The focus of this page is to be a guide for Support Engineers in finding, selecting, assigning and beginning work on support tickets. For information about working on tickets successfully in the Support Global Groups environment, please read the SE Responsibilities and Priorities topic on the main Support Global Groups page.
The views within Zendesk are arranged as follows:
| Name | Purpose |
|---|---|
| My Assigned Tickets | Use this view to manage all of your assigned tickets that are not yet in a Closed state. |
| Needs Org | This view shows all new tickets that will not get assigned to an SGG group and that do not have an organization associated with them. |
| SGG: [group name] | You'll see an alphabetical list of group views here. Each view shows all the non-solved, non-pending tickets for its group. |
Support Engineers should make decisions about what to work on based on the SGG description of prioritizing work. Through that process you may:
Select a new, unassigned ticket in your group's view
There are no special considerations here. Proceed to ticket assignment
Select a new, unassigned ticket in another group's view
In this situation, follow the guidance in the SGG FAQ to move the ticket to your group before proceeding to ticket assignment
Select an in-progress ticket assigned to someone else
In this situation, proceed according to the guidance in our SGG FAQ about responding to other SEs’ tickets.
When you begin work on a new ticket, as your first step please assign the ticket to yourself. In the SGG environment, that shouldn't stop anybody from collaborating with you on the ticket. What it will do is let others know that you have taken responsibility for the ticket, allowing them to help you or to move on to another new ticket.
NOTE: The SLA clock continues to run until you've sent a public response to the user!
As you're working on tickets each day, be aware of the number of tickets in your
My Assigned Tickets view, and of their statuses and needs, so that you can
decide whether you have the right number of tickets. There's no specific number.
Aim to take as many tickets as you can while maintaining customer happiness and
good progress toward resolution on each, and having some amount of time to
meet other responsibilities.
While some people might maintain three to ten open, pending and on-hold tickets
in their
My Assigned Tickets
view, others might comfortably maintain closer to twenty tickets. Each person
will need to find the right ticket load for themself.
You might at times know that you can provide a good response on a specific new ticket, and yet not have room to assign it to yourself. Since every response should be part of a ticket that is assigned to somebody, please place an internal note describing what your first response would be. You might consider then looking for another person in your group who can take the ticket, and even offering to pair with them.
You might at times feel prepared to provide a good first response and yet not prepared to keep the ticket progressing. When that happens, remember you have your group, and in fact the whole global team, ready to help you drive the ticket to a great resolution. You're never alone. So go ahead and accept the challenge! Assign the ticket to yourself, send out your first response, and seek help as soon as you need it.
In SGG, if you've found a new (no first response yet) ticket in your group's
view that you would like to work, you should feel free to work it regardless
of its Preferred region setting. Please assign yourself the ticket and
provide a substantive first response as usual. The one extra thing you should do
is determine whether to keep the ticket or to do a "warm transfer" to a member
of your group who is in the preferred region.
@spt-[SGG]-[region]) so the request is visible for the right group members.It's always a good idea when beginning work on a ticket to perform a few routine steps that can help you to provide a good solution that meets the customer's needs, and that might save you and the customer time and effort as well.
If you take none of the other steps described in this topic, take this one. It is the one most likely to get you very quickly on the right path.
Confirm with the customer your understanding of their situation, needs, and problem to be solved or question to be answered.
OpenEach week, every Support Engineer should aim at least to meet, and preferably to exceed, the appropriate baseline from the following list for the number of first responses:
The aim is to ensure equitable ticket distribution among team members. These numbers are based on ticket volume, number of SEs, and average PTO (15%). We will continue to monitor ticket volume and number of SEs to make sure the above guidelines are accurate.
There will be times when you may be leading an escalation, working through challenging tickets or focus on non-ticket work and you cannot take on new ticket assignment. This is okay! The key is to make sure you have coordinated with your SGG and Manager so they are aware of the risks to our team.
Follow the how to get help workflow for guidance on this. Reach out to a manager for guidance if you are still stuck.
Please see the Support Team Member Time Off page for a full description of this situation.
The best course of action in this case is to acknowledge the customer's wish with a public response
and then set the ticket to On-Hold and change it to type Task with a reminder for yourself
to check in with the customer x days after their planned return.
This way, the ticket will permanently stay On-Hold for the duration of the customer's absence. See
Behavior of On-Hold tickets
for details.
There are some situations in which it is appropriate to reassign a ticket:
If you've determined that specific expertise outside your own is required to resolve the ticket, pair with an expert so that you can get the ticket resolved and learn in the process. If that person determines that they need to take the lead due to the advanced or complex nature of the problem, then:
This should only happen on rare occasions since in the SGG system all tickets should be assigned from the time the first response is made. When it does happen, please:
As detailed in Support General Policies it is GitLab's policy to handle each unique issue or incident within a single support ticket.
As detailed in the Support General Policies it is GitLab policy to handle each individual incident, problem or issue within a single support ticket. If a situation arises where you need to open a new ticket on behalf of a customer then please use the following steps:
Please note: The above approach is required in order to ensure that the ticket is routed correctly and is assigned an SLA.