General Service Desk Settings

The general settings page in SysAid provides you with many different options that control how your SysAid behaves. The first part of the page is primarily related to automatic notifications, and the second part contains miscellaneous service desk settings.

Be sure to click Save after making any changes to this page.

Automatic notifications

Notifications sent when a service record changes

A service record is considered to have changed every time you click OK/Apply.

You can configure which changes to an SR trigger automatic email notifications and push notifications (see below) to which admins. Click  to expand the options for each type of admin.

For information about the different type of admins, see Edit Service Record.

The settings for the request user are a bit different. Your end users like to know the progress of their service records, which is why you have the option to have automatic notifications sent to them when certain types of changes are made to their service records. Your end users can be notified when:

• The status changes. You might prefer that only certain statuses notify the end user, so we've given you the option to choose which statuses will generate automatic end user notifications.
• The assigned administrator changes.
• Notes are added to the notes field.

Note that you also have the option to attach a link to your survey to the automatic email notification sent when you close a ticket.

Notifying the submit user in addition to the request user

Depending upon the way your helpdesk operates, you might want the person who submitted the service record to receive the end user notifications in addition to the person on whose behalf the service record was opened. Using SysAid terminology, this means that the submit user will receive request user notifications in addition to the request user (go here for explanations of submit and request users).

Use this check box to send all automatic request user notifications to both the request user and the submit user. Keep in mind that if the submit user was an end user (e.g. the end user opened the service record from the End-User Portal), the notifications will go to him/her.

Automatic email notifications for guest users

This allows SysAid to send automatic notifications to emails not registered in User Management. This can be useful when users submit SRs in Guest mode.

Default impact, urgency, and priority of new service records

New Service Record default impact

This determines the impact of all new service records submitted to the helpdesk, unless specified otherwise by an administrator.

New Service Record default urgency

This determines the urgency of all new service records submitted to the helpdesk, unless specified otherwise by an end user or administrator.

SMS Notifications

Enabling this option will send an SMS to the administrator assigned to a new service record if the priority of the new service record is greater than or equal to the priority you choose here. In the event that the service record has no assigned administrator, you can select one or more administrators to receive the SMS instead using the ellipses button .

Email notifications to administrators for new service records

Administrators or administrator groups can be notified by email about new service records. Choose which priorities will generate notifications using the drop-down box. Choosing low priority will ensure that all new service records generate emails. You can also select one or more administrators who will receive the notification in the event that a service record has no assigned administrator or admin group.

Instant messages are pop-up messages that administrators receive the next time they change pages in SysAid. Click here for a more in-depth explanation of instant messages.

The option to enable push notifications is no longer supported as the Mobile app has been discontinued. For more information on using SysAid on a mobile device, see the SysAid Mobile solution.

Default closed status

This setting allows you to select a Closed status for situations where an SR is closed and a specific Close status is not specified. Currently, this is only relevant for the SysAid mobile apps.

Miscellaneous Service Desk settings

The following settings affect the operation of a variety of helpdesk functions.

Enable automatic suggestions from the Knowledge Base

When end users and/or admins submit a new service record, SysAid offers links to Knowledge Base items related to the words that they type in the Title field. You can enable this feature for end users, admins, or both. You can also choose which Knowledge Base fields are searched, and if you want to exclude any particular terms from the search.

When closing SR, ask whether to add to Knowledge Base/FAQ

When you close a service record, SysAid prompts you to add the details to the Knowledge Base. If you click yes, the title, description, and solution are automatically copied into a new Knowledge Base entry which you can then edit to your liking.

Limit access to Knowledge Base articles by category permissions

When this option is selected, admins and end users can only access Knowledge Base articles if the they have access to an article's category.

When an admin is not assigned to an SR and closes it, prompt the admin if to assign it to himself or not

When selected, SysAid asks admins who close an SRs that they were not assigned to, if they want to reassign the SRs to themselves.

Prompt to reset SR escalation level

When this option is enabled, SysAid asks the admins if they want to reset an SR's escalation level whenever they modify an escalated SR.

If you want to disable the message, clear this check box.

Threshold for Operating Hours in Escalation Rules

When the number of hours you enter for triggering an escalation rule is lower than this number, SysAid calculates the hours according to the operating times of the ticket's request user. When the number of hours is higher, SysAid calculates the hours in absolute time - not business hours. The default value is 168, which is the number of hours in one week.

Enable third-level categories

By default, SysAid displays two levels of categories. Select this option to enable a third level of categories.

Reroute Service Records based on routing rules when the details of the request change

With this option enabled, routing rules will be reapplied any time the request user or category of a service record changes. The routing rules are reapplied at the time you select the new request user or category, not at the time you save the service record, so if the ticket you are working on needs to be assigned to somebody not specified in the routing rules, you can always manually change the assigned administrator or admin group and then save the service record.

Display the automatic notifications in messages

This determines whether you will by default see automatic messages in service records. If you have this option disabled, you can still see automatic messages by clicking Show automatic messages above the messages field.

Messages field from a service record

Automatically add chat sessions as activities within the Service Record

If you would like chat sessions to automatically show up as activities on service records, enable this option.

Activities field from a service record

In the SR form, show only the Assigned To users, according to the selected admin group

With this option enabled, the Assigned To field on the SR form will be linked to the Admin Group field. When you are looking at a service record, only administrators who are part of the currently selected Admin Group will show up as choices in the Assigned To list.

Allow changing of SR type from Incidents to Requests and vice versa

This enables you to change a request to an incident and change an incident to a request. You can access this option in the list view, when you click More Actions, or within the service record, when you click  in the top-right corner.

Change SLA when the request user is updated

When this is selected, the value of an SR's agreement field changes to match the SLA of the updated request user.

Automatically set Asset Owner

When this option is selected, SysAid automatically assigns an owner to an asset based on its asset history. Any user who logs in to an asset five times in a row is set as the new owner for that asset. 

You can exclude an asset from being automatically assigned in the asset's form by selecting the Exclude asset from asset owner calculation in the asset form.

When duplicating a Change/Problem/Request, reset the action item statuses

This option resets the statuses for action items in duplicated workflow SRs to their original status. If this option is not selected the action items inherit the status of the corresponding action items in the original workflow SR.

Updating problem priority, urgency, and impact from a linked incident

If these check boxes are checked, then problems will take their priority, urgency, and/or impact from the linked incident with the highest priority/urgency/impact. If the priority/urgency/impact of a linked incident is raised, the priority/urgency/impact of the problem is raised as well. This is true even if the priority/urgency/impact was raised by an escalation rule. An incident is linked to a problem if it appears in the Related Items list for the problem. SysAid only looks at incidents in an open status class.

Example : Problem A has priority Normal. A new incident with priority High is reported, and after investigation, it's determined that the incident was caused by Problem A. The incident is linked to the problem using the Related Items field, and the problem immediately receives priority High, taken from the incident. The incident is subsequently escalated to priority Highest by an escalation rule, and so the problem immediately receives priority Highest as well.

Enable visual indicators for weighted SRs

If this box is checked, your weighted SRs are displayed with a red background in their lists. A button appears, allowing you to float all your weighted SRs to the top of the list, sorted by weight in descending order.
If you enabled this functionality, you can also select for the SR list to load with the last state of the float button. For example, if the last time you were in the list, the float button was in the inactive state, the next time the list loads, it will remain in the inactive state with the weighted SRs sorted as a normal SR.

Statuses of incidents linked to changes, problems, and requests

When an administrator creates a linked change, problem, or request from within an incident, it usually means that the incident will not be worked on directly anymore. Rather, the work will be done on the linked SR. These options tell SysAid to automatically change an incident's status when a linked change, problem, or request is created.

Automatically changing the incident status has several benefits, including:

• The incident will be removed from the list of active incidents
• In reports, the incident will be reflected as a change, problem, or request