HaloPSA Guides

Topics Covered In This Lesson

1. Global Notifications
2. Configuring Notifications
3. A List of Event Triggers
4. Personal Notifications
5. Agent Level Settings
6. Notifying An Agent of All Tickets
   
7. SLA Notifications

Global Notifications

These are set up from the notifications section in the configuration console Configuration > Notifications. Here is where you set up global notifications or ones that agents can subscribe to:

The only difference between the two screens for the set-up is the notification type. Setting up a notification this way allows you to determine who the notification goes to, rather than forcing the notification only to go to you. 

Notification Configuration

To begin creating notifications, head to Configuration > Notifications > *Click on the notifications module*. Once viewing the list of notifications, you can click on new in the top right hand corner. This will take you to the notification creation screen.

Settings

• Description: The name of the notification
• Notification Type: The person, or entity receiving the notification, if "Agent Notification" is selected, this allows for multiple agents to be selected, it can also be set to a single agent type.
• Access Restriction: Restrict which agents can access this notification. You can restrict by department or team, so if for example you wanted only the Human Resources team to be able to use this notification, you can restrict to that team. Now when an agent that is part of the human resources team goes to their preferences tab and looks to see what notifications they have, they will be able to checkbox on the restricted notification, no other agents outside of that team can add this notification to their list:

For example, Jennifer from the HR team can add this notification named: "Restricted to HR" to her list, as it is restricted to the HR team, but no other teams agents can add it:

• Default Delivery Method: This can be email, sms, browser notification or popup notification in the portal. The pop up option will appear within the pane of the bell icon in the top right hand side of the portal  The other option is a push notification via iOS or android.
• Event: Define which event will cause the notification to trigger, i.e. the assigned to recipients team, which means agents assigned to the notification, will be notified when their team/ teams have a new ticket logged against them, this also applies if the agent with the notification is assigned a ticket.
• Criteria Table: There can be certain criteria which needs to be met for an event to trigger. This may be that you would like the notifications to agents for new tickets logged to their team to be triggered, but only when the ticket is of a certain ticket type, i.e. change request - 3rd Party. Now the only notification for new tickets logged, will be sent to agents, if the ticket type is of the following type:

Criteria Added v2.144.1

Added criteria when using asset triggers for notifications, webhooks, and runbooks

The criteria can use the:

• Asset Tag
• Status
• Asset Type
• Asset Custom Fields

Notification Types in Detail

These are all of the types of notifications you can set globally as an administrator, these will trigger notifications by the configured method to the intended recipients.

• Agent Notification:
  • This will notify any agents who are subscribed to this notification. Agents can be added via the agents tab, or roles can be added which will then add all the agents attached to that role onto the notification, they will display in the agents tab with "Inherited from Role" displayed, and the notification rows for each agent will show in blue.

• Agent Notification (Single Agent):
  • This will notify a fixed agent of an event. These are often personal notifications.
    

• Team Leader Notification:
  • This will notify the Team Leader of any Team/Section within which a notification condition is set.
• Account Manager
  • The account manager for the customer will be notified when this type is used. Account managers can be set from the details sidebar (Tab) of a customer.
• Primary Agent
  • The Primary Agent for the customer will be notified when this type is used. Primary Agents can be set from the details sidebar (Tab) of a customer.
• Secondary Agent
  • The Secondary Agent for the customer will be notified when this type is used. Secondary Agent can be set from the details sidebar (Tab) of a customer.
• Department manager Notification:
  • This does the same as above but for Department Managers, department managers can be added via a user role Configuration > Users > User Roles, set the department manager on a role and then assign users to the role, so that they inherit department manager from the role, alternatively departments and department managers can be configured in  Configuration > Organisation > *Departments Tab*.

• Notify All Agents:
  • This notifies all agents when triggered. Often used for high priority notifications or events.
• Recipient/ Related User of a Ticket:
  • Will notify the end user of a ticket if the ticket triggers an event.
• End-User Notification:
  • This notifies a fixed end-user when triggered. The search button can be clicked on which will open a cleaner UI for selecting an end-user.

As of v2.154 you can filter the user recipients of the notification by things such as send to all subscribers at the tickets top level. This would pertain to all users at the same top level as the customer/site/user of the ticket.

• Fixed Email Notification:
  • Notifies a given email address, can be used for team email groups or monitoring services.
    

• Slack Notification:
  • Updates slack for the given channel integrated. "Slack integration must be enabled for this option to show.
    

• Mattermost Notification
  • The Mattermost integration also has a notification type that will be visible if the integration is turned on. Similar to slack, you can choose a channel that your Halo has been integrated with.

• Manager of the recipient of a Ticket
  • This would send an email to the line manager of the user of a ticket, using the Active Directory Line Manager field. This notification type must be set to the email delivery method.

• Send to Site Contact
  • When this option is selected the site contacts can be used as the recipients of notifications, the site contacts can be configured in "Configuration > Users > Site Contact Types". Then they are added in the tab shown below within each clients sites:

The site contact type can also be filtered on, so that specific contact types will be notified i.e. "Site Administrator", which was previously added to the site contacts list in the example images above.

Adding Agents to an Agent Notification

To add agents to an existing notification:

1. Navigate into the notification.
2. Click on the agents tab.
3. Press the ⊕.
4. Select the agent to add.
5. Click "Save".

Agents can add themselves to notifications that they have access to. If "None - All Agents can subscribe to this Notification" is selected via the restrictions of a notification, then any agent can assign themselves to the notification, if team is set, then only the agents in the team can assign themselves.

There are some checkbox settings under the general notifications tab

List of Triggers

• New Ticket Logged
  • Triggered when a new ticket is logged in the system.
• New P1 Ticket Logged
  • Triggered when a ticket is logged in the system which has a priority level of 1 (aka the highest priority tickets).
• New OOH Ticket Logged
  • Triggered when a ticket is logged outside of the working hours you have configured into the system.
• New Ticket Logged (Qualified)
  • Triggered when a new ticket is logged that requires specific qualifications (see qualifications section under "Teams and Agents" configuration section).
• Ticket Updated by User
  • Triggered when a user emails into a ticket to update it, this can include other agents updating your tickets if you have this functionality "switched on" for that ticket type.
• P1 Ticket Updated by User
  • Triggered when a priority 1 ticket (see above) is updated by an end-user via email.
• OOH Ticket Updated by User
  • Triggered when an out-of-hours ticket is updated by the end-user via email.
• Ticket Updated by User (Qualified)
  • Triggered when a ticket requiring certain qualifications (See above) is updated by an end-user via email.
• Ticket Updated
  • Triggered by any update on a ticket (any new action taken).
• Re-assign
  • Triggered when a ticket is re-assigned to the agent the notification is assigned to. 
• Closed
  • Triggered when a ticket is closed.
• Ticket Status Changed
  • Triggered when the status of a ticket changes.
• Ticket Unassigned for X Hours
  • Triggered when a ticket is in the "unassigned" queue for a number of hours of your choosing.
• Priority Escalated
  • Triggered when a ticket has it's priority increased, e.g. moving from P2 to P1, aka High to Critical.
• Estimate Exceeded
  • Triggered when a ticket is exceeding the "estimated time" it should take (estimated time field must be on the ticket in question). 
• 1st SLA Warning
  • Triggered when the SLA of a ticket is under certain percentage of time left (this is set in the windows application, but will be defaulted to 75% of the time gone if you have never altered this value).
• 2nd SLA Warning
  • Triggered when the SLA of a ticket is under certain percentage of time left (this is set in the windows application, but will be defaulted to 90% of the time gone if you have never altered this value).
• Ticket Deadline Warning
  • Triggered when a ticket is nearing it's deadline ("Deadline" is a field you can add to tickets to ensure they are complete by a certain date).
• Ticket Deadline
  • Triggered when a ticket has reached/breached it's deadline (see above).
• Re-order Level Alarm
  • Triggered when stock is low of a certain item in your system and it is time to re-order.
• Pre-Pay Threshold met
  • Can set a pre-pay used percentage, the notification will trigger when the amount of pre-pay used surpasses this percentage (the notification will only trigger the first time the customer has surpassed the pre-pay threshold). 
• Purchase order created/updated/deleted
  • Three options, triggered when a notification has been created, updated of deleted.
• Ticket Changed
  • A notification will be sent when changes to the ticket are made, this includes changes to any field on the ticket. You will need to set which changes will trigger this in the criteria table, if no criteria is set the notification will not trigger. 
  • Assigned to recipients/ teams/unassigned - When triggered this can be sent to the agent assigned to the ticket, all agents in the team the ticket is assigned to, when the ticket is unassigned or sent to all agents whenever any changes are made. 

As of 2.151 'Ticket budget threshold met' is a new event trigger

This notification type can be used for the following Tickets: 

• Tickets assigned to me 
• Tickets assigned to my teams
• Unassigned Tickets
• All of the above

The notification will fire for the ticket that has the associated budget exceeded, and for only one instance of that budget type in the child-parent-grandparent relationship.

An accompanying 'Budget used %' field will be visible to choose what minimum percentage the notification will trigger at. This will only trigger once when the 'budget used' has been met or surpassed. Using the above configuration as an example and stating the budget is currently at 70%, an action causes the budget to hit 78%, triggering the notification to fire. Doing another action after this will not cause the above notification to trigger again. 

NB: The event service must be enabled to use this functionality.

Setting up a Personal Notification

Any agent who can change their preferences can set up their own notifications. These can be used to monitor ones own tickets or those of your team.

Clicking on your initials icon (or profile picture if you have configured one) and then "My Account" takes you to your agent's settings screen. Clicking preferences and heading down to notifications brings you to the list of your Notifications.

The upper part of this notifications configuration is designated to notifications that can be subscribed to by agents. These are notifications that exist in the system already and will notify the agent by the method shown in the second column. The third column displays the trigger that will cause these to send. Any conditions should be stated in the "Name" to avoid confusion. 

The second option is the personal notifications, agents can edit their personal notifications once created, they cannot create them. These are custom Notifications for this Agent only.

Conditions

These take the form of any ticket level field that can be associated with a ticket and the values these hold. This allows you to customise your notifications at a granular level. You can select a wide variety of fields here to create conditions with. This includes the team the ticket is assigned to, to any category value associated with the ticket. This also includes ticket level custom fields, and much more.

Agent Level Settings

In addition to personal notifications, there are checkbox options for some system defaults, which are configured per agent. The first option is to turn off your own notifications

Do not send me notifications which I triggered: When checked, if you create a new ticket and assign yourself, you will not be notified of this.

Send notifications for errors with Incoming/Outgoing Email and Halo Integrator: When checked on, emails will be sent to your agents email account notifying you when there are errors with Incoming/Outgoing Email or the Halo Integrator.

Send notification when the Halo Integrator has not run for X amount of hours: When checked, you can receive a notification when the halo integrator has not run, you can define how many hours after it has stopped running until you receive a notification, as shown below

Defining the hours from when the Halo integrator last ran

Notifying An Agent of All Tickets

Setting on the option (Configuration > Notifications > General Settings):

Agents can get notified for tickets that are not assigned to a team or department that they are member of. When checked, agents that have a notification for i.e. Event: "New ticket logged - All" will receive all notifications regardless of team and department.

SLA Notifications

If using the NHServer, to configure SLA notifications there must be a setting enabled. Go to Configuration > Advanced Settings > *Configure NHServer Button* then make sure the following setting is turned off.

To enable SLA notifications go to Configuration > Service Level Agreements > General Settings:

The dropdown can be set to "Percentage of SLA response/ resolution target" met, or for the number of "Hours before resolution target" is met. Then head to notifications and configure 1st SLA warning and 2nd SLA warning notifications, there should be two separate notifications, the triggers are 1st SLA Warning and 2nd SLA Warning.