Best Way to Implement a Ticketing System with SharePoint
A ticket system in SharePoint intends to assist in solving problems, without causing new ones. Considering this fact, a lot of business enterprises hesitate in introducing any new software to their corporate digital ecosystem, because they are frightened of compatibility issues. But, the good news is that, with SharePoint, they don’t need to purchase and deploy a separate third-party ticketing software, as they can easily generate ticket systems through the software already in use.
Enterprise-Level Ticket System with MS SharePoint
According to a recent study by GitHub, over 85% of Fortune 500 Companies are effectively using MS SharePoint for corporate-level employee collaboration, project management, document management, etc. This clearly makes sense why this famous platform is ideal to be considered as a foundation of the ticketing system. Here are some reasons why it is a good idea to use SharePoint for an enterprise-level ticketing system.
To begin with, Microsoft SharePoint is a highly-customizable and integration-friendly platform. It facilitates building a tailored ticketing system to serve the unique enterprise-level and department-level needs. A SharePoint ticketing system is ideal for procession various types of requests such as;
- IT – Network Issues, Intranet Support, User Support, Tutorials, Permissions, Errors, and User Access Issues, etc.
- Accounting & Finance – Invoices, Expenses Approvals, Payment Tracking, etc.
- Purchasing – Quote Requests, Buying Requests, etc.
- Office Support – Printing, Office Supplies, Courier Service, etc.
- Legal – Approvals, Document Certifications, Review Requests, etc.
- After-Sale Customer Service – Product or Service Issues.
- Facilities Support – Booking Equipment, Facility Repair, Meeting Rooms, etc.
To implement a ticketing system in your SharePoint, you have two options. You can either customize your SharePoint, or you can also opt for an off-the-shelf SharePoint ticketing system.
Customization Abilities of MS SharePoint
To offer businesses a robust ticketing system, SharePoint is a highly customizable platform. Depending on the time and efforts that are needed, we have classified customization into two types based on the ticketing system in SharePoint.
Type A – This category includes easy-level customizations that do not require much time and effort (around 16-32 per hour per feature). However, it takes more technical skills as compared to the admin that handles the configuration of exclusive features of SharePoint.
Type B – This category includes complex customization that takes up to 32-160 hours per feature for development and requires a SharePoint expert or specialist to perform the task.
Now, let’s have a look that what aptitudes these two types of customizations can add up to your SharePoint ticketing system.
Type A – Low-Level Customization
Low-level customizations are sufficient if you require ticketing support for HR, IT, and office support tasks. Type A customizations facilitate the following SharePoint ticketing system jobs;
- Generating unspecified or anonymous tickets.
- Setting up tickets on basis of priorities (prioritizing ticket requests).
- Tagging employees to get a request approval.
- Attaching signature/file/document to a ticket.
- Organizing tickets into different groups i.e. Resolved, New or Important, etc.
- Marking colors on the basis of priority, statuses, and due issues.
- Changing background pictures, logo, branding/color theme, etc.
Type B – High-Level Customization
You will need Type B or high-level customizations if you have a highly-regulated domain in terms of finance, law, and security, where the role of analytics and notification is critical. Type B customizations can help you get better and more advanced capabilities.
Managing Tickets, Watchers & Assignees – A high-level customized SharePoint ticketing system enables building tickets from e-mails. It also allows inserting screenshots within request forms, modifying and duplicating tickets to generate new tickets on their basis. Type B customizations are deep customizations that enable automated assigning of problems to operators on the basis of relevant competencies shown in the user profile; while indicating estimated execution time for the ticket, tagging watchers, and tracking execution process. Deep customizations also enable you to merge, forward or reassign groups and also allow you to take print them (only in PDF form), etc. Furthermore, a deeply customized SharePoint ticketing system helps generate automated templates for the assignees suggesting ticket resolution on the basis of issue tags. Not only this, but it also sends knowledge-based articles.
Managing Notifications – Type B customizations offer a SharePoint ticketing system to provide notification templates such as replies, assigning/creating notifications, etc. It also generates an automated notification for new tickets assigned, changes in tickets, SLA breaches, user replies expired or upcoming due dates, etc. You can also enable direct replying to the notifications with the automated turning of the replies in the discussion comments.
Integrations – Deep customizations allow you to integrate your SharePoint-based ticketing system with other software as well. For instance, you can use Type B customizations to enable your intranet to extract user profile information to be used in request forms. It also allows integrations of SharePoint Ticketing System to CRM (Hubspot, Zoho, Salesforce, etc.) Such integrations facilitate operations of customer service, such as extracting account information and customer profile, service history, etc. right from the moment the customer tossed a complaint. Integration with databases and ERP systems provides a synchronized data flow among these systems without any data supplication. Also, integration between the asset management system and the SharePoint ticketing system facilitates the association of tickets to physical items to check their cost, availability, description, etc.
Top 4 Off-the-Shelf SharePoint Ticketing Solutions
If you don’t want to customize, you can also choose to get a ready-made SharePoint ticketing solution. Below, we have listed the top 3 off-the-shelf SharePoint ticketing solutions along with their benefits and shortcomings.
Crow Canyon System’s IT Help Desk
Rewards
The IT Help Desk tool by Crow Canyon Systems is available for 24/7 support for desktop and mobile devices. IT Help Desks provides integration with asset management and email systems. The tool is very easy to operate and manage and it utilized standard utilities of SharePoint, while also providing a custom administrative interface for easy configuration and system maintenance. It also supports priority filters that allow quick identification of tickets that are overdue and have close deadlines. This tool has an amazing visual display for ticketing status, quantity, priority, assignment, execution time, resolution time, etc. along with great reporting capabilities. It can also be used to generate tickets for MS Power BI for report building.
Limitations
This tool requires the assistance of the IT team for installation. You also don’t get access to features like multi-channel communication, real-time chats, and multilingual support. Also, if you are purchasing the standard plan of the tool, it will offer you very limited functionalities. For instance, external user management options such as creating, viewing, and altering tickets, etc., and SLA management will not be entertained.
MetaOption’s MetaCaseDesk
Rewards
Next we have MetaCaseDesk by MetaOption. The company offers this tool in two variations. One for end-user i.e. Customer Portal and the second is for support team i.e. (Support User Portal). Customer Portal enable user to log into a secure SharePoint report and website for real-time tracking of cases and incidents. Whereas, Support User Portal allows users to create, track, manage tickets and log-in to the ticketing system. MetaCaseDesk offers integration with email and asset management systems and provides 24/7 live support. It also supports multiple user roles such as end-user, support user (read-only or write/read), end-user admin and support user admin etc. MetaCaseDesk also allows for SLA notifications and configuration for multi-channel communication.
Limitations
This tool does not serve on mobile devices and it does not have multilingual support and active community forums.
Plumsail’s SharePoint HelpDesk
Rewards
This tool offers fast and easy installation that can be done without any assistance of your IT team. The tool also has a mobile version and it is very friendly to use. SharePoint HelpDesk also supports customization of templates, statuses, reports, ticket views, forms and overall feel and look of the platform. You can also manage a large number of tickets by splitting or merging them. Plumsail’s ticketing solution also offers its external users to create, view, and alter tickets.
Limitations
SharePoint HelpDesk does not provide 24/7 support and also has poor interoperability with MS Office 365 email system.
Conclusion
The SharePoint ticketing system is a valuable asset for companies that are already using Office 365 or SharePoint Online because with this they can avoid 3rd party integrations. This also helps companies to reduce their cost while maintaining a healthy and integral digital working environment. However, creating a feature-enriched helpdesk or ticketing system is completely dependent on time and resource consumption for SharePoint customizations.
