What is a watcher? When should I add watchers to my support tickets? How do I do that?
A quick Google search will tell you that a watcher is "a person who observes something attentively or regularly".
The 'watchers' feature is best described as an 'ongoing carbon copy' of ticket updates to people that need to be kept informed of changes to the ticket's (or customer's) status.
This term is widely used in ticketing systems for software development that track bugs however there are many other reasons to add watchers to your tickets:
- You're using the ticketing system as a task manager and you want to keep your project team informed about the status of a task.
- Keep other operators informed when a customer's ticket is touching on their functional area (without reassigning the ticket to them) in case:
- Additional help from technical support will be necessary.
- Changes to a bill or invoice will be needed.
- A sales opportunity is emerging.
- A department manager or company owner needs to be informed of a ticket's progress.
- Keep external stakeholders (partners, affiliates, distributors, etc) informed of ticket updates when you both have a relationship with the customer.
How to add watchers to a ticket:
- Open the Operator Panel & switch to the TICKETS tab.
- Select a ticket worth watching from the Tickets grid.
- Click the 'watchers' icon (looks like a set of binoculars).
- Select operators from the right column (using the + sign).
Emails will be sent to each operator you've added as a watcher informing them that they are now watching a ticket. They will be emailed each time the ticket is updated by either the customer or the ticket assignee (you). - (Optional) Add one or more external watchers by entering their email addresses.
External watchers will be emailed each time the ticket is updated by either the customer or the ticket assignee (you). - Click [Update Watchers] to save your changes.
Watcher FAQs:
Q: Can watchers respond to the ticket-email updates they receive? If they do, what happens?
A: Yes, If a watcher responds to a ticket update via email their comments are marked private and will be invisible to the customer since they are not the ticket assignee.
Q: Can operators remove themselves as watchers?
A: Yes they can, in fact any operator can remove a ticket watcher in the same manner that a watcher is added (explained in steps 4 & 5 above).