[11966] Custom Flag Feature Endpoint

[Aycorn]

Currently this is based on a company's Account Manager: https://help.deskdirector.com/article/3riz4pqlro-the-flag-feature-cw-only "...an activity will be created for the Account Manager to review the ticket"

Requesting the ability to change this at a granular level.

In an example, having the Flagged tickets go to a Service Delivery Manager rather than the Account Manager.

[Nness]

I believe flag is an feature we would like to revisit. By revisit I mean completely redesigned.

Why do we need flag? What is the purpose? what is the problem we try to resolve?

Flag has been marked as not well designed feature since 4 years ago. We hardly publicly talking about it, nor promoting it.

[FluidNets-DamianS]

Our users love and use this feature often. Its purpose is exactly as what was originally sold when implemented. It's a way for a user to quickly tell the account manager they want to talk about this ticket. Maybe it is sensitive in nature, maybe there are special requirements not easily conveyed in writing.

Again our users love and use this often.

[Nness]

Personally I never had chance to fully understand the issue for Flag. Internally we were always very quiet on that.

One of the problem I can think of is activity. From ticket, invoice or quote, it is hard to say which one is flagged. So at end of month catch up, it is hard for account manager to easily have a list available, unless they are search under activity view.

The implementation was complex too, is not easy to find account manager until RESTful API came out.

Original design was based on SQL. Most legacy DD was written only for on premise customer, and we connect directly to the SQL database. So we have access to all the data and views. As switch to API, we lose the ability to query multiple table efficiently. Flag was displayed in ticket list view, then removed when switch away from SQL.

There are several features lost when move away from SQL, display flag in ticket list view is one of them. I need to do some homework on exactly reason on why people saying it is not well designed, from developer point of view, it is designed based on SQL and it is hard to work with feature.

So if we are going to redesign it, what is core problem we try to resolve from user point of view and from account manager point of view?

User:

• A way to rise discussion with account manager
• A way to communicate to account manager on sensitive conversations

Account Manager:

• Increase relationship with customer for certain sensitive conversation.
• List flagged items more easily before they talk with customer

From sister company, their account manager collect those flagged ticket and discuss with customer once a month I believe.

[Nness]

Talk around with other developers. Here are things that we noticed for flags.

• Flag is not always part of Activity's type, before deploy we have to make sure they have
• Flag on ticket list, invoice list, quote list is hard to query and display
• Flag conversation cannot be displayed inside ticket detail. (which in term became a hidden feature)
• Account manager is hard to find with SOAP but OK with RESTful
• It is hard to query and list flagged entities other than activity list

I do need to talk to Warwick on original design on why we came up with that feature.

[FluidNets-DamianS]

Ok. For us we could never wait until the end of the month. We a user flags a ticket is puts an activity on the account managers calendar. For us the account manager generally follows up immediately. We do not use to collect data for monthly or quarterly discussions (as I would not know how to find). Again for us we use it kind of like "call me back" but between customer and account manager (not tech).

[Nness]

Do you have an example on why they want to contact account manager directly and not let tech to see it. Under which condition this could happen. Is sensitive an requirement?

[FluidNets-DamianS]

It could be a sensitive issue that the user wants to talk to the AM before work is started. It could be during work in progress if maybe they need to complain about a tech working on the issue.

[AirLHull]

From our point of view the Service Delivery Manager(s) / Dispatch team would review the flag for continual service improvement and not involve the account managers unless needed. Agreed other clients will use the flag feature to its full potential but having the option to add 2 or 3 flagged users and being able to change that the syncing it with our ConenctWise tech's will prove beneficial to use. The Flag feature does provide alot of value to the tickets as it makes the user's feel should they need a "Higher Power" to speak to about it, they are able to request this. As per Damian's notes it could be confidential, the user may feel the service with their ticket isn't up to scratch and need the managers t get involved etc. Due to our structure the SDM's will pick these up and we have 2 people that need to see the flags.

[Nness]

I have asked Warwick on flag functionality, he said the original goal was to provide a way to review ticket. I think that's something we can improve in UI, for example, instead of saying flag ticket, but flag ticket for review. That way end user will know what exactly it is for.

@AirLHull Service delivery manager is per company based or just one? Could you give an example of delivery manager? Which member is delivery manager for which company. Is that indicated in ConnectWise. We do need to figure out the way to get it.

On the other hand, we do want to explore option to have setting in DD instead based from CW. That way we can provide flag functionality for Autotask in the future. And may at some stage to not use ConnectWise's activity but built into DD. That way we can filter ticket by flagged etc.