Teams

A team is a group of agents who share a ticket queue and look after some locations, like "Tier 1", "Zone 1" or "Maintenance – North". Tickets reach a team from a topic's route, a routing rule, a team's email address, or a person. The team then decides who works each ticket.

Admin › Tickets › Teams opens the Teams tab of Users. You need View people to see it, and the Users area of Admin › People › Roles at Edit to add teams and change them, or Full to delete them.

The Teams tab#

A list of your teams: each row has the team's name and description, its Department (when departments are on), how it will Assign new tickets, and the team it Escalates to. schoolOS staff see teams across accounts, with an Account column. Search teams... finds a team by name, and Columns shows, hides and reorders the columns. Select a column's name to sort every team by it; Assign new tickets sorts Manual, Take turns, then Fewest open tickets. Select a row to open the team's page.

The … menu at the end of a row:

• Open. The team's page.
• Edit. Change its Name and Description, then Save changes.
• Add agent. Pick someone under Agent, then Add agent. The list has the people who can be assigned tickets: agents and admins, not everyone in the account.
• Delete. Removes the team once you confirm. It leaves routing and the team pickers; its tickets keep whoever they're assigned to. A department's default team can't be deleted until another team is the default.

New team opens New team: a Name, an optional Description and, when departments are on, the Department whose tickets the team works. The department you're in is picked to start. schoolOS staff also pick the Account the team belongs to before creating it. Its member choices come from that account. Select Create team.

schoolOS global admins choose an Account in the Teams tab or the New team dialog. The list, department choices and available agents follow that account, and new teams are saved there. Opening a team uses its account; the Teams breadcrumb and Back to Teams keep that account selected, including after a page reload. Account admins continue to create teams in their own account automatically.

A team's page#

The team's description is under its name. Teams, in the path at the top, returns to the list. Edit details changes the team's Name and Description.

The page is in sections: Department, Tickets this team owns, Coverage, Routing and Members. Select a section's heading to open or close it. A closed section shows its setting, like "Take turns" or "3 locations chosen", and the page remembers which you left open. Members starts open.

Department#

When departments are on, Department is the department whose tickets the team works (Works tickets for). Its topics and rules can send tickets to the team, and the team shows in that department's pickers. Picking another department moves the team straight away. A department's default team can't move: make another team the default first.

Tickets this team owns#

Default team#

Each department has one default team. A ticket that no rule, no topic and no covering team places lands there, so none are left without an owner. A topic or rule that applies later moves it on.

Make default makes this team the department's default, and the old default stops being one. To stop a team being the default, make another team the default.

Private tickets#

Teams aren't made private anymore: a ticket is private when its topic is private. Put the team on that topic's access list, and its members see the topic's tickets as they come and go.

Each team that used to be private became a private topic of the same name in its department, with the team on its access list, and its email address now lands on that topic. Its tickets stayed private, and the people let in on each one stayed in. A team still marked Private (one that had no department) shows the switch until you turn it off; its tickets stay private.

A single ticket that holds student records is kept private the same way: give it a private topic. See Who can see it.

Its own email address#

Type the part before the @, like records, and select Save address. Email sent there becomes this team's ticket straight away. When the address lands on a topic (a private team's did when it became a private topic), the ticket gets that topic too, so mail to records@ is private from the first second. Clear the box and select Remove address to stop it. Share the address shown with the people who should use it.

Coverage#

The locations this team is responsible for. People whose role sees Their teams' tickets, assets and tasks (what that means) see what's at every location their teams cover. A person has one location of their own; teams are how they look after more.

• Its members' locations. Every team starts here. Wherever the people on the team are based, so it changes as people join or leave.
• Chosen locations. Only the locations you tick, grouped by district when you have more than one. Find a location narrows the list.
• All locations. Every location in your account.

Select Save coverage, or Discard to put back what was saved. Everyone on the team sees the change on their next page: add a school, and every member can see its tickets, assets and tasks; take it off, and they can't. A school can be covered by several teams. Coverage never opens a private ticket.

You need Update people to change it. If your own role reaches only your locations, you can tick only the locations you reach (the others are grayed out), you can't pick All locations, and locations someone else chose that you don't reach stay as they are.

Which should I choose?#

| Option | What it does | Choose it when | | --- | --- | --- | | Its members' locations | Covers where the team's people are based. | Each tech looks after their own building, and the team shares a queue. Nothing to keep up to date. | | Chosen locations | Covers exactly the schools you pick. | Schools are split into zones or areas, like "Zone 1 covers five schools", and the split doesn't follow where people sit. | | All locations | Covers every location. | A district-wide team, like central IT or the grounds crew. |

For example, a district with 12 schools splits them into three zones. The Zone 1 team covers its five schools with Chosen locations. When the district moves Lincoln Elementary to Zone 2, untick it on Zone 1 and tick it on Zone 2: Zone 2's techs see Lincoln's tickets at once, and Zone 1's don't.

New tickets from these locations come to this team#

With Chosen locations, this switch sends new tickets filed at those locations to this team, when they're in the team's department. It's a step of routing, after routing rules and the topic's route, before the department's default team: a rule or a topic that knows the type still wins, and the team covering the school takes the rest. Off by default.

If two teams in the same department route the same school, the one covering the fewest locations takes it (so "Lincoln Elementary" beats "Zone 1"), then the name A to Z. The ticket's routing trail says "Location's team: Zone 1 covers Lincoln Elementary".

Routing#

Assign new tickets#

How the team picks a person for a ticket that routing places with it and nobody is assigned to. It applies whichever step chose the team: a rule, a topic's route, the location's team or the department's default team.

• Manual. The default. Tickets wait in the team queue until someone takes them.
• Take turns. Each new ticket goes to the member who was given one of this team's tickets longest ago, by when it was assigned to them, not when it was opened.
• Fewest open tickets. Each new ticket goes to the member with the fewest open tickets, counting all their open tickets, not only this team's. Pending tickets count as open; solved and closed ones don't. A tie goes to whoever was given one of this team's tickets longest ago.

Either automatic method only picks active members who aren't marked out of office. When an available member handles the ticket's topic, only members who handle it can be picked. A ticket that already has someone keeps them, and a solved or closed ticket is never assigned. If nobody can be picked, the ticket waits in the queue.

Which should I choose?

| Method | Choose it when | | --- | --- | | Manual | A lead hands out the work, or agents pick their own from the queue. Also right for a small team where everyone watches the queue anyway, and for work that needs a judgment call before anyone owns it. | | Take turns | The team's tickets are similar in size, like password resets and Chromebook swaps, and you want everyone to get the same number. It ignores how busy people are, so someone already buried in a project still gets their turn. | | Fewest open tickets | Tickets vary a lot in size, or members also work other teams' tickets. Someone stuck on a long job gets fewer new ones. Tickets parked in Pending still count against them, so clear out stale Pending tickets or they'll look busier than they are. |

For example:

• A district Tier 1 team of four. Most tickets are quick account and device fixes. Take turns gives each agent every fourth ticket, and each ticket's routing trail says "takes turns".
• Facilities – North, three technicians covering HVAC, plumbing and general repairs across five schools. A boiler job can take a week. Fewest open tickets keeps the technician on the boiler from getting the next ten work orders.
• A middle school tech assigned to one building, on a team of one. The method doesn't matter much; Take turns or Fewest open tickets assigns every ticket to them automatically, while Manual leaves each one in the queue until they take it.

Select Save routing settings, or Discard. They appear once you change the method.

Topics routed here lists the topics that send tickets to this team. Change them in Admin › Tickets › Topics & Routing or on the Routing tab of Admin › Tickets › Topics & Routing.

To hand at-risk tickets to a next team, like Tier 2 after Tier 1, set the Escalation team on Admin › Tickets › SLAs.

Members#

A list of the team's members, with their role. Select a member to open their profile. Add member searches people by name, email or username; pick one and select Add to team. In a member's … menu, Remove from team takes them off the team once you confirm; tickets already theirs stay theirs.

Topics each member handles#

When the team's department has topics, each member has a button in Topics they handle. Tick the topics they handle. Ticking a topic covers everything under it, at any depth.

When the team picks a person for a ticket, it picks only among the available members who handle the ticket's topic, even when they're the busiest people on the team, with either method. Everyone else, including members with nothing ticked, gets that topic's tickets only when none of them is available. Tickets with no topic, or on a topic nobody on the team handles, go to any available member. The topics button says the same.

For example, on a Tier 1 team of four, tick Printing for your printer expert. With Take turns, every printer ticket goes to them while they're in, and everything else is shared among all four. When they're marked out of office, printer tickets go to whoever's turn it is.

Tick topics for people who should own that work, not for everyone who can do it.