Halo Implementation Series – Ticket Approvals – Video 8

hi everyone and welcome to um another installment in our halo implementation series again with me today I have my favorite person at Halo um Mr Halo himself um and uh today we're going to talk about I'll see you nodding um I'm getting too used to it yeah I'll get you used to that I know Morgan loves it when I when I yeah so um today we're going to talk about um the ticket approval process in in Halo um you know how to use it when to use it um you know what it is and all that kind of stuff like we've done with with all of these other videos so um once again Morgan thank you so much for doing these with me I really really appreciate it um you know and I really appreciate kind of you know Halo letting us do these and letting me borrow you for the for these videos um really do appreciate it so thank you for being with us and uh yeah always a pleasure it is excellent so do you want to share out your screen and kind of go through this and um you know let's look at how we do this ticket approval process yeah yeah yeah absolutely um so approval processes uh it tends to be something that is not um uh you know a must-have from from day one if you're uh you know if you're looking for a real Baseline then you're probably looking for incident service request management some basic CRM and project management functionality billing perhaps some service portal um however approval processes is something that is often uh you know the the start of phase two of an implementation so you know you're familiar with your your ticket types and actions and workflows and how to drive that ticket towards resolution um but we want to take you to the next step right we want to incorporate um some approvals perhaps to uh the key contact and then an End customer or an internal approval process for some you know permission changes or something like that so um I thought we'll we'll just look at the configuration of approval processes today we'll create a basic approval process see how they're triggered and and then perhaps come back in a later session and have a look at how we can actually sort of contextualize our approval process by incorporating that into a workflow that's triggered by our request a request being raised from the self-service portal and start to have a look at you know the the whole start to end process of that kind of Journey of a ticket so anyway approval processes um fundamentally what we're doing is we are changing the status of our ticket and we're notifying relevant stakeholders uh where though or approvals should I say where those approvers can make a decision on whatever it is that is being requested approve or reject um so the configuration of our approval processes is as it always is in our configuration panel and we go into our ticket module and we'll see the first optional feature that we have on the far left is our approval processes now when we click in here firstly we're provided with some miscellaneous information regarding approvals in general so these are our sort of global approval settings and then at the top we have those three buttons where we can set up processes namely create the approval processes from scratch create approval process rules allowing us to establish who makes an approval based on some given criteria and the finally we have our change in by Sports where we can set up cabs for approval so um let's let's start off just by creating a basic approval process so we'll go into our setup processes and we can actually have as many approvals in the system as are needed um so you know you might have different approvals for different events occurring within Halo different types of requests that are being raised so we can handle all of that by a separate approval processes each process itself is multi-step so you can have one approval but it it that one approval might have an initial peer review approval and then if peer review is all good then we can go to a main cap for uh you know primary consideration and scheduling and implementation of all that stuff so yeah so you you may I guess you may have like a technical sign-off and a and a finance sign off right so from a technical perspective it might be that yeah you know whatever it is that we're going to install technically that's going to work blah blah blah blah blah and now we need to get some kind of financial approval on that um so so we can have um and I guess at that point we can then send that over to a different cab or we could have it as part of the same approval process maybe you need to have the technical and the finance side sign off at the same time before it goes to to the next the next Stager yeah yeah exactly okay so uh so when we're setting our approvals up uh when we're adding steps to our approval process um let's just collapse these so we can break this down a little bit so of course we have first and foremost our details uh establishing our sequence our sequence here is uh where in the step or which step is this process right so um we can reorder our approvals to have those steps based on the sequence that they're set um if it's just a single step process you don't need to worry about that of course you do need to give it a name I could type them you get the point um but below that you have your approval section so uh who is actually approving at this point at this step in our approval process um now that can be anything from a specific agent to a fixed cab we'll see in a moment how those are configured and constructed um a fixed user we could have that based on the the user's manager or second level manager in active directory or we could even have that based on approval process rules uh specific to this approval so we might want to come down here we might want to have that based on approval process rules um at which point I have this table of contents where I can add my rules in and just like our ticket rules we have a criteria section and an outcome section where the criteria may be the change type and if our change type is an emergency change we can actually automatically approve at this point so um you'll see a pretty vast list of approval options in here so I'd like to thank our artist company Halo itsm for implementing those features um is these are yeah the some of these have been driven more from the itsm space unfortunately as uh Halo itsm and Halo PSA use the same code base we've been fortunate enough to inherit some of that functionality so um yeah you'll see an extensive list of types of approvers in here I'm not going to go through every single one but it is incredibly flexible I will say that much yeah yeah and I think it's it's um you know certainly on the the customers I'm implementing you know a few of them are going through this this kind of you know whole approval process I think you know a lot of the the msps certainly the smaller ones um may may or may not do this it depends upon um the type of approval you know certainly if you if you had a customer that um you know like we said needed to sign off some kind of financial um uh you have some kind of financial sign up before you went ahead and and and and um you know purchased whatever it was then I guess you you could get your customers to to sign that um to sign that off but most of the time I'm seeing that you know a lot of msps I'm talking to are not necessarily using the approval process in their everyday business yeah it's um it's I I've had the same experience I suppose um is a mixed bag it's not fundamental um you know I don't think I've worked with an MSP that hasn't uh Incorporated billing into Halo PSA at some point you know it is fundamental um however the approvals are not quite as fundamental however you know sort of on the flip side of that it is something that I think if I was an MSP I would be bringing into Halo or into my PSA if I could because it's that extra level of safeguarding right um you if you're getting customer approval for these changes uh especially if you're purchasing something for the customer or if you're implementing some technology into the customer's Network um you're going to want to make sure that there's some level of audit Trails some sign off on the customer side there or even internally um you know to make sure that the first line are on doing things ordering things they shouldn't be ordering we can put approval processes in there such as Senior Management can actually oversee some of those requests that the first line of making so it's a good mechanism to to safeguard yourself um you know in the eventuality of needing to call upon that yeah and I agree I think you know it a lot to say it's a good audit Trail to have that you know when there's a comeback at some point six months later saying well I didn't ask you to buy that particular device or you know we didn't approve that um you can come back here and say well you know here here we have the proof of that yeah that you did ask for this or you did you know a proof for this to be installed and things like that so yeah yeah or if it's um you know if you're giving someone in the business uh if you're giving the customers and user admin privileges um yeah and and later on down the line something goes wrong and that person that has those admin privileges to deleted or changed something they shouldn't have done you can always come back and say well you know we we asked the CTO your company uh to sign this up but we've got an approval here stating from them that we were good to make that change so yeah it's all it's all about that that proper audit Trail and best practices yeah yeah absolutely and I you know and I I said earlier on a lot of msps don't use this and I agree with you I really think it's something that um which is why you know why I wanted to cover it on on the series because I do think it is something that um that people should be looking at and should be saying you know let's go through some kind of approval process either internally or or you know with our own user customers so that we're um we're covering our backside so to speak if you know if if anything went wrong in anything that we did we've you know we we've got the cover here so yeah yeah exactly it's um yeah you know it's a step at the start of this implementation series and I mentioned the concept of garbage in garbage out where you know if you're not putting the proper uh information into Halo PSA then it's going to be very difficult if not impossible to extract meaningful information back out of the system well this touches on a similar concept where it's garbage in garbage out but we're not talking about data we're talking about processes right if you don't put proper processes into the system buy your workflows by your approvals then you're never going to be able to really follow those proper you know industry standard guidelines um so this is in a similar fashion to our workflows a way of helping you the MSP do things the the proper official industry standard way of doing them so yeah yeah cool um so yeah as I mentioned uh we have a vast list of different types of approvers um within our step now below that we have the option to send emails to approvers so a previous don't have to approve by our email they can head to the self-service portal um where we can add an approval section in so uh people uh particularly end users via the self-service boards can approve or reject these requests um for for agents there is my approvals module um where we can see the the list of approvals that this particular agent has a given point where they can approve or reject and however if you are sending an approval email the email that will be sent we go back into our approval configuration just go into this one the email that will be sent or more specifically the email template will be sent is established here now by default we have our approval message email template which we can find in configuration email email templates under approval message and and out of the box this is what we have you know fairly generic um but the important bit of functionality is these two icons and Behind These two icons we have dollar accept link and dollar reject link now those two variables don't accept linking dollar reject link uh are going to be sort of translated into URLs that you can navigate to to approve or reject uh the the request in questions so you don't need to use these icons but it's important to make sure that you at least include those variables either behind an image or directly onto your email Center absolutely yeah yeah and I think I I I've seen that before as well you know people excuse me people adjust that email you know putting putting icons on there not realizing that there's actually stuff behind those so if you are going to adjust any of these templates or mess around with them you know just just look behind any of the stuff that's there already if there's any graphics or images or anything and make sure there's no code behind that like uh like Morgan showed yeah um so below our email section of our approval process configuration is our outcome section so this is where we can establish the status of the ticket in question based on the outcome of the approval so we've got our status while we're awaiting approval status of approval not needed perhaps it's been also approved um status if the approval has been accepted and if it's been rejected and then we've got our status if the start date on the ticket has been reached or exceeded um you know and the approval hasn't yet been made so this is it's quite handy for those scheduled changes that you might have in place so uh you've got uh you know scheduled server upgrade um but for a couple of weeks time it needs to go through approval for for the uh you know technical team to make sure that everything's backed up the approval has been made but that scheduled maintenance date is here now so what do we do so we can um we can have the status of the ticket say you know uh planning date reached or something like that yeah cool um and then finally we have our uh sort of outcome notifications so do we want to let the the end user on the ticket and or the the agent assigned to the ticket know the outcome of the approval so you know if it is an internal approval you might not want to let the end user know but you might want to let the assigned agent know so they can then pass that message onto the end user or you can have your your end user also be informed of the outcome so yeah makes sense cool um and yeah as a first pass that sort of approval processes in a nutshell that's how we configure them um the next point to consider is well how do we actually trigger them so we've set our process up uh we've got our example service request process here and but how do we actually initiate this approval and that could be done via two main mechanisms so firstly within our ticket type configuration via the defaults tab we have this start and approval process option now this means that whenever a ticket of this type is going to be logged we are going to immediately initiate our example service request approval process so we can have that based on a ticket being logged just a you know the very nature of it being created will trigger that approval again think in the back of your mind about an admin rights request uh logged by the self-service portal as soon as that comes in you're going to want the the key contact and the customer in question to get an email saying you know Joe Vlogs has just logged this admin rights request is this something that you actually want to go forward with or are they doing this behind your back or something like that yes um so you can have that logs or sorry you can have that approval process triggered uh just for as soon as the tickets been logged or within our action configuration via the details tab we have this start and approval process option so you might have a request approval action um that triggers that approval so a ticket comes in and but not until that request approval action has been performed does that approval process get triggered uh so those are the the two main ways that you would sort of go about initiating the approval yeah absolutely and by default that approval process is set to no on both the ticket type and on the action uh good question yeah but um it is these days uh older trial configurations actually had every type of request by default have the approval process uh triggered so this is something that again something that I saw in my days of onboarding and implementations um the trial config has all of these different requests automatically logging this approval process which is pretty annoying to be honest you're playing about with Halo you're going to log a desktop request and you get this you know approval screen pop-up and you have no idea what's going on um this is old configuration this has since been removed I think that the uh there is a change request workflow that's recently been implemented that will be triggered when a change request is raised but not when a service request or you know Network requests or desktop requests has been created so um yeah it depends depends on the mode of the trial that you've got all the configurations might have this invite default uh more recent ones or not yeah that sounds good cool um perhaps just got a couple more minutes just to have a look at what the ticket looks like when we're in the midst of an approval um yeah I think that would be good I think it would be good to show kind of let's actually do this let's go through this whole flow of you know what happens when this when this gets approved when it gets elected whatever yeah so you have the same issue I have today with the typing yeah I have it every day to be honest you'd think that after years of typing I'd actually be good at it but no not yet okay so um I've gone to log this service request and I get this pop-up before I I actually go to log the request so why is that well let's let's backtrack through the configuration right so let's go to our ticket type let's go to our defaults tab for the service request we can see that's logging or that's initiating the example service request approval process and now let's go and take a look at that approval process so we can see in our example service request process we have one step and that step is going to be approved by a cab cost center approval well let's go and take a look at that cab so we'll take a step back config tickets approval processes go to change advice boards go to cost center approval and we can see in here there's two members of our cab one member type is Agent and one member type is user so our change of bias boards can be a combination of Agents users or even fixed email addresses so those cards are very flexible as well um and from that we have the cap pop up with those users and I can select who in that cab I want to be approving this request cool so let's save that so now the tickets come in um we can see the current status is awaiting approval uh and down here below we actually have our approval process information now now I have logged the ticket so as an approver I've actually automatically approved that um because you know by virtue of logging it I am requesting it and it's also we have our our user here that has not yet made our approval um as an administrator I have the the ability to come in and Mark an approval on behalf of another individual okay and we'll see now both of our cab members have approved the status of our ticket has moved to approved um and we'll see we'll see in a later session how we can start tying this into our workflows such that let's think about a standard change process uh you might have a scheduling an implementation a documentation phase of that change but that's not relevant until the change itself has been approved so we can actually have our workflow actions our buttons along the top here um did uh present or not based on the outcome of an approval process so uh yeah that's something that we'll see in an upcoming session yeah and I think that that's going to be the next session we're going to do just one of the things that does come up a lot on on this and it'd be good to get your take on this is you know both both users have or both um people in the camp have have approved so both modern user have approved so if one of you rejects it so if the user says yeah no I don't want this to happen and I'm going to mark it as as rejected yeah then I'm assuming at that point the the ticket becomes rejected rather than approved until that person then goes back and um approves it yeah great question um so when we're talking about change of biasports uh when we're configuring our change in by Sports we have the option to specify that all members must approve which you know means exactly what it says with this option checked yep we're not going to mark that as approved until everyone in the cab has approved um or we don't need everyone in the card to approve at which point we can set thresholds for approval and rejection so here um what I could do is I could add you in Chris and I could say so we've now got this pad uh composed of three individuals and we're saying that if any two of those three individuals approve this then it's approved but if any one of the three rejects it then we're rejecting it yeah exactly so uh to answer your question that yes that is configurable and that is based on the configuration options within the change of ply support itself cool yeah yeah and and that's exactly how um uh you know how it works in other PSA tools as well it's either you know you can either have one person approve it or um you know or multiple people or you can say it won't be approved until every single person has marketers approved so somebody can come in and Market as as unapproved um or now and then go away and think about it and come back and you know run some figures or whatever and then come back and go yeah actually now I've had a meeting and I've had some discussions and now actually I am approving it so I'm going to come back and approve it and then again yeah okay yeah cool cool okay that's good yeah so I think that approval process is is really good in terms of being able to um you know decide decide who's gonna approve the tickets um and and adding it as a um you know step within the ticket so if you use that as a um you know either from the the ticket itself and say you know this ticket is is always going to need need approval this kind of ticket or added as an action where you can just request the approval for that particular action if you need to yeah yeah exactly yeah it's um it's it's a useful tool to have uh you know by your side to make sure that these changes that you're making uh you know are properly audited there's a lot of um a lot of power and uh you know with power responsibility uh in the msp's hands and so you want to make sure that the proper process is followed whenever you have the ability to follow it and and this is uh yet another uh option within Halo that allows you to align uh your processes with the industry standards as I mentioned okay brilliant yeah I mean that's that's really good I think um I think that's really helped and and that will certainly help a lot of people as they're kind of implementing the the tool to understand you know what is the approval process when do we use it how do we use it so yeah I think I think that was yeah I think really well so yes it's it's also um a lot of people see it it's not very well documented part of Halo PSA um soon to be changed but yeah at the minute it's not really well documented so it's like I don't really know how this works I can't find any documentation for it so I'm going to leave it so hopefully uh this is going to help people better understand the functionality and uh help them put it into their their own instances of payload yeah absolutely so um as always thank you very much and if anyone has any questions you know feel free to leave a comment below um you know either I'll I'll be able to help you through this or you know we can we can get you in touch with somebody at Halo that can kind of go through this with you so um yeah as always Morgan really appreciate your time really appreciate that you're you know spending the time with me to go through these and um and you explain it a lot better than that than I can so um so it's really good to have you doing these with us yeah always always happy to jump on these yeah thank you Chris and thanks everyone for watching yep thanks for watching see you on the next one Cheers Cheers