In the last how-to I mentioned something about Staff Only departments.

This is a really great feature of iDesk and extends it’s capabilities beyond most help desks.

For our example we’re going to assume you offer technical support in two tiers.

Tier 1 which is basic support and fulfills the need to respond to the user as fast as possible to let them know their issue is being worked on. Tier 1 does the easy support work and replies.

Tier 2 is advanced support. These are the guys who know everything. The issue is that these guys are few and far between and they can’t spend their time answering simple questions.

The solution? Staff Only departments. Assuming your email address is support@idesksupport.com and that you already have your support deparment set up, you need to add a new department now.

Click on Department and then click on the green Plus sign to add a new department. Enter the department name (lets use Tier 2 Support) and description and now check off the Staff Only box and click Add.

Now if you look at your departments you’ll see Support and Tier 2 Support. Go ahead and look at the home page for iDesk. Tier 2 Support does not appear there!

The only way a ticket can get into the Tier 2 Support queue is for a staff member that belongs to the Support department to assign the ticket to Tier 2 Support.

If the Support department users do not have permission to view tickets in Tier 2 Support the ticket would seem to disappear to them after they went back to the Browse Tickets page.

Tier 2 Support users would now see the ticket and can respond without having to sort through dozens of support requests just to find a request that they would be needed for.

Using Staff Only departments will cut down on the amount of time your users spend monitoring tickets. This translates into more productivity and happier customers.

iDesk is really great software, I use it daily and you should consider iDesk for your help desk solution if you haven’t already.