Adding, copying, and editing tickets

This button only appears on the toolbar of resources with a non-co-managed security level. Clicking it saves the ticket and passes it to the co-managed help desk and moves the resource from the Primary Resource to the Secondary Resource(s) field. It also sets the Assigned to Co-managing User field to True.

If a queue is not selected, the ticket is assigned to the organization's Primary Co-managing User.

This button only appears on the toolbar of resources with a co-managed security level. Clicking it saves the ticket and passes it back to the service provider and moves the Co-managing User from the Primary Resource to the Secondary Resource(s) field. It also sets the Assigned to Co-managing User field to False.

1. Put the form into Edit mode.
2. Select the template from the Enter Speed Code or Choose Template menu at the top of the form. The available templates are grouped into Recently Used (not available on all forms), Personal, Department, and Organization templates. Each section is sorted alphabetically.
   
3. To use a speed code, enter it in the field. The template corresponding to the speed code will be highlighted automatically. Either click the template or click Enter to select it.

Form templates follow the limitations of the currently applied category and the user's security settings. If a form template uses a value or provides content that is not allowed in a field by the category or the user's security settings, the field will not be updated. This includes the category field itself.

IMPORTANT  Selecting a form template is the equivalent of manually populating the form. Form template settings will override any previously populated field content, including notification settings, additional contacts, and secondary resources.

The [Entity] Category field appears on all entity pages for which categories can be configured. They determine the layout and the options on the entity:

• The sections that appear on the Details panel
• The order of the sections
• The section titles
• The fields in each section
• The display order of components and elements in the Main panel
• The field defaults and required settings
• The pick list options
• The insights that appear on the Insights panel (except Organization Category)
• The tags that appear on the Main panel (Tickets only)

Refer to Introduction to Categories.

Adding or editing a ticket

Subject to security permissions, click the drop-down menu and make a selection.

When you create a new ticket, the ticket category defaults to the category selected on your Profile page or the system default if you didn't choose one on the profile. If your security level allows you to choose between multiple ticket categories, click the drop-down menu and choose the appropriate category.

Viewing a ticket

When you are viewing the ticket, you will see the ticket in its actual ticket category.

If your security level includes access to other ticket categories, you can view the ticket using a different category's layout, without modifying the ticket's actual ticket category. This will give you access to fields that may be hidden on the original category.

Access to ticket categories may be limited by your security level. Refer to Available Ticket Categories when Creating or Editing Tickets. You will not be able to change the ticket category at all if one of the following applies:

• Your security level has a specific ticket category selected for the Render all Tickets as Ticket Category setting. Refer to Render all Tickets as Ticket Category:.
• You are assigned a Co-managed Help Desk security level, and Ticket Category Override was selected for you.

Either way, you are limited to the one ticket category when creating or viewing a ticket.

The ticket type determines which Accessory tabs are available and which Tools are enabled on the ticket. Refer to Tools menu and Selecting a ticket type.

With the Ticket Type classification, Autotask supports the Information Technology Infrastructure Library (ITIL), a set of practices for IT service management (ITSM), specifically Service Management, Incident Management, Problem Management, and Change Management. But even if you don't follow ITIL guidelines for problem management, the problem/incident ticket feature of Autotask will help you group and manage tickets that have a common cause.

An additional ticket type, Alert, supports the deep integration between Autotask and Datto RMM.

Changing ticket type using workflow rules

Ticket type can be changed using a workflow rule. Refer to Adding, editing, and copying workflow rules.

The following rules apply:

Workflow rules can change this ticket type...	to these
Service Request	Incident Problem Change Request Alert
Problem	Incident, unless there are Incidents Service Request, unless there are Change Requests or Incidents Change Request, unless there are Change Requests Alert, unless there are Change Requests or Incidents
Incident	Service Request Problem Change Request Alert
Change Request	Incident, unless there is more than one Problem, or if there are Incidents Problem, unless there are Problems Service Request, unless there are Problems or Incidents Alert
Alert	Incident Problem Change Request Service Request

A note is added to the ticket indicating that a workflow rule fired or the reasons it didn't fire.

The Ticket Stopwatch starts running as soon as you open the New Ticket page or the Edit Ticket page.
For detailed information, refer to The task or ticket stopwatch.

This field tells the user what the ticket is about. It is most often used for ticket searches when the ticket number is not known.

You can apply tags to tickets through ticket categories, custom mailboxes, incoming email processing, form templates, or the Client Portal to indicate the content of tickets and help you easily find them in widgets and searches. Autotask supports up to 30 tags per ticket.The Tags section of the Ticket detail view shows the tags that have been added and, if you have the appropriate permissions, allows you to add new tags. You can also easily remove tags and organize them by tag group. Refer to Working with tags on a ticket for more information.

This section is only displayed for insourced tickets.

If you have insourced a ticket from another Autotask customer, the Insource Information is displayed automatically on the ticket. This information is read-only. Refer to Insourcing features on the Ticket page.

This is a brief summary about how the ticket was resolved. This field supports Rich Text. For important information and compatibility details about the Rich Text feature, refer to The Rich Text editor.

You can also populate this field with data from the Summary field of a ticket time entry, the Description field of a related ticket note (by selecting the Append to Resolution check box), or the Reason field from a completed ticket (this field appears only for organizations that require a completion reason).

If Knowledge Base is enabled and this ticket is used to create a new article, the contents of the Resolution field appear in the Knowledge Base article. Refer to Creating Knowledge Base articles from tickets.

The display of this field is controlled by the ticket category.

The Timeline is only displayed when you edit the ticket. It is a visual ticket component that provides insights into the lifecycle of a ticket and the performance of the resources working it. Ticket creation, due date, and SLA targets are displayed below the timeline, and actual performance is indicated above the timeline.

Refer to The ticket timeline.

Ticket creators can add a checklist to a ticket to provide a set of steps that are necessary to resolve the ticket. Assigned resources can then check off each step as it is completed, and Autotask will track the date and time and the resource name. Using checklists improves consistency, provides service managers with an immediate view of the progress on a ticket, and assists in guiding less experienced team members.

NOTE  Checklist items will be copied to the new ticket without the Complete status.

Refer to The checklist.

The same device cannot be both the device and an additional device.

• If a device is already listed in the Additional Devices field and is then selected as the device, it will be removed from the Additional Devices field.
• If a device is already listed in the Device field, it cannot be selected in the Additional Devices field.

Add up to 100 additional devices to a ticket. Additional devices can be added even if the Device field is empty.

The same contact cannot be both the ticket contact and an additional contact.

• If a contact is already listed in the Additional Contacts field and is then selected as the ticket contact, the contact will be removed from the Additional Contacts field.
• If a contact is already listed in the ticket Contact field and is then selected as an additional contact, a confirmation dialog box will appear. If you click Yes, the confirmation will close, the Contact field will be cleared, and the chosen contact will be added as an additional contact.

An Additional Contacts insight is available and can be selected for the ticket category. It displays the names, titles, contact data of the first three additional contacts associated with the ticket.

Add up to 30 additional customer contacts to a ticket. Additional contacts can be added even if the ticket Contact field is empty.

For this field, you can select a different local term. In your Autotask instance, it may be named Device (default), Asset, Configuration Item, Installed Asset, or Installed Product. Refer to Selecting a currency and local terms and symbols.

A device is a product associated with an organization that is being supported with a ticket or affected by a subscription. When you select a device on a ticket, the Primary identifying information to display for devices on a ticket system setting will determine which device field populates this field. Options are Product Name, Serial Number, Reference Name, or Reference Number.

• Selecting a device on a new ticket will populate the Organization, Contact, Contract, and SLA fields.
• To add a new device, click the next to the Device field. You can do this only after you have selected an organization.
• To associate an existing device with a ticket, search for it by name, serial number, reference number, or reference name.
• To find a device associated with a ticket's contact, click the contact icon to open a device selector that presents only devices associated with a tickets' contact (available only if a contact has been selected for the ticket).
  
• If you add a device that has a default billing contract, the device's contract will override any other contract associated with the ticket (for example, a default service desk contract), even when the Contract field is hidden by the ticket's category. If the device is also associated with a specific service or service bundle, it will be automatically selected, but you will be able to select a different service or bundle from the same contract.

This field allows you to view or add a name that you specify for the device. You can report on this field by using standard reports or LiveReports (refer to Reports on products that are associated with customer organizations as devices).

If you are using device discovery, this value is a read-only field reported by device discovery. The source for this information varies by monitoring service. For example, the service may use the Name or Computer Name values returned by device discovery. The monitoring service may not provide a default value. For some monitoring services, the Reference Name field displays duplicate information. For example, the content of the Reference Name field is identical to the content of the Device ID field. If there is no default, you can manually add a reference name.

Reference numbers work like serial numbers, but you can assign them by using your own system. Reference numbers are not required by product categories. You can report on this field by using standard reports or LiveReports (refer to Reports on products that are associated with customer organizations as devices).

The serial number identifies a particular stocked item in your inventory, or a device installed at an organization. This field appears only if the product associated with the device or stocked item has the Serialized check box selected. Serial numbers can be up to 100 characters long.

Enter the serial numbers of the items currently being added, separated by line breaks.

Devices:

• Serial numbers cannot be updated using an import.
• Serial numbers linked to a stocked item cannot be deleted, but if the serial number of the stocked item is modified, the serial number of the device is updated automatically.
• If you enter a duplicate serial number, you will see a warning indicating that a device with this product and serial number already exists. The import will fail for this row.
• If you enter a serial number for a non-serialized product, the import will fail for the row.
• If the item you are installing is a printer associated with the Xerox PageConnect/XPPS program, the Serial Number is required.

Inventory:

• The count of serial numbers you are adding in the list will equal the number of items added in the Items Added field, and will be equal to On Hand (New) - On Hand (Old).
• When adding a stocked item, you can type or paste the serial numbers into the field. Each number must be on a separate line or the serial numbers must be separated by a comma.
• You can use a keyboard wedge option with a bar code scanner to quickly enter serial numbers.
• When editing a stocked item, if a serial number is reserved or picked, the Ticket Number,Project Name, Contract Name, or Quote Name is hyperlinked on the row.

A Co-Managed Visibility field is available for all ticket categories. This field will appear for all users except users with a co-managed security level. It will allow users to set tickets to Visible or Not Visible for co-managing resources .The field is available in all ticket contexts for viewing, searching, filtering and reporting.

If set to Visible, the ticket is visible to all co-managing resources and teams assigned to the ticket organization. Tickets are visible to co-managing resources if one of the following applies:

• The ticket has a co-managing resource as either the primary or secondary resource
• The ticket is marked as Assigned to Co-managed
• The ticket is a Change Request and one of the approvers is a co-managing resource
• The co-managing resource is on the selected Change Advisory Board or the Other Resource Approver field
• Even visible tickets are still hidden from co-managing resources who are not associated with the organization.

If set to Not Visible, the following applies:

• Co-managed resources cannot be assigned, even if the organization is co-managed and they are assigned to that organization. This allows you to create tickets for co-managed organizations that are hidden from the co-managing team.
• The ticket is not visible to co-managing resources and teams, even if they are assigned to the ticket organization. It overrides any other visibility settings.
• If a workflow rule changes a ticket to Not visible, but the Primary Resource is co-managing, the workflow rule will fail. If a Secondary Resource is co-managing, the workflow rule will succeed and the co-managing resource will be removed from the ticket.
• If the ticket category is assigned to tickets in email processing and a primary or secondary resource is a co-managing resource, ticket creation will fail. Co-managed visibility must be set to Visible if co-managing resources may be assigned. You may want to set up a separate mailbox for tickets that will be assigned to co-managing resources.

To display this field for a category, move it from the Hidden Fields section to another section. Note that this field is not displayed for co-managing resources.

Organization or Organization Name refers to the organization associated with the entity. This field is always required.

• In View mode, the name will appear as a hyperlink for users with permission to view the organization, and as plain text for all others.

• In New mode, enter the name of the organization. As you type, Autotask will suggest possible matches. Click an organization name to select it and populate the field. Alternatively, you can click the selector icon to choose the organization from a list. On some entities, such as ticket and opportunity, you can click the plus icon to the right of the selector icon to quickly create a new organization. Refer to Adding an organization.

• In Edit mode, this field cannot be modified for some entities (for example, projects and devices).

For this field, you can select a different local term. In your Autotask instance, it may be labeled Account, Business Unit, Client, Company, Customer, Organization, or Site. Refer to Selecting a currency and local terms and symbols.

You cannot change the organization associated with a ticket if:

• It has posted billing items (time entries, charges, or expenses).
• It has a posted Overage Per Ticket Purchase.
• It is associated with an opportunity or a project.
• It has to-dos.
• It is associated with your local organization The database record of your own organization in Autotask. It has the organization ID "0", and is used as the sender address on quotes, invoices, etc. Previous versions of the help referred to this database record as: 0 Account, Zero Company, Your Own Company. and has time entries. You can remove the time entries and then edit the organization field.
• It is a Datto RMM ticket.
• It is an insourced ticket.
• It was created in Taskfire. Because a Taskfire ticket is created by a customer in Taskfire, the customer owns the ticket and so the customer organization on the ticket cannot be changed.
• The ticket type is Change Request and the ticket has an active Request Review.

This field appears in entities that track status. It displays the (last) date and time the status was set to Complete.

This field appears in entities that track status. It displays the name of the person who changed the status to Complete. If the entity was completed by a workflow rule or ticket merge, Administrator, Autotask will be displayed.

A contact is a person at an organization who is associated with the entity you are creating or editing.

This field appears on many entities that display the Organization field. You must select an organization before you can select a contact. All active contacts associated with the organization plus the current contact, even if it is inactive, are available. If the organization is a sub-organization Previously: Subsidiary. Your Autotask instance may be configured to use one of the following terms instead: Sub-Account, Sub-Business Unit, Sub-Client, Sub-Company, Sub-Customer, Sub-Site. of another organization, you can select a contact from the list of parent organization Your Autotask instance may be configured to use one of the following terms instead: Headquarters, Parent Account, Parent Client, Parent Company, Parent Customer. contacts that appears below a dashed line.

On some entities, such as ticket and opportunity, you can click the plus icon to create a new contact. Refer to Adding and editing contacts.

In Add or Edit mode, start typing the name of a person or click the selector icon to choose a person from an alphabetic list.

All entities:

• Selecting a contract is optional. If no contract is selected, standard time and materials billing will apply.
• The Contract field is not active until an organization is selected.
• The field is unavailable if you do not have security permissions to modify the contract.
• If you selected a recurring service contract, you must also select a service or a service bundle.

Devices:

• If the item you are installing is a printer associated with the Xerox PageConnect/XPPS program, the Contract must be a recurring service contract and is required.

Tickets:

• The Contract field may already be populated if the customer (or, if it is a sub-organization, the parent organization) has set up a default Service Desk contract.
• If you select a device that is associated with a contract, the device's contract will prevail, unless you manually select another contract.

Projects:

• If you select a contract that has a start date after the project start date or an end date before the project end date, a warning message opens. To select the contract anyway, click OK. Make sure you edit the contract and extend the contract timeline, if appropriate.
• To create a contract to associate with the project, click the plus sign . You can select the contract type. The Organization Name defaults to the organization associated with the project. You can change the organization to an organization that is a parent organization to the project organization. Refer to Sub-Organizations.

This shows the targeted date for completing a workflow.

Enter a valid date. This field may be populated by defaults set for the ticket category or the form template, but it can be edited.

The targeted time to complete a workflow.

Enter a valid time. This field may be populated by defaults set for the ticket category or form template, but it can be edited.

The number of hours you estimate it will take to complete the work.

Project Tasks:

Estimated (h) and another field, Per Resource (h), are interdependent.

• If you select Fixed Work, the Estimated (h) field is enabled and the Per Resource (h) field is calculated
• If you select Fixed Duration, the Per Resource (h) field is enabled and the Estimated (h) field is calculated

NOTE  Estimated hours on tickets and tasks populate the Workload Availability report.

Phases:

The total estimated hours specified for all tasks in the phase.

If an External (Legacy) Ticket ID is provided when a ticket is imported into Autotask, then that ID is displayed in this field. Otherwise, no value is provided. Refer to Populating the Ticket import template.

The field allows you to categorize tickets for routing, workflow processing, searching, and reporting. Each issue type can have multiple sub-issue types.

NOTE  Issue Types are not to be confused with Issues, which are a type of task.

BEST PRACTICE: Due to their important role in ticket automation, we recommend that Issue Type and Sub-Issue Type are set to Required for all ticket categories.

Line of Business lets you classify finances and segment data. This field is displayed when Organizational Structure (Line of Business) is activated and enabled. It is available on the following entities: Contract, Opportunity, Sales Order, Project, and Ticket. Refer to Introduction to Line of Business.

If a contract is associated with a different line of business than the ticket or project, billing items always inherit the line of business from the contract, not the parent entity. Refer to Line of business inheritance rules for dependent entities.

Select a pairing of Business Division > Line of Business.

A location is an individual business unit that is associated with an organization in Autotask. The business unit can be a separate physical location, like an affiliate or franchise. It can also be a division or agency operating in the same physical location as the organization, like a hospital emergency department, where the hospital is the Autotask organization. The organization handles all billing for the business unit. Refer to Adding and editing organization locations.

For this field, you can select a different local term. In your Autotask instance, it may be named Branch or Site. Refer to Selecting a currency and local terms and symbols.

Select the location with which the entity will be associated.

The organization location can be populated automatically, according to certain rules:

• If the selected organization has a primary location, that location autopopulates this field. If there is no primary location, only locations associated with that organization can be selected.
• If a form template is applied and populates the location but not the organization, the Organization field autopopulates with the location's organization.
• If a contact is selected and is associated with an active organization location, the contact's location populates the ticket location field only if no location is currently selected, or if the current location is the organization's primary location. If a ticket is created from the Contact page, the contact's location will be used.
• If a device is associated with the ticket, the device's active location will autopopulate the location field unless the location has been manually selected.

You can manually override the automatic selection. If location is required but is not selected, the primary organization location will be used.

This field appears on tickets if the Datto RMM integration is enabled. In Datto RMM, monitors alert users when components are failing, certain events occur, or performance falls below a predefined threshold.

It is populated when an Autotask ticket is generated from a Datto RMM alert, or if its associated device is a Datto RMM device.

An opportunity is a potential sale you have identified. This field appears on entities that are associated with a sales opportunity. Depending on permissions, the opportunity name or a link to the opportunity is displayed.

Select an opportunity or click the plus icon to add a new opportunity. You must select an organization first. All active opportunities associated with an organization are available.

CRM notes and To-Dos:

CRM notes and to-dos created from the organization or contact entity can optionally reference an active opportunity for the organization. When you add a note from the Opportunity page, the Opportunity Name field is defaulted in.

Contracts:

If the contract is created while running the Won Opportunity or the Won Quote wizards, the opportunity is referenced here.

Projects:

You can associate an opportunity with the project and do the following:

• If this is a proposal project, convert the proposal into a project while running the Won Opportunity Wizard. Quoted charges will become project charges. The opportunity's Total Revenue and Total Cost forecast will populate the project's Estimated Revenue/Cost fields (if these fields do not contain any values). Refer to Closing opportunities you have won.
• Use the linked opportunity's user-defined fields to update the project's user-defined fields. Refer to Copy opportunity UDFs to project UDFs.
• When the project is completed, you can update the opportunity to Implemented from the Complete Project wizard. Refer to Completing a project.

Quotes:

Select an active opportunity, create a new opportunity, or allow the opportunity to be automatically created. If the opportunity is created automatically, it will have the same name as the quote, and the remaining fields will default to the values described in Default values for auto-created opportunities.

Sales orders:

If Procurement is enabled, sales orders are automatically generated from opportunities when the Won Opportunity wizard is run. The field is read-only.

Tickets:

An opportunity will appear in this field if the Won Opportunity wizard was run and Associate this ticket with this opportunity was selected, creating this ticket in the Post Sale queue.

A primary resource (role) is a resource with a specific associated role.

To select a Primary Resource (Role), start typing the name or the initials of a resource or scroll through the list of available resources and roles and select one. You can also use one of the icons to the right of the field:

• Click the data selector icon. The Select Primary Resource window will open. You can filter by department, workgroup, and/or queue.
• To find a resource with a specific skill set, click the search icon and use the Find Resource wizard. The wizard will present you with a list of resources that match your requirements. For more information, refer to The Find Resource wizard.
• To move a primary resource into the Secondary Resources field, click the demote icon.

The name is followed by the Notify icon which opens the Note window. If enabled, the More icon that opens the options to use Microsoft Teams to send a message or schedule a meeting also appears. To enable this setting, refer to System settings for site setup.

Priority is defined as the impact and urgency of the ticket compared to other tickets. It may be populated by defaults set for the ticket category or the form template used to create the ticket, or by the mapping of impact and urgency to a specific priority. Priority is always required.

Select a Priority. Be aware that if your customers are using Client Portal, this field will be visible when they review their tickets.

This field appears on tickets that have been associated with a project. It displays the name of the related project. Refer to The Related Tickets page.

This field appears on entities that are part of the billing workflow, and is applied to labor and charges.

• If you assign a purchase order (PO) number to a quote (on the Terms tab), and then close the associated opportunity using the Won Opportunity Wizard, any charges created using the Won Opportunity Wizard will inherit the PO number.
• If you assign a PO number to a contract, the associated billing items inherit the contract's PO number.
• If you assign a PO number to projects, tickets, or tasks, that PO number will override the associated contract's purchase order number.
• The PO number appears on invoices. A separate invoice is created for each PO number. If an organization has multiple billing items that are assigned to different PO numbers, Autotask will generate multiple invoices for that organization.

Refer to Working with purchase order (PO) numbers.

Queues are used to group together tickets with something in common and resources who can work on those tickets.

Tickets:

Select the queue to place the ticket in. You must select a resource or a queue, or both.

Resources:

Add the queues the resource will be associated with.

This field allows you to view or add a name that you specify for the device. You can report on this field by using standard reports or LiveReports (refer to Reports on products that are associated with customer organizations as devices).

If you are using device discovery, this value is a read-only field reported by device discovery. The source for this information varies by monitoring service. For example, the service may use the Name or Computer Name values returned by device discovery. The monitoring service may not provide a default value. For some monitoring services, the Reference Name field displays duplicate information. For example, the content of the Reference Name field is identical to the content of the Device ID field. If there is no default, you can manually add a reference name.

Reference numbers work like serial numbers, but you can assign them by using your own system. Reference numbers are not required by product categories. You can report on this field by using standard reports or LiveReports (refer to Reports on products that are associated with customer organizations as devices).

Request types are the Client Portal equivalent to ticket categories. They are templates your clients will use when submitting tickets from the Client Portal. This field appears on tickets that originate in the Client Portal. They are auto-populated and cannot be required.

Many tasks and tickets require a group effort. Naming a user as a secondary resource ensures that they have visibility of the task or ticket, can assist with aspects of the work, and can easily be notified. You can name up to 50 secondary resources.

Secondary resources on a task or ticket assist the primary resource or may be assigned checklist items on the task or ticket. For directly billable labor, the role determines how much your company is charging per hour.

• On tickets, only resources who are members of at least one queue and are available in the selected ticket category are listed. First, members of the selected queue are listed (), then all resources ().
• On tasks, any resource can be selected. If you select a resource who is not currently a part of the project team, the resource will be added to the team.
  However, if the Filter Secondary Resources field by project billing roles box is checked, only team members and billing roles that are associated with the project are displayed.

To select a Secondary Resource (Role), start typing the name or the initials of a resource or scroll the list of available resources and roles and select one. You can also use one of the icons to the right of the field:

• Click the data selector icon. The Select Secondary Resource window will open. You can filter by department, workgroup, and/or queue.
• To find a resource with a specific skill set, click the search icon and use the Find Resource wizard. The wizard will present you with a list of resources that match your requirements. For more information, refer to The Find Resource wizard.
• To move a secondary resource into the Primary Resource field, click the promote icon. The current primary resource will be demoted.

The name is followed by the Notify icon which opens the Note window. If enabled, the More icon that opens the options to use Microsoft Teams to send a message or schedule a meeting also appears. To enable this setting, refer to System settings for site setup.

The point of an SLA is standardization. A service level is a performance standard that defines the time frame in which an issue will be resolved, based on its severity and impact. A service level agreement is a minimum set of service levels that your company defines to meet the service needs of one or more customers. For example, you promise your customers that critical tickets that impact multiple contacts will be resolved within 8 business hours 90% of the time. For more information on SLAs, refer to Introduction to service level management.

You should rarely have to manually select an SLA. If they are correctly set up, SLAs should be applied automatically.

If an entity is created from or associated with multiple entities that can default in a service level agreement, the more specific SLA is prioritized over a more general one:

1. Manual selection (or applying a form template, which counts as manual selection)
2. SLA on the device
3. SLA on the recurring contract service or service bundle
4. SLA on the contract

This applies also to tickets created in the Client Portal.

For more on this complex subject, refer to Applying service level agreements.

Services and service bundles allow you to charge for defined incidents on a recurring basis. This field is required when it is available. It can be modified if you have the required security permissions. Refer to Setting up service bundles.

Tickets:

If the device selected on the ticket specifies a recurring service contract and service or bundle, they will be defaulted on the ticket.

Ticket Time Entries and Task Time Entries:

Ticket and task time entries inherit the contract and service or bundle settings of the ticket or project.

Devices:

If you selected a recurring service contract in the Contract field and a service or bundle that will cover the support of the device, Autotask will check if the number of devices is higher than the number of units in the service or bundle that covers them on the Installed On date of the device. If it is, you are given the option of updating the number of units in the service or bundle to match, or you can continue without updating (not recommended).

• If you click OK, the number of units will be incremented, and a pro-rated billing item will be added and documented with a contract note. The default Effective Date will be the Installed On date of the device.
• If you click Cancel, the number of units will not be incremented, but the contract will be set Out of Compliance. It will be up to the contract manager to update the number of units.
  

If the Installed On date is earlier than the Contract Start Date, compliance is checked on the Start Date of the contract.

Note that the device will be associated with the contract either way.

This field appears on tickets associated with a Service Level Agreement (SLA).

When the ticket status is changed to one that is mapped to the Waiting Customer SLA event, Autotask calculates the number of hours to the next SLA event. This value is cleared when the ticket status is changed to one not mapped to Waiting Customer.

This field is blank if there is no SLA or no additional events, or when the SLA uses End of Day or End of Next Day in its targets.

IMPORTANT  If you edit a ticket status in Admin and associate it with the Waiting Customer SLA event, existing tickets are not updated.

This field appears on tickets. The source is how the customer contacted you.

The status indicates how far the entity has progressed in a particular process.

EXAMPLE  On a ticket, status examples are New, In Progress, Ready to Bill, Complete, Active, etc. On other entities, status names are different.

Most entities come with a default list of statuses that you can customize. The Status field is often required, since it is frequently used as a condition in workflow rules.

NOTE  Outsource status is separate from the standard ticket status.

Charges:

If an Estimated Arrival Date was added to the purchase order item, it is displayed in parentheses after the status.

• If Procurement is enabled, the status options are conditional based on the current status, and some statuses are set automatically. For details on charge status in the procurement process, refer to Introduction to Inventory.
• If Procurement is not enabled, you can manually select any status. For consistency, your company should set guidelines for charge status selection.
• If you set the status of a charge to Canceled, the Unit Cost and Unit Price fields are zeroed out and the charge is removed from Approve & Post.

The Sub-Issue Type field allows you to further categorize tickets for routing, workflow processing, searching, and reporting purposes. Each issue type can have multiple sub-Issue types. This field is available once you select an Issue Type.

BEST PRACTICE: Due to their important role in ticket automation, we recommend that Issue Type and Sub-Issue Type are set to Required for all ticket categories.

User-defined fields (UDFs) are custom fields set up by your Autotask Administrator that capture information that is unique to your business. They can be one of the following field types:

• Text (Single Line, Multi Line, or Email)
• Date
• Numeric
• List (Single Select, Multi Select)

You are able to see and update this information based on your security permissions. If you do not have permission to view or update the data, it will be masked with asterisks. If you can view but not edit the data, editing will be disabled. Refer to Viewing protected data.

Also review Managing user-defined fields.

You must complete any required UDFs before you can save the entity.