When you’re viewing an individual ticket in the agent interface, you can send a message to the user from the reply area.

By default, when you press the Send Reply as... button, your message is emailed to the user’s primary address.

Use the pull-down menu at the right of the Send Reply as... button to select what the status of the ticket should be after you send the message:

• Send Reply as Awaiting User (default) - if you need to hear back from the user before progressing.

• Send Reply as Awaiting Agent - if an agent needs to act further on this ticket.

• Send Reply as Resolved - if the user’s issue is resolved and no more communication is needed.

You can uncheck the Email User checkbox if you don’t want the reply to be sent to the user by email. The user will still be able to see the message if they log in to the user portal.

If you want to add a message for other agents that the user can’t see at all, use Notes (see below) instead.

Note that you can also reply directly to a ticket email notification from your email software. See the section on  Replying to tickets by email for more details.

Agent notes

Notes are messages that are intended for viewing only by other agents. They show up in the message history as usual, and agents will be notified of them according to their preferences, but they are not sent to the user by email, or visible on the portal.

Click the Note tab to enter a note.

Your signature is not added to notes you create.

You can convert a normal ticket message to a note, or vice versa, by using the gear icon to the right of the note or message.

Using ticket CC to copy in users

Adding a user to the ticket CC field means they will be copied in on ticket email messages, even though they are not the main user associated with the ticket.

You must enter the exact email address for the person.

CCs enable multiple users to track the progress of the ticket. When a user is added to the ticket CC:

• they are cc'd on outgoing emails about the ticket.

• they can view and reply to the ticket when they log in to the portal, and mark it as resolved.

Any user who is cc'd into the original email which created the ticket will automatically be added as a CC user (up to a limit of 10 email addresses).

Agents cannot be CCed to a ticket; the equivalent for agents is adding them as ticket Followers (see Ticket assignment). If an agent is cc:ed into the original email, they will be added as a follower (although your admins may have disabled this feature).

Note that the CC users will only be copied in on outgoing emails from Deskpro; the main user associated with the ticket must use “Reply All” from their email software for the CCed users to see their messages.

Another way to allow multiple users to track the progress of a ticket is using Organization Managers (see Organizations). An organization manager can see all the tickets from their organization, even if they are not the main user or CCed.

Ticket message formatting

You can apply rich text formatting to your reply using the controls above the text area. They work a lot like the formatting controls in word processing software.

The text style buttons are:

• B for bold

• I for italics

• U for underlined text

• A for colored text (select the color after you click on it)

You can use these buttons in two ways:

1. Toggle: without any text selected, click a button to apply the relevant style to everything you type from that point on. Click it again to stop.

2. Paint: select some text, then click a button to apply the relevant style to the selection. Click it again with the same selection to remove that style.

You can toggle bold with the keyboard shortcut Ctrl-B and italics with Ctrl-I.

To the right of the text styling controls are buttons which apply formatting to your current paragraph, or all paragraphs under the selection area:

• 
   bullet list

• 
   numbered list

• 
   shift paragraph left

• 
   shift paragraph right

The 

 button enables you to insert an image into the body of the message. You can either upload an image file from your desktop, or provide the web address of an image file.

The 

 button enables you to insert a clickable web link or email address into your message.

Reply drafts

If you start a ticket message or note and close the ticket tab or browser window before you send it, the draft version is automatically saved.

Simply re-open the ticket to see the draft message and continue editing it.

Using links in messages

To insert a clickable link to a website or file server:

1. Optionally, highlight some text you want to turn into a link.

2. Click the 

   
     icon, then click Insert link.

1. The default URL link type is used for inserting a web link.

1. Enter the full address in the URL field e.g. http://www.yourcompany.com/troubleshooting.

2. Enter the text for the link in the Text field e.g. “our troubleshooting guide” - if you highlighted some existing text, it will appear here.

3. Check the Open link in a new tab box if you want the link to open in a new tab when the user clicks it. (This will usually happen anyway, depending on how they read their email).

The result is the link our troubleshooting guide which goes tohttp://www.yourcompany.com/troubleshooting.

To insert a clickable email address that will open a new email in the user’s email client:

1. Optionally, highlight some text you want to turn into an email link.

2. Click the 

   
    and click Insert link.

3. Select the Email link type.

4. Enter the email address in the Email field e.g. sales@yourcompany.com

5. Enter the text for the link in the Text field e.g. “email our sales team”.

To remove a link, highlight it, press the 

 button and click Unlink.

Quick-linking to Knowledgebase articles and downloads

You can quickly direct users to Knowledgebase content if you keep the ticket you’re working on open in the content pane.

Open the relevant Knowledgebase articles or downloads in the list pane.

For articles, you can use the page/arrow icon to insert the full article contents into a ticket message.

For articles and downloads, you can use the page/chain icon to insert a link to the item.

Automatic translation plugin

If your admins have installed the Microsoft Translator plugin, you will see a control to translate the message content between languages.

Note that this is automatic translation, and quality of results can vary. Be cautious when sending automatically translated replies in a language you don’t understand.

@mentions

When adding a note to a ticket, you can alert another agent to it using @mentions. This is useful if you want to quickly get another agent’s advice on a ticket.

1. Type @ within a note, and then start typing the agent’s name - you’ll see a list of matching suggestions.

   

2. Click on the agent you want to notify.

3. Enter the rest of your note. When you click Add Note, the agent you mentioned will be notified by IM that you mentioned them.

Exactly how the agent is notified when somebody @mentions them depends on their Notes with @mentions setting, accessible through Preferences at the top right of the user interface under the Ticket Notifications tab.

They can choose either:

• Always receive an email and an agent IM message

• Receive an agent IM message if online, and an email if you’re not logged in to Deskpro

Note that the @mention IM notifications use the agent IM system, not user chat; you will receive them even if you are logged out of user chat in the toolbar.