Certificate o aplikacji "Helpdesk"

Configuring the workflow in the "Helpdesk" app.

A workflow is a business process in which requests are handled in the "Helpdesk" app. The concept of a workflow is based on three components: sources, states, and actions.

Source is the "place" from which a request originates. The app supports four types of sources:

1. Backend. The "New request" button allows you to manually add a request on behalf of a customer — for example, if the inquiry is made by phone and the reply needs to be sent to the customer via email.
2. Email. Regular emails arriving at the company's email address. You just need to configure "Helpdesk" to receive news emails from your mailboxes.
3. Web form. A common way to receive inquiries from website visitors is through a form with fields for entering name, email address, and the request text. There may be multiple such forms.
4. Personal account. This is a password-protected section of the website created for each customer after their first request, where the entire correspondence history is available, along with a form to submit new requests.

State is the status of a request at a given point during its processing. Examples of states include "New", "In progress", "Closed", etc. In "Helpdesk", you configure the workflow yourself, which means you can create as many different states as needed.

Action is the process of transitioning from one state to another. Examples of actions: "Reply to customer", "Add comment". In most cases, actions are performed in the backend, but you can allow certain actions to be performed from a personal account-for example: "Cancel" (if the customer finds a solution themselves) or "Reopen" (for requests requiring clarification). There are actions that are executed automatically upon specific events-for instance, changing the state upon receiving an additional news email from the customer.

Example of a simple workflow.

Source "Email" → State "New" → Action "Reply" → State "Closed"

The request was sent by email, meaning the source is an email address where the customer's message arrived. When the request reached "Helpdesk", it was assigned the "New" status. After performing the "Reply" action, the request's status changed to "Closed".

Tips for setting up the workflow.

1. The workflow must include at least one source. Otherwise, customer requests simply won't reach "Support".
2. The workflow must include at least one state. Actions on a request can only be performed when it is in some state.
3. To move a request to another state, you must perform an action available in the current state. If none of the actions point to a certain state in the workflow diagram, no request can ever enter that state.
4. An action may not change the request's state. For example, the "Add comment" action will leave the request in its current state.
5. You can create any number of states in the workflow. To get requests into these states, you need to add corresponding actions.
6. In each state, you can define any number of available actions.
7. A state may have no available actions ("empty"). This means that once a request enters such a state, it cannot change its status to any other.
8. The same action can be available in different states. For example, the "Reply" action may be available in both the "New" and "Discussion" states.

Workflow diagram.

This is what the default workflow configuration looks like when the "Helpdesk" app is installed for the first time: