A Complete Guide to Internal Ticketing Systems

Everyone who has worked on a project understands the importance of project management. Whether you're working alone or with a team, organizing your day-to-day activities is crucial. For example, teams need a means to communicate and organize tasks accordingly.  For this reason, many teams use an internal ticketing system for staff and project management. 

Imagine an application that helps you manage projects like a to-do list. You can mark a task as "done" or "processing," according to your progress. You can also add the time you expect to execute each task. However, an internal ticketing system does more than a to-do list. For instance, teams can submit and track issues and the tasks that relate to them. 

In this article, we will explore internal ticketing systems and how teams can utilize them. This article covers internal ticketing systems, why you need them, how they work and how to use them. 

What Is an Internal Ticketing System?

Internal issues can be classified as all queries, projects, and tasks that are submitted or managed by employees and the organization at large. Internal ticketing systems allow teams to automate tasks, queries, and problems attached to a project. 

These systems allow team members to get full access to the tasks, issues, and notifications that relate to them. For instance, a manager can create a task for an employee and copy them using an internal ticketing system. The employee will get access to this issue and all it entails; they can move this issue around the system to show progress and resolve a ticket when they're done. 

"Internal ticketing systems allow teams to automate tasks, queries, and problems attached to a project." 

How Internal Ticketing Systems Work

Although there are many applications to manage internal issues, most internal ticketing systems follow a similar schematic. For instance, all internal ticketing systems cover a workflow from the point of creating a ticket to closing it. In this section, we will explore how internal ticketing systems work. 

Create a Ticket

The first step to internal ticketing is creating a ticket or issue. Different organizations have different rules when it comes to creating an internal ticket. However, it is important to note that when you create an internal issue, it should be clear and concise. 

For instance, when you want to create an issue, you'll need to create a title and description for each ticket. The title needs to be brief. However, the body of the ticket should contain details about the issue, including why you're creating the issue, what you hope to achieve, and how you wish to go about it. 

Most firms like to organize their tickets according to teams or projects. Therefore, be sure that you're creating the ticket in the right place. It is also a common practice to include a due date for tickets. 

Allow Collaborators

Sometimes, issues may require the help or attention of others. For example, a manager may create tickets with tasks for a project. This manager will go ahead and add members of the team to the task(s) that apply to them. The team members that are added now have access to the tickets, depending on the authority level the creator gives them. Think of this like when you copy someone in an email. 

Track Progress

Internal ticketing systems make tracking an issue's progress easy. Assignees or task can track the status of a ticket from one stage to the next through the lifecycle of the request. When the status of a ticket changes, collaborators in the ticket will get a notification. Collaborators can also ask questions regarding the tasks in the issue, and the system will notify the relevant parties. 

Sometimes, teams will group tickets into priorities. Therefore, it is important to understand the priority of the issue you're currently working on. 

Close Ticket

After completing an issue, it is a good practice to close it. When you close a ticket, all collaborators will receive a notification. Most internal ticketing systems automatically close issues when you mark them "done." 

Sometimes you can close a ticket even when the issue isn't complete. For instance, you can close a "stale" ticket if the requestor is no longer actively responding to your attempt to resolve the issue.  This way, collaborators don't keep getting notifications on stale issues. 

Why Do You Need an Internal Ticketing System?

Teams continually ask, "Why do we need an internal ticketing system?"  For example, teams will mistake a ticketing system for a task manager. In this section, we will explore why you need an internal ticketing system for your organization. We'll also compare an internal ticketing system to a task manager and explain how they're different. 

Automation

With teams always looking for means to ship products faster to users, automation is important. You don't want to manually repeat tasks over and over. For instance, you don't need to manually close tickets when you complete them. Instead, when you mark issues as "done," the system should automatically close them while notifying relevant parties. 

Some systems also go a step further. For instance, you can automate the assigning process in a project. When a manager creates tasks for a project, the system automatically assigns a team member according to their skill set and the number of issues they already have. 

Notifications

Whenever there's a change in a ticket, all collaborators get notifications. This allows collaborators to follow their issues closely and have first-hand information on all that's going on in their tasks. This is an important feature, as you don't want information to be lost regarding the progress of an issue. Notifications help keep collaborators on an even plane. 

Clear Visibility, Better Communication

Internal ticketing systems help us build transparency and open communication, which improves efficiency. By allowing team members to see an overview of tickets and requests, the entire support organization can align on prioritization helping agents close tickets faster.  

Organizations that don’t deploy internal ticketing systems often end up with siloed teams that are difficult to measure and track. This can lead to a breakdown in processes and inefficient distribution of resources. By using an internal ticketing system, you will help ensure that your business is improving the output of each team member while helping to reduce the more tedious and labor-intensive tasks. 

Internal Ticketing Systems Best Practices

Since we now understand how internal ticketing systems work, let's explore the best practices you should keep in mind when working with internal ticketing systems. 

• Communication: Maintaining communication is important when working with internal ticketing systems, especially if you have collaborators. Fortunately, your internal ticketing system should help maintain clear lines of communications by keeping everyone up-to-date when the status of a ticket changes.  Sometimes, a ticket's status moves back and forth when working on projects; communication helps keep things afloat. Your ticketing system should be flexible enough to allow for a non-linear ticket progression.
• Create Automated Workflows:  Defining a workflow is important. For instance, you can might create a workflow to automate common requests and apply conditional logic to route specific issues to the right individual. You can also automate sending reminders to assignees concerning their tickets.
• Workflow Templates:  Your ticketing system should have templates you can use to create clear processes for creating an issue.
• Prioritization: Using prioritity to organize tickets. Related tickets are grouped together allowing teams to easily search for relevant issues.

The Evolution of Ticketing Systems and Slack

Slack has transformed how we communicate when doing business. It’s no surprise that more businesses are leveraging chat to manage internal ticketing. Wrangle, a modern ticketing system built for Slack, helps companies turn chaotic Slack channels into productivity machines with ticketing and automated workflows. 

If your business uses Slack, there’s no better way to manage internal ticketing than Wrangle. By bringing your service desk into Slack, you can more easily manage support requests in your business. Wrangle transforms your workspace into an advanced IT service desk and ticketing platform, which will allow you to:

• Turn any Slack message into a ticket
• Instantly allow users to see the status of a ticket
• Gather all the issue context with an intake form
• Automatically assign tickets to the right agent
• Automate reminders to keep agents moving
• Provide reporting to uncover bottlenecks

Further, Wrangle lets you automate custom workflows in your ticketing system. Check it out today. You can also book a personalized tour with a member of our team.  

‍This post was written by Ukpai Ugochi. Ukpai is a full stack JavaScript developer (MEVN), and she contributes to FOSS in her free time. She loves to share knowledge about her transition from marine engineering to software development to encourage people who love software development and don't know where to begin.