat to life safety, there’s really no need for anything beyond a ticketing system. Create an “urgent” category in the system and build a workflow around it. Speaking from experience, going the route of making a phone queue will likely lead to abuse in the name of getting petty/trivial requests elevated.

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PsyduckAF@reddit (OP)

I completely agree. I was actually pushing this way of thinking, although this is at a university. Sometimes a lecturer will have tech issues in the middle of a class and needs support right away. I don't think a ticket is suitable in a situation like this, no?

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Dry_Condition_231@reddit

Just because Dr. Smith doesn't have a backup plan for when his slideshow doesn't present correctly doesn't mean your staff should come running. Something something devil's advocate

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Ipconfig_release@reddit

University sysadmin, unless the building is on fire, which incase is not my problem anyways. there is nothing urgent that ticket isn't used for. Just set up urgent in the ticket system with workflows around it. If you have no ticket and no documentation, then nothing you say later will be taken as the truth by any professor.

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overworkedpnw@reddit

Depending on the ticketing system you’re using, there should be some kind of way to kick off notifications and automation that you can put in place. I’d also add signage in the lecture spaces denoting how to open a ticket, my go to for general public spaces is to have a [QR code](https://www.qr-code-generator.com/solutions/email-qr-code/) with some kind of blurb about requesting assistance. I’d also suggest setting up a request type in your helpdesk to allow them to pre-request support for VIPs or other events where they anticipate there might be a need. If they absolutely insist on a phone system, I suggest avoiding scenarios where you give anyone your direct phone number, use something like Teams or Google Voice instead (otherwise you’ll never have a second of peace). In this scenario I’d also suggest tracking anything that comes in as “urgent”, and seeking sanctions if you find yourself working a lot of non-urgent “urgent” tickets.

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BrainWaveCC@reddit

>I don't think a ticket is suitable in a situation like this, no? Does the University have a help desk? Then, in the scenario presented, the lecturer would call the help desk, and then someone would be sent over plus the ticket would be created.

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CravenLuc@reddit

I see this argument a lot and have to say it doesn't have to be. We have a phone queue for things that lock users out of their usual communication. Password forgotten while remote is the main thing. Happens maybe twice a month with over 1k users. Sure, people call with other things, but every single agent doesn't solve it right then. We make a ticket. The user gets a notification to fill in info so we don't sit there while they dictate something. The ticket gets handled like every other ticket. Same for requests that come in via chat, at the water cooler etc. People will always try to get their problem solved sooner. But no matter what communication channels you have, your agents need to stick to them and the established processes. We get on average less than a call a day. People in the hallway start off with some problem and then automatically say "ah yes, I will make a ticket". It takes nerves to sit through the initial phase (and support from management), but it gets processes established. You can have fast communication channels if you make sure to only work on requests through them escalated that need to be.

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nohairday@reddit

Yep, ticketing systems generally should have an urgency or priority option. If it's truly earth-shatteringly urgent, then it can be escalated via a call to the manager or someone to bring attention to it, but the ticket gets raised first. And there has to be a lot of checks and pushbacks on what is actually **urgent** or it'll become the new default for all tickets...

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Dafoxx1@reddit

This is true. I used to be handed an oncall phone and people would call that instead of putting in a ticket. Like im locked out cant remember passwords in the middle of the day. Like walk down to IT or use one of the many reset kiosks. Use a ticketing system that has an alert on a phone/mailbox/ app that alerts the user an urgent ticket has been submitted and hasnt been addressed after x amount of time.

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StaffOfDoom@reddit

Users can’t change priority. All ticket urgency will be decided by us.

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ABlankwindow@reddit

I work in a 24/7/365 our protocol could be summarized as follows Can it wait up to 72 business hours, then submit a ticket. Need to be handled today, submit a ticket and drop it in the tickets channel in teams with url to ticket. Nothing else is posted in that channel except urgent and emergent tickets. Needs to be handled right now, then call the oc line. While you are waiting to be answered submit the ticket tag it in the tickets channel in teams. If you call the oc unnecessarily, management has given permission to end the call and tell them to follow protocol and to report them for failure to follow protocol. Couple of complaints about people wasting our time and people stopped abusing the on-call line. Some.sales guy decided to call me at 4 am because he couldn't wait the timeout to expire. I told him I would help after I went to the bathroom. I would call him back. because he woke me out of dead sleep. By the time I was done shitting his account had auto unlocked and I knew this so I went back to bed without returning the call or logging in to anything but the toilet. Occasionally, we have to deal harshly with a new hire, especially new salespeople. But management is on our side that line is for emergencies only.

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ML00k3r@reddit

Our process is anything important or urgent at bare minimum requires a phone call to the help desk. Then they can request an escalation to the appropriate groups management and then it's up to them to triage from there. No guarantees. The process is already there for standard expected times for requests and if you think yours is more important than others, you'll need to justify to management why. Seems to be working fine IMO.

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Garetht@reddit

Why can't it be a ticket?

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PsyduckAF@reddit (OP)

Because it's usually an urgent request, so someone would need to tend to it right away.

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sitesurfer253@reddit

Yeah... Like when you see a ticket marked "urgent". How would it being in a different system make that process faster?

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PsyduckAF@reddit (OP)

So in real life, say you have a medical emergency. Would you see a difference between calling and talking to someone who can help you instantly (e.g. 911) vs raising a ticket and waiting for someone to tend to it?

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sitesurfer253@reddit

Do you often deal with medical emergencies?

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BrainWaveCC@reddit

You realize that when you call 911, they still generate a ticket **and** send someone to help you, right? You can change who is responsible for generating a ticket in an emergency, but you should never develop a process that foregoes the ticket entirely in the name of urgency. Even in the ER / Urgent Care, some processing of paperwork takes place first except under the most exigent of circumstances. (And even then it still manages to get done.)

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Sasataf12@reddit

This isn't a question of "should a ticket be created?" A ticket should always be created. The question is "what's the best method to handle urgent requests?"

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Ph886@reddit

Pretty much this. Create “severity levels” for different issues , create SLA response times for each level of ticket, propagate that out. If there is an “urgent” issue and it’s been cleared through whoever takes the ticket a higher severity would page the “on call” so that they could act immediately on the issue. This buffer also prevent frivolous “urgent” tickets from being made/abused. You may also need to set up “VIP” tags for users if someone is specifically a higher priority in getting issues resolved for.

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Spez-eats-ass-alt@reddit

Creating a ticket can be done in about a minute or less. If there’s a workflow in place, all the “urgent” tickets get automatically dispatched. They also get visibility from the incident management team. This also lets you reassign the ticket to the right group without having to repeat all the information. I have seen urgent tickets initially sent to sysadmin group get resent to the networking team, who then sent it to the Storage team because it ended up being a SAN issue that presented as a windows folder issue. The time required to create a ticket is the shortest part of dealing with the urgent issue. It’s trivially short. Also consider that a single issue could affect many users simultaneously. Do you really want to handle 30 different text messages? A proper help desk would be compiling the calls into the same ticket. I have worked in financial environments where we had 5 minute SLA to respond and it worked very well with a ticket system.

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gopal_bdrsuite@reddit

First, the ticketing system monitored by 24/7 ? . Ticketing should have urgent category, Other than that the user should call the respective team if urgent request needed, after raise a ticket.

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inosak@reddit

My old company had "ship is sinkin, life in danger" independent phone line for emergency situations (and I mean real ships on sea) - different ring tone (nuclear attack siren - forbidden to use for anyone else) and always two people in the office at any time. If it's really needed it's not going to be cheap + requires additional training, like real 911 operators.

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StiffAssedBrit@reddit

It will be abused. It is up to you, or whoever is in charge of allocation, to decide what is urgent. Don't give that option to users as they will just use the priority channel for every issue.

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daniels471@reddit

So my go to normally is to get users to log the ticket and then if it's urgent get them to call us to notify ( ticketing system isn't great but it's on the list)

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Brett707@reddit

Clients could during business hours call the office and request an urgent ticket. That meant that the tech assigned would be calling them within 15 minutes. After hours they could call the main line and select an option for urgent after-hours support. They could also send an email to a specific address and it would generate an alert for the on-call techs and management. No ticket no work. An urgent ticket during office hours was an extra $50 fee. After hours it was $250 and a min of 1 hour. The after-hours weekend was $350 with a 1-hour min. Holiday was I think $600 with a 2-hour min. My job prior to my current there was no upcharge for urgent or after-hours work. Because a tech always had to answer the phone. Also, everything was urgent so nothing really was. It sucked when we would get a call at fucking 2 am on a Saturday to create a new user and set them up on 15 different workstations. This couldn't wait until Monday it had to be done right then (bosses rule). If you are internal support it will be different from what I was doing at an MSP. Where I work now there are no urgent requests and there are no after-hours work for us.

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picturemeImperfect@reddit

Request feature in the ticketing system but usually is never urgent

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cichlidassassin@reddit

Phone Call, hit special number, leave message, opens urgent ticket, pagerduty to oncall person

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justaguyonthebus@reddit

Whatever you do, require the tickets first. Then have any ticket marked urgent page whoever is on call or responding to alerts. Then schedule a debrief meeting that includes them and your manager and their manager to discuss why it was urgent and how the urgency could have been mitigated or avoided. This is the cost of urgent requests that makes it "expensive" for frivolous items and holds IT accountable for fixing things that should be fixed.

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athornfam2@reddit

ITSM. Setup defined priorities and urgencies.

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cobarbob@reddit

Whatever you setup, make it slightly painful. Like user has to call the boss for urgent requests, not the newbie. Carol from accounts is going to call the newbie with "urgent" requests every time, but she ain't calling the CIO because her screen looks funny.

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NotYourNanny@reddit

Most tickets have an option to mark something as urgent or high priority. I suspect the one you're using does. The reason some higher up wants a separate system for urgent tickets is that users abuse that option to mark their electric pencil sharpener being full as "urgent, come yesterday or hellfire will rain down from the heavens and dogs and cats will be living together," and actually urgent tickets get lost in the noise. So go to whoever it is that's requesting this and ask them what process will be put in place - **and enforced** - to prevent those same users from abusing the new, urgent only, ticketing system? **And why that process can't be applied to the priority setting on the current system.**

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Waste_Monk@reddit

When have seen this sort of thing discussed in the past, having the ticketing system automatically notify the C-suite for an emergency ticket seems to be the way to go. Genuine emergency? they need to know anyway. Someone fucking around and raising a P1 ticket because they locked themselves out on a weekend? they've just pissed off their entire management chain and after a couple of incidents word will get around and the problem will resolve itself.

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scubafork@reddit

In your ticketing system, set multiple levels of priorities. One is what the help desk/IT believes it to be and the other is what the user believes it to be. Help desk SHOULD be able to get an initial intake on what scope and impact is, but the impact can be modified based on needs. The user does not need to have access to see the actual impact. The two priorties together dictate the actual priority. It's also helpful to have designation of certain users who have VIP tagging(also invisible) so that their interpretation of impact gets more notice and can have a greater weight. For example: Kathy the facility person reports a problem and it looks like his site's internet access is off, affecting 5 users. That gets a priority 2 from helpdesk, and Bob says it's priority 1. The adjusted priority is 1.5. Bob, the CEO's admin reports that Outlook isn't loading. It's priority 4 to helpdesk, but the user reports it as priority 2. Since they're a VIP, it automatically bumps up by -2. So the adjusted priority is 2.

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techtornado@reddit

It needs to go up the chain of command and you need to program the team leads and managers to triage urgency and request priority when it is appropriate You define what is appropriate for such and hold them to it Also get HR on board that scrambling to set up a new hire that day is not an urgent request

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DestinationUnknown13@reddit

User submitted tickets take lowest priority for our organization vs. a phone call to the help desk. We also have an express/emergency bypass call option. If the call wait is too long or if not urgent, users can leave a voice mail. 90% of our work is via end user calling (waiting their turn in queue) and speaking to the help desk agent.

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J_de_Silentio@reddit

If there's a urgent or emergency, they pick up a phone and calls us.

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floswamp@reddit

My users don’t know how to use a telephone. They just text in their urgent problem..sometimes they can’t even. /s

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OkBaconBurger@reddit

When all requests are urgent, none of them are.

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Astat1ne@reddit

Standard process I've seen across a number of organisations is your "express path" could be anything (a phone call, a walk up) but you still log a ticket for the issue at the appropriate priority. Why? Because: * Some ITSM tools have automatic notification functionality for P1 tickets * Paper trail to capture what's happening as it's happening * Paper trail for the eventual problem management or post incident review that will happen.

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