Intelligent tagging for Datto BCDR

BEFORE YOU BEGIN  Review the topic that introduces the concept of global knowledge base articles. Refer to About global knowledge base articles.

When a Datto BCDR product generates an unfamiliar error code, you may need to research the issue in the Datto Knowledge Base or contact Kaseya Helpdesk. Both approaches can take time and scheduled backups may not occur during this time due to the error.

Autotask offers intelligent tagging to immediately act on the issue. We do this by taking the following steps behind the scenes:

  • As the developer of BCDR products, Datto knows the error codes these products can generate.
  • The solutions or troubleshooting steps to these scenarios are documented in the Datto Knowledge Base. The Datto Knowledge Base contains troubleshooting for all Datto products and is external to Autotask's Knowledge Base, but the two are connected.

About intelligent tagging

In Autotask, you can apply tags to tickets and Autotask Knowledge Base articles. When the same tag applies to a ticket and an article, the ticket describes the problem and the article describes the solution.

Autotask also includes a number of BCDR-specific system tags in the list of system tags, and it has associated BCDR Knowledge Base articles in Autotask. These articles are "stubs" that point to the source content, which is located in the Datto Knowledge Base.

The tagged articles are solutions waiting for a problem.

What happens to a BCDR ticket in Autotask?

The following steps outline the process that occurs when a BCDR ticket is created in Autotask:

  1. Datto BCDR products generate alerts in Datto RMM (via monitoring), in Autotask (via email), or in both applications. The tickets created by Datto BCDR products represent a specific set of issues and they are formatted in a consistent way.
  2. When Autotask detects the arrival of a Datto BCDR ticket, it analyzes the ticket's Title and Description fields to determine if a known scenario is represented. If there is a match, Autotask will apply the appropriate tags. If more than one key phrase appears for a single ticket, multiple tags may apply.
  3. Autotask checks its knowledge base for articles with matching tags. If there are any matches present, the automated process relates the articles to the ticket.
  4. When your technicians open the ticket, they can scroll to the Tags section and click View Potential Solutions. An article table that lists all articles with matching tags opens.

NOTE  If more than one key phrase appears for a single ticket, the case will receive applicable tags and reference articles up to a maximum of 30 tags. If doing so would cause the ticket to exceed 30 tags, Autotask uses the scenario that corresponds with the first key phrase found, then the second, and so on, up to the allowable tag limit. If all of the tags related to a certain scenario cannot be applied to the ticket, Autotask will stop tagging at the last applicable scenario. Autotask will apply Datto BCDR tags before any of those supplied by the ticket’s category. If the combination of tags on the ticket from BCDR and category tagging causes the total number to exceed 30, none of the tags from the category will apply.

  • You do not need to configure anything for Autotask to intelligently tag BCDR tickets and relate reference articles to them. If a Datto BCDR appliance originates the ticket, the process happens automatically.
  • While the intelligent tagging process is not customizable and cannot be disabled, as a best practice you can specify additional tags and workflow rules for the ticket category used by your Datto BCDR tickets. For example, you might have a BCDR appliance with a protected system that always fails screenshot verification at 3 PM because it is doing system updates, but you have determined that the backup for that point is always good. As a result, you decide you don't want to receive tickets for the issue. You can create a workflow rule to automatically handle the ticket generated for those alerts in a certain way, which can include taking specific actions on the ticket. Refer to Autotask workflow rules for more information.
  • If you would like to restrict the use of Datto BCDR tags to only the intelligent tagging process, you can use the Exclude from Suggestion and Automatic Tagging option, or you can inactivate the tags in your Autotask instance, whichever option is most applicable to your use case. Excluding or inactivating tags will not cause them to be unavailable to this process. For more information about these settings, refer to Managing tags and tag groups.
  • Tickets created via the Autotask APIs will automatically be tagged by this process if they meet the criteria described in the What happens to a BCDR ticket in Autotask? section of this article.

At the links below, you can view all of Autotask's intelligent tagging scenarios. The data includes example ticket titles and descriptions, as well as the tags and external article references that will result from them.

When reviewing these scenarios, it's important to note that for key phrases marked as "contains" in the examples, the string must appear somewhere in the ticket title or description. For key phrases marked "starts with" or "ends with," the string must appear at the beginning or end of the title or description.

Select your preferred format to view the examples:

NOTE  To provide the most current information about this feature, both the spreadsheet and the PDF generate on demand. It is normal to experience an extended page load time while the data compiles.