Hi, we've been using osTicket for about four years, and it's one of the better things that has happened to our organization. It makes customer support that much easier, it's a truly great tool!

We have, however run into trouble when staff are on vacation, it usually goes like this:

Details:
-All tickets are generated from emails, originating from a few different email inboxes. Works flawlessly.
-The first responder to a new ticket gets auto-assigned
-She standard 24h SLA plan is the only one configured, so all tickets gets this plan by default.

Our workflow is that we start the day checking our assigned tickets. After that, we use a few "Saved searches" that shows us tickets that are unassigned and unanswered. We claim these, or assign them to others.
Obvious spam gets closed without being assigned first.
The goal with this is to not have any tickets that are unassigned and open.

The problem:
On the 1st of June, my co-worker, let's call him Bob, gets assigned (or assigns himself) to a ticket.
A few emails gets sent back and forth with the customer(user), and finally after 15 or so days, the customer is satisfied with the communication and emails that he accepts the order they have been discussing.
Trouble is, Bob has now left for a two-week vacation. Since our workflow is to check for unassigned+open+unanswered tickets, the ticket is not visible to the other agents during their daily check and it can easily get overlooked until Bob is back from his vacation.

If i understand the vacation mode feature correctly, it prevents new tickets to be auto-assigned to an agent, but it does not affect tickets that are assigned before the agent goes on vacation?

Suggestions and solutions?
Does a script/feature/mod that unassigns tickets that gets a new reply when an agent is on vacation mode exist? That way, the ticket would show up as "orphaned" in the other agent's daily search for new tickets.
Perhaps a custom "Saved search" that looks for tickets that are assigned+unanswered+overdue?
Or am i missing anything really obvious here? Thankful for ideas and suggestions!

Thanks in advance!

    sulaco411

    ... it prevents new tickets to be auto-assigned to an agent, but it does not affect tickets that are assigned before the agent goes on vacation?

    Correct, it does not affect existing assigned Tickets; only new ones.

    Does a script/feature/mod that unassigns tickets that gets a new reply when an agent is on vacation mode exist?

    Not at this time, no. They were assigned before vacation so the flow would be for that Agent to release assignment to their Tickets before vacation -or- you can run an Advanced Search where Assignee > includes > Agent's name and then you can release assignment yourself (if you have the Role Permission).

    Cheers.

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