After signing in to Request Tracker Pro, you will be guided through a set of initial setup options. Keep in mind that you can edit all of these settings later on, but follow this tutorial to get up and running as quickly as possible.

Set TimeOut for Session

TimeOut for Session sets how long an agent can be inactive — or not doing anything — in minutes before they are automatically logged out. The time out settings apply to your entire organization and all levels of user.

A good default is 30 minutes.

Enter a good time out duration for your organization, and click Next.

Create Users

In RequestTrackerPro, each individual contributor, or agent, should have their own user account. This makes it easier to see who your organization’s rock stars are, where your agents are spending their time, and which agents could use some extra guidance.

• UserType: select from User, Manager, or Admin. You can learn more about what each role does here: User Levels.
• Name: The agent’s username. This is what customers will see when interacting with this agent.
• Email: The agent’s email address, used for login purposes.
• Autogenerate Password: Optionally, RequestTrackerPro can generate a secure password for each user. The password will be emailed to the user, which they can change later.

After filling in each field, click Create, and repeat for each user that you want to add.

Alternatively, uncheck the Autogenerate random password box to manually enter a password for the agent, which will appear in the email sent to the agent.

Once you’ve added each of your users, click Next. Note that you can add more users to your organization later.

Create Departments

In RequestTrackerPro, a department is a subdivision of your staff, and works similarly to the way many businesses split their employees into different departments.

Note that departments are optional, and you can also skip doing this now and add them later.

For example, if you’re an online retailer, you might have different departments for Shipping, Billing, Customer Support, and Legal.

1. Click the Add New Department button.
2. Give it a name like “Sales.”
3. Click the Queue box, and select which ticketing queue corresponds to this department. For example, if this is a Sales department, you might select the Sales Support queue.
4. Finally, click Create.

Continue creating new departments until you’re satisfied, and then click Next.

Add Users to Departments

Next, let’s populate your departments with your users.

1. Click on the edit button  next to a departments name.
2. Click the Users box, and select each user that provides support for this department. Note that individual user agents can work in multiple departments.
3. After adding each appropriate user, click Update.

Continue adding users to their appropriate departments, and then click Next.

Create Queues

Queues form the backbone of RequestTrackerPro’s agent response system, and will help your agents keep on top of incoming tickets to keep response times fast. Queues are highly flexible, and can be set up to accommodate a wide variety of different business needs. You can learn more about queues, how they work, and some best practices here: Managing Queues, but for now, here’s a quick overview on the options:

• Name: the name for this queue. This name appears only to your agents and does not to customers.
• Queue Level: queues in RequestTrackerPro appear in descending order, based on the level input here. Your most important queue should be level 1, second most important level 2, and so on. Note that queues can be given the same queue level.
• Queue Friendly Name: the name that your customers will see when interacting with this queue.
• Queue Email Address: the first part of an email address. For example, if this queue will handle incoming tickets sent to support@yourdomain.com, then enter support here. Then, select yourdomain.com in the dropdown list. You can have additional domain addresses added to your organization by contacting support@requesttrackerpro.com.
• Use My Mail Servers Option: click this box to use your own email servers. This will allow your outgoing emails to appear to originate from your servers directly instead of a third-party service. You may need to contact your email administrator for this information, but please feel free to contact us at support@requesttrackerpro.com for additional help.
• Queue SMS Number: if you have an SMS account configured, you can enter it here. Note that SMS configuration can be completed after the Guided Setup is complete.
• Signature Tag Line, Website to Use in Signature, and Phone Number for Signature: when an agent responds to a ticket in this queue, the information in these fields will appear in the sent email.

Here is the format for email signatures:

Best regards,

Agent name

Signature tag line,

Email address for this queue

Signature tag line

Phone number

Here is an example of how the email signature will look in an outgoing email:

Best regards

John C.

This is our signature line.

support@yourdomain.com

(800)555-5555

• Take Call Content: When your agents take a customer call from this queue, the information entered in the Take Call Content box will appear on their screen. You can use this for a variety of different purposes for different queues, and is best used to create a set of standards for all agents to follow. This can help ensure that the right questions are asked at the right time, and prevents key information from being missed when helping customers.

Create Categories

Categories are used to group and label different support tickets into similar topics, and can be customized to cover a wide range of business use cases.

In RequestTrackerPro, categories are used to streamline which Canned Responses appear for your agents, and can be added onto tickets automatically using Rules.  You can also search queues for tickets with specific categories.

For example, the category “Service Interruption” can be used on incoming support tickets that relate to a service outage. When an agent is resolving the ticket, they can quickly select a relevant Canned Response to the customer, and move on.

To create new categories:

1. Click the Add New Category button
2. Give it a name like “Service Interruption” or “Duplicate Billing.”
3. Add as many categories as you want to use, but keep in mind that you can always add more later.
4. When you’re finished, click Next.

Create Canned Responses

Canned Responses are a great way for your agents to not only quickly respond to common support tickets, but to stay on message and keep your customer messaging consistent.

A lot of nuance can go into crafting great canned responses, and you can learn more about them here: Creating Effective Canned Responses.

To get started, click the Add New Canned Response button.

Here are the options for canned responses:

• Canned Response Title: the internal title for the canned response. Your customers will not see this title.
• Canned Response Text: the text that your customers will see. For example, if this is a canned response for a service outage, you might include something like “We’re currently experiencing an issue with one of our servers, but our engineers are aware of the problem and actively working towards a solution. Please check back later!”
• Category: the ticket categories that this canned response applies to. When an agent uses a canned response, only the canned responses with the corresponding category will appear. For example, if the ticket category is Sales Support, then only canned responses in the Sales Support category will appear.

When you’re done creating canned responses, click Next. Keep in mind that you can add more canned responses later!

Setup Heatmap

The heatmap feature gives support tickets a color depending on how old they are, and is a great way for your agents to be able to prioritize tickets at a glance.

When looking at a queue, the ticket’s ID field is given a specific color depending on how old it is. For example, a ticket that was created within the last 30 minutes might be green, between 30 and 59 minutes orange, and older than 60 minutes red.

To get started, click Create New Heatmap.

• Minutes: the time threshold for when the designated heatmap value is applied to the ticket’s ID. Use 0 to apply this color to new incoming tickets, 15 to apply this color to tickets 15 minutes old, and so on.
• Color: the color that the ticket’s ID receives. You can use the color picker to select a color manually, or use a hex value to set a specific color.

Although you can use any color scheme you like, here’s an easy one to get your started:

Green: #1cdb32 at 30 minutes.

Orange: #ff9000 at 90 minutes.

Red: #ff0000 at 180 minutes.

After setting up your heatmap, click Finish to complete the initial setup, and get started with RequestTrackerPro!