How to assign a Task to Multiple Agents?

sriworld

Hello, I have installed the osTicket from cpanel and its really nice to use it. I have a question of how to assign a Task to Multiple Agents.
There are some tasks which require 2 or more agents to work on them but I am unable to see the multiple Agent assigning to tasks. Can you please let me know how to use this feature.

Thanks
Srikanth.

RBGE

You can add a second agent as a collaborator, but I don't think it's possible currently to have more than one agent in the assignee field. I think this way is designed to ensure that one person is responsible for ensuring the task is completed... or just a feature that hasn't been implemented yet ?

sriworld

True, we can add the second person onwards as collaborators but they are Users and not Agents. Or am I missing something out? I am unable to add the agents as collaborators.

glienhard

You are right, collaborators are users not agents. We have the same situation of needing multiple agents but have ended up using the collaborator as that is the only work around we have found.

ntozier

To assign a task or ticket to more than one Agent... you would have to transfer it to a department... or assign it to a Team.

sriworld

Yes true, I have seen that assigning to a Team or Dept. But when we have 10 agents, we cannot have various combinations of teams no. if randomly we have to assign to 5th and 9th guy, we dont have a team ready, neither we can create hundreds of teams for that sake.

I hope this can be a great feature in the upcoming versions.

glienhard

We are exactly the same as @sriworld describes. It would be really great if this could be fixed in an upcoming release.

Also, there seems to be an ongoing bug that once a ticket is assigned to a team there is no way to remove that team or reassign to just an individual agent. It also seems weird that when you assign a ticket to a team that the agent it was assigned to stays assigned. Maybe this speaks to the bigger issue that even when a ticket is transferred to a different department it does not remove the assigned agent...

ntozier

Maybe I didn't make myself clear.

Assigning a ticket to a single Agent does not prevent other people from working on a ticket. Because the Ticket is also either in a Department or in a Team.

Transferring a ticket to another department does not change or clear if it is assigned to an Agent... nor should it. There is a valid use case where agent A (in department Foo) needs Department Bar to complete an issue. So they transfer it to another department and since it is still assigned to them they can follow along the status of the ticket.

There are a number of ways to clear or change who a ticket is assigned to, Transferring is not one of them.

glienhard

Thanks for the response @ntozier. I get all that and yes I'm completely clear on how that works. Our current work-around for this issue is to give all agents access to all tickets so they can get into all tickets.

We'll have to agree to disagree. IMO (and my team's opinion) when a ticket is transferred to another department it should absolutely remove any assigned agent and/or team. By forcing us to manually clear ticket assignments it add extra, unnecessary steps to our way of business.

Since we all use things differently, that really should be a setting to allow us to choose how transfers are handled.

ntozier

Then your work flow should be to un-assign it and then Transfer.

Personally I would like to see a check box on the Transfer screen that gives you the option to also un-assign it. But that's just my opinion. ?

glienhard

That is a great solution. A checkbox on the transfer screen would be very straight forward and easy to use. :-)

ntozier