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Setting up CRM 2011 as Ticket Helpdesk? RRS feed

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    We are trying to set up CRM 2011 as a Ticket Helpdesk for our support team. What I have planned so far is to create Vendors for each customer we have and add their support contracts there.

    Now under Issue Resolution I want to have issues/tickets that the customers logged. Basically an email sent to support@mycompany.com would create a ticket automatically? How can I achieve this, where do I set this up?

    Thanks!

    Wednesday, November 14, 2012 7:46 PM

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    Ok, so you want to create Cases from emails.  It sounds like the best bet is to set up a Queue for the email address.  Then configure your CRM Email router to send emails to that email address to the Queue. 

    From here, you have two options:

    1. You have users monitor the queue, open the email, and use the "Convert to Case" button for converting valid support emails into Cases.  This is good, because you don't create useless Cases, and you don't overburden the CRM system with workflow.  It is, however, potentially labor-intensive.

    2. You set up a workflow that monitors for email Activities created against that Queue, and then creates a Case for that email.  This isn't as robust as the "Convert to Case" button, generally, but it also makes the cases right away. 

    I favor the first, as users have to touch Cases anyway to resolve them.

    The postings on this site are solely my own and do not represent or constitute Hitachi Solutions' positions, views, strategies or opinions.

    • Marked as answer by share_starter Wednesday, November 14, 2012 10:17 PM
    • Unmarked as answer by share_starter Wednesday, November 14, 2012 10:18 PM
    • Marked as answer by share_starter Friday, November 16, 2012 4:09 PM
    Wednesday, November 14, 2012 9:26 PM

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    Ok, so you want to create Cases from emails.  It sounds like the best bet is to set up a Queue for the email address.  Then configure your CRM Email router to send emails to that email address to the Queue. 

    From here, you have two options:

    1. You have users monitor the queue, open the email, and use the "Convert to Case" button for converting valid support emails into Cases.  This is good, because you don't create useless Cases, and you don't overburden the CRM system with workflow.  It is, however, potentially labor-intensive.

    2. You set up a workflow that monitors for email Activities created against that Queue, and then creates a Case for that email.  This isn't as robust as the "Convert to Case" button, generally, but it also makes the cases right away. 

    I favor the first, as users have to touch Cases anyway to resolve them.

    The postings on this site are solely my own and do not represent or constitute Hitachi Solutions' positions, views, strategies or opinions.

    • Marked as answer by share_starter Wednesday, November 14, 2012 10:17 PM
    • Unmarked as answer by share_starter Wednesday, November 14, 2012 10:18 PM
    • Marked as answer by share_starter Friday, November 16, 2012 4:09 PM
    Wednesday, November 14, 2012 9:26 PM
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    Ok, so you want to create Cases from emails.  It sounds like the best bet is to set up a Queue for the email address.  Then configure your CRM Email router to send emails to that email address to the Queue. 

    From here, you have two options:

    1. You have users monitor the queue, open the email, and use the "Convert to Case" button for converting valid support emails into Cases.  This is good, because you don't create useless Cases, and you don't overburden the CRM system with workflow.  It is, however, potentially labor-intensive.

    2. You set up a workflow that monitors for email Activities created against that Queue, and then creates a Case for that email.  This isn't as robust as the "Convert to Case" button, generally, but it also makes the cases right away. 

    I favor the first, as users have to touch Cases anyway to resolve them.

    The postings on this site are solely my own and do not represent or constitute Hitachi Solutions' positions, views, strategies or opinions.


    Thanks for the reply Wayne. SO if I was to just use a queue and send emails to that queue, would I still need to use the Issue Resolution section? I've been using this section because it creates Vendor Issues but if the best practice is to use the queues, then I can definitely switch over to that. What is the purpose of the Issue Resolution?
    Wednesday, November 14, 2012 10:19 PM
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    Would you mind screenshotting what Issue Resolution is? I think I am missing something that I am used to working with in Cases.

    From a Case management standpoint and a Queue Standpoint, the difference is the Queue is a generic work area that can hold lots of different things.  It's not a resolution area, it's a glorified inbox.  Like an inbox, someone picks stuff up out of it, and then works on it.  In this instance, working on it would be to create a Case and resolve the Case.   Cases have Resolutions, can track time to resolve against service contracts if needed, and have a lot more customer service reporting information than a Queue does.

    The postings on this site are solely my own and do not represent or constitute Hitachi Solutions' positions, views, strategies or opinions.

    Wednesday, November 14, 2012 10:56 PM
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    Would you mind screenshotting what Issue Resolution is? I think I am missing something that I am used to working with in Cases.

    From a Case management standpoint and a Queue Standpoint, the difference is the Queue is a generic work area that can hold lots of different things.  It's not a resolution area, it's a glorified inbox.  Like an inbox, someone picks stuff up out of it, and then works on it.  In this instance, working on it would be to create a Case and resolve the Case.   Cases have Resolutions, can track time to resolve against service contracts if needed, and have a lot more customer service reporting information than a Queue does.

    The postings on this site are solely my own and do not represent or constitute Hitachi Solutions' positions, views, strategies or opinions.

    So what I mean by the Issue Resolution is the section in the screenshot. From my understanding I can create a new case there directly for a particular vendor, however, that is only if I manually create the case rather than from an email. If I was using a queue would this Issue Resolution section be useless or will the caeses still appear under heir appropriate vendors, that is if the vendor field was correctly filled in?

    Wednesday, November 14, 2012 11:04 PM
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    ooohh, Cases have been renamed in your system.  Everything makes sense now.

    Whether or not you use the "Create Case" button on an email, all Cases should be there. 

    Queues don't violate any of that, either.  Issues (Cases) would still show up their respective Vendors, as long as that field was filled out on the Case. 

    to Test all of this, send a dummy email to yourself as if you were sending it for support.  Open it, use the Convert to Case button in CRM (assuming you have the Outlook plugin here), and then fill out the Vendor in the new Issue (Case) that pops up.  Save the Issue (Case) and then navigate to CRM and you should see it relating to your Vendor just fine.

    Queues only provide a common place for everyone to do exactly that without having to deal with going to Outlook for the original support email.

    The postings on this site are solely my own and do not represent or constitute Hitachi Solutions' positions, views, strategies or opinions.

    Wednesday, November 14, 2012 11:18 PM
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    ooohh, Cases have been renamed in your system.  Everything makes sense now.

    Whether or not you use the "Create Case" button on an email, all Cases should be there. 

    Queues don't violate any of that, either.  Issues (Cases) would still show up their respective Vendors, as long as that field was filled out on the Case. 

    to Test all of this, send a dummy email to yourself as if you were sending it for support.  Open it, use the Convert to Case button in CRM (assuming you have the Outlook plugin here), and then fill out the Vendor in the new Issue (Case) that pops up.  Save the Issue (Case) and then navigate to CRM and you should see it relating to your Vendor just fine.

    Queues only provide a common place for everyone to do exactly that without having to deal with going to Outlook for the original support email.

    The postings on this site are solely my own and do not represent or constitute Hitachi Solutions' positions, views, strategies or opinions.

    Thanks Wayne. One question, in order to use Queues as you mention (to receive and email and then create a case) do I need Exchange? Currently I am running a test environment with CRM 2011 and no Exchange configured yet, as it is ouside of our company domain. If I want to test this workflow would I need configure Exchange on the CRM test environment?

    Thanks again for all the help!

    Thursday, November 15, 2012 5:25 PM
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    Yes, to close the loop with a Queue, you need the CRM Email Router set up and pointing to a live email server, such as Exchange.

    You can set up the CRM Email router to the external Exchange with just the Queue email address approved, so you can test it without having to set up a whole new mail server.

    The postings on this site are solely my own and do not represent or constitute Hitachi Solutions' positions, views, strategies or opinions.

    • Proposed as answer by The Hosk Friday, November 16, 2012 1:07 AM
    Thursday, November 15, 2012 5:39 PM
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    Yes, to close the loop with a Queue, you need the CRM Email Router set up and pointing to a live email server, such as Exchange.

    You can set up the CRM Email router to the external Exchange with just the Queue email address approved, so you can test it without having to set up a whole new mail server.

    The postings on this site are solely my own and do not represent or constitute Hitachi Solutions' positions, views, strategies or opinions.

    Thanks for all the help Wayne, I will give that a try :). One other question, the Customer Portal. How do I enable this in CRM 2011? The ultimate goal is to have the users go to the Customer Portal and fill in a form for support, rather than email us. Do you have any idea if this possible or how I can enable/install the portal?

    Thursday, November 15, 2012 8:11 PM
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    The Customer portal is a completely separate thing from core CRM.  There is a free version that Microsoft puts out, and then the retail one ADX Studio maintains.  It's a good framework for having a public-facing portal for CRM data, but you still need to put up a web server for the portal, skin the site to match your own websites, and possible do development on it if it doesn't meet all of your needs out of the box (and what does?).

    Customer Portal is a good start, but it's not going to ready out of the box.

    The postings on this site are solely my own and do not represent or constitute Hitachi Solutions' positions, views, strategies or opinions.

    Friday, November 16, 2012 2:50 PM