• IT Asset Management
• PC Configuration Management
• IT Help Desk & Service Management
• Business Issue Management

Email integration in Vector Issue Tracker and Helpdesk

This page summarizes the role played by email integration in Vector’s Issue Tracker engine, which is the foundation for the high level Issue Tracker and IT HelpDesk solutions.

Vector Issue Tracker increases the effectiveness of Service Management operations through enhanced email integration and workflow management. This is particularly important in the IT HelpDesk solution, a configuration of Issue Tracker optimized for the typical IT support environment.

With ever more demanding Service Level Agreements increasing the pressure on resolution times, it is critical that incoming issues are routed swiftly and if possible automatically to the most appropriately skilled support analyst. Vector HelpDesk accomplishes this with a powerful Mailbox Workflow rules engine to analyze incoming issue emails. Depending on the interpretation of the email content, the rules system invokes defined actions such as optimal routing for the issue, or can initiate another process.

In Vector’s experience, many dispersed organizations use multiple mail servers. In response, HelpDesk provides Multi-server E-mail configuration that enables the Mailbox Workflow engine to monitor email from multiple accounts and multiple e-mail servers. This capability is of course Web based so configuration details can be changed at any time, from anywhere.

If your HelpDesk or Service Desk allows users to submit issues without previous registration in the system or in an Active Directory, you can take advantage of the automatic creation of contacts from e-mails. Automatically or manually create call tickets from new emails that arrive into the POP3 mailbox.

Following the automatic generation of a new issue from an incoming new issue email, a summary of all email traffic generated in the course of resolution of an issue is combined with actions in an easy-to-view chronological Activity Log. The full content of any emails is accessed through the Email Conversation dialog, where new emails can be sent, and incoming emails Replied to, Forwarded etc.

The Activity Log supports Issue text search, facilitating finding related issues. The search extends to the detail of emails summarized in the Activity Log, including the ‘from’, ‘subject’ and ‘message body’ of email content held in the Email Conversation records. Average issue resolution times can be greatly reduced if analysts can exploit previous issue resolutions.

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