Announcements

New updates and improvements to TIKIT

  1. Email Connector Improvements

    Improvement
    Announcement
    Fix

    While we're preparing for some updates around the end of the month, we've got a new release live for everyone that handles performance improvements, bugs, and enhancements to the email connector.

     

    Email Connector, Conversation Management

    Whether you're using one or 20 different mailboxes, when it comes to ticket creation things couldn't be simpler:

    1. Email arrives
    2. Ticket is created
    3. Employees featured in the To or CC lines of the email become Affected Users
    4. The inbox notifies you of the new ticket that was created
    5. Since the ticket Id is in the subject, replies always append to the correct ticket

     

    But what if one of those employees decides to start the Reply Allmagedon before everyone is made aware of the new Ticket Id? And in doing so, includes your monitored inbox? Up until now, they have caused the creation of new ticket for everyone involved and new outbound emails with their own unique Ticket Id. Granted, there are workarounds. You could:

    • Delete the "duplicate" tickets
    • Merge the "duplicate" tickets
    • Tell your fellow employees to wait for the ticket to be created before replying

    But these workarounds create either more work for Agents or a less than stellar experience for your fellow employees. Wouldn't it be great if Tikit's Email Connector just knew how to find the correct ticket and append the conversation to the correct ticket?

     

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    Starting today with no configuration required on your part. Tikit's Email Connector will now process email threads/conversations about an existing ticket even if that email does not have the Ticket ID in the Subject. So go ahead, converse just you would expect to in email and we'll handle the rest. 😁

     

     

    That's it for now! We'll discuss this and more at Technically Speaking next Friday the 23rd.

  2. Increased Notification Context

    Improvement
    Announcement

    One thing that always helps when receiving notifications from others in Teams is providing as much context as possible in those notifications.

    With updates to Tikit and Tikit Virtual Agent, notifications sent now show even more information than before without requiring any additional configuration on your part. "Sent Card" begone!

     

    Tikit Virtual Agent

    Requesters can quickly see on their device of choice, what's happening with their tickets as changes occur from Tikit Virtual Agent.

     

    Leaving comments?

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    Changing Status?

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    Tikit

    And the same goes for Agents receiving notifications from Tikit

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    Mobile

    And with Teams installed on a mobile device, that same experience carries over!

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    The year is only just starting, and we've got plenty of updates coming your way soon!

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  3. Sessions Timeouts and Export to CSV

    New Feature
    Improvement
    Announcement
    Fix

    We've got the end of the year in sight. But we've also got performance updates, handling session timeouts, improving the Custom Forms experience, and Export to CSV available for all. Right now!

     

    General

    We're always looking for ways to improve overall Tikit performance. Now creating tickets from messages in Teams is faster than before.

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    Never Be Logged Out AGAIN!

    Depending how often you're interacting with Tikit's Agent Portal, you might find yourself having to re-authenticate with Microsoft 365. Effective immediately and without requiring any configuration on your part, that is no more.

    Just like Teams, once you're authenticated - you are authenticated until you logout.

     

    Custom Forms

    We're also making a very slight change to the Custom Forms designer in that by default, the Card Payload Editor will be minimized. Which means by default, more real estate to design, experiment, and test things out.

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    The Card Payload Editor can still be accessed/brought into focus by clicking the "+" icon associated with it in the event you need to manually edit things or copy the contents out to replicate your card layout in a different Template.

     

    Export to CSV

    If you're the currently signed in Agent looking for a one time export of tickets with no access tokens required. Then look no further...than the top right of your screen!

     

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    Now with a single click, you can quickly perform a one time export of the current ticket list as it spans any number of pages to a CSV file.

     

     

    That's all for now, until next time!

  4. Multi-Department Mailbox

    New Feature
    Improvement
    Announcement

    Our last update to Multi-Department saw the introduction of the Multi-Department Picker for Teams and/or Email. Giving employees across your organization the ability to choose where that ticket ends up.

    Today we’re introducing another feature in a similar vein for ITSM Plan customers, Multi-Department Mailbox which enables any of the many departments you have configured the ability to hook up their own mailboxes located in 365.

     

    The Email Connector is Moving

    To accommodate this feature - a few things are changing and a few things are staying the same. First, the Email Connector now offers Global settings for all mailboxes you can configure.

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    Second, you’ve probably noticed the actual inbox you can configure (or already have configured) above is absent. That’s because each Team now supports an additional configuration for mailbox connectivity. If you're already using the Email Connector, we've already migrated your configuration for you.

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    Whether it be other departments or project based Teams within your organization. Not only can they have their own dedicated Tikit instance. But now they can hook up the mailbox of their choice to their Team.

     

    You’ll also notice that clicking into a Team’s configuration, now looks a little bit different as well.

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    Now anytime their respective inboxes receive mail, tickets will be created for them, in their Team. Regardless of if it’s a new mailbox you just created, or one that department is already used to using. This configuration is but a click away for ITSM Plan customers.

    Despite things moving around a bit – this configuration is still administratively protected. Which means the only way you will see the above configuration is if you are in the Administrator role for your Tikit deployment. Otherwise, this section is hidden from other Tikit roles.

     

    Wrapping Up

    This release also includes fixes as reported by our customers as well as introducing SLAs and their respective status on the main ticket list!

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    We'll cover these items and more at Technically Speaking happening a whole week earlier, this Friday!

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  5. Multi Department Picker

    New Feature
    Improvement
    Announcement

    When employees can't find what they're looking for with Tikit Virtual Agent, the request they submit has always ended up with the Default Team configured for Tikit.

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    But with our recent update, customers in multi department scenarios can now opt-in to leveraging the Multi Department Picker across Web, Teams and/or Email.

     

    Configuring the Multi Department picker

    Getting started with this feature couldn't be simpler, just head into Settings over at web.tikit.ai. There you'll be able to decide if you want to enable this feature for Bot Config and/or the Email Connector by navigating to those respective areas.

     

    Bot Configuration

    Enabling this will present the picker in Tikit Virtual Agent and employees submitting requests via web.tikit.ai/requests.

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    Email Connector

    Enabling this will present the picker via email.

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    Now when Tikit Virtual Agent isn't sure what to do, you can let your fellow employees choose where that soon to be created ticket should end up. As you can see above, both of these messages can be configured as you see fit.

     

    Let's run the example above again, this time with Multi Department Picker enabled for Tikit Virtual Agent.

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    Here the default Team is selected, but can be changed pre-submission.

     

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    But that isn't the only change available with the Multi Department picker. We're also bringing a concept from Groups, into the Team Configuration area.

     

    Configuring Friendly Names for Teams

    With Friendly Name, we're giving you a way to rename a Team wholly within the context of Tikit and how you choose to work. Heading into Teams, you'll see this new column.

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    And heading into a respective Team's configuration, you'll be able to change this name.

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    This Friendly Name is what users will see in the Multi Department Picker and what Agents will see throughout their experience in web.tikit.ai and in Teams via Tikit!

     

     

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    That's all for now. Less than two days until Technically Speaking!

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  6. Affected Users and Collaborators

    New Feature
    Improvement
    Announcement

    Whether you're trying to cut down on the number of tickets you create, looking to merge any ticket you see fit, or be able to communicate once to a larger group of people - with the introduction of Affected Users and Collaborators you gain it all through Teams and Email. Plus, we're supporting larger ticket request titles and auto refresh of the tickets list.

     

    General Improvements

    Tickets created through TVA now support up to 1,000 characters giving end users the ability to share more in their initial ticket submission. Plus, Agents who hang out on the list views for /Tickets, /MyWork or /MyGroupWork will now experience views that auto-refresh!

     

    Affected Users & Merging Any Ticket

    Tickets have always had just 1 requester. But now, you can have multiple requesters through Affected Users. Those listed as Affected Users on a ticket experience the ticket as though they were the requester. That means, comments left by Agents are received by all through Tikit Virtual Agent. Giving everyone the same update, at the same time, with the ability to response and add attachments just like the requester of the ticket.

     

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    This also means, another feature is making its way in from the roadmap with the ability to merge any ticket, by any number of requesters. With this change, let's say you have 4 tickets from different requesters and your currently viewing 1 of those tickets. When you merge the other three, an updated dialogue appears:

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    Specifically, the other ticket's requesters will become Affected Users of the current ticket. But you might also some other new language above with Assignee/Collaborators.

     

    Collaborators (Multiple Assignees)

    Another requested feature has been the ability to assign a ticket to multiple agents. With Collaborators, this is now possible. Updates made to tickets by the Requester/Affected User(s) will notify the Assignee and Collaborators of a ticket.

     

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    Updates to the rest of Tikit Experience

    And with the introduction of Affected Users and Collaborators also comes the ability to leverage these new concepts throughout other aspects of Tikit.

     

    Automations

     

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    Custom Views

     

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    Templates

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    SLAs

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    And that is just the Tikit web experience. We can't forget about improvements coming to email!

     

    Tikit Email Connector

    With the addition of Affected Users and Collaborators, the email connector is also expanding its abilities. Need to create a ticket with several people on it? Anyone featured on the To or CC lines will automatically become an Affected User on the ticket.

    Of course, just like many other properties on a ticket this can always be changed by an Agent or Automation.

     

    And that wraps things up for now! Until Technically Speaking!

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  7. Tikit's ITSM Plan is here!

    New Feature
    Improvement
    Announcement

    We've got several updates and a lot to cover, so let's get at it!

     

    Automation

    They're more powerful than ever, because Automations now have even more ways to fine tune conditions to your liking with the introduction of Evaluation Types.

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    With Evaluation Types, you can now build filters based on whether the chosen property Changed, Changed From something specific, Changed To something specific, or Changed From one specific item to another specific item. Speaking of which, eagle eyed customers might see something else in the above screenshot. But if not, it's a great way to move into some functionality and properties that are now making their way into Automations.

     

    Source

    Tickets created through various mediums will now automatically set their Source property depending on where they came in from. Giving you another data point to pivot off of.

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    Tags

    This is right from the roadmap and puts Tags right into Automations! One tag, two tags, any amount of tags will do for the next Automation you want to build.

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    SLAs

    How about building Automation/Custom Notifications based on SLAs?

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    Notifications

    We're also giving you more ability to control what emails go out but also support for pushing properties from the ticket right into email and sending to people external to your organization.

    And if you're using our Email Connector, you'll be able to choose it as your From address

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    But there are plenty of properties available to use, to get started just drop into the Subject or Body and start by typing { to bring up the available properties to use.

     

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    Email Connector

    Very related to to the above gif for Email Notifications. Updates to tickets, processed via email, will now look for #Id anywhere in the subject. So whether you're customizing outbound notifications or deeply integrating with Power Automate. All it takes is throwing the ticket ID right after # in the Subject.

    There is also one more change that's made its way to the email connector and that's how new vs. updates to tickets are processed. Let's say:

    • You're on an email chain, forward it over to Tikit. The entire thread will make its way into the the freshly created ticket. Conversation preserved!
    • You're replying on an email chain, the most recent reply in the thread will update the ticket. Keeping your Activity pane tidy!

     

    Tasks

    Need a checklist of things to do on a ticket? How about assigning someone else a portion of the work to do on ticket? With Tasks, you can now do just that.

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    You can add as many Tasks as needed and everyone will get notified in Teams! But with Tickets, Approvals, and now Tasks - that's a lot of work that could be moving around. If only there was a place to centralize all of that...

     

    My Work and My Group Work

    While the Tickets view provides exactly what you would expect. We wanted to offer a different way to centralize all of the work flowing through Tikit. That's where My Work comes into play.

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    This view offers the currently signed in Agent access to all of their Tickets, Approvals, and Tasks in a single view with the ability to quickly switch views along the top navigation. This view also shows the Type of item you have assigned, SLAs, and more. But there is also another view available right beneath this one and it provides the currently signed in Agent the ability to view all of the work assigned to their immediate peers per how you've configured Teams/Groups.

     

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    Now if one of your colleagues is out sick, on vacation, or just not available for whatever reason - you can easily check in on their work from this view. Because what's true in both cases is you'll be able to view Tickets and their associated Lifecycles and current Phase of work.

     

    Lifecycle

    Being able to add Task and Approvals to a Ticket is one thing. But being able to define when and where in a process they are needed is another entirely. With Lifecycles, we're giving you the ability to build out your processes in Tikit through any number of Phases to ensure work gets to the right people the first time, only when it's their turn, every time. Phases can contain any number of Tasks and/or Approvals.

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    I've already got one Lifecycle configured, so I can make sure when we onboard employees we're always following the same process and can track things every step of the way. As you'd expect, once created you're free to come back and edit this process as often or as little as you need to.

    You'll also notice a couple other things here. Not only can you control the Ticket Status based on whether or not the Lifecycle Completes or Fails. But you can define all the various paths to get to a Complete or Failed Lifecycle through Transitions. They can be as simple as "As long as all of the Tasks Complete and Approvals are Approved" move forward to the next Phase. But they can also be as complex as necessary. Maybe instead of failing a Lifecycle, you want to return to a previous Phase of work or maybe skip forward to another Phase of Work.

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    Once we have a Lifecycle created, we need to apply it to Tickets. We wanted to make sure that process was easy and it can be done through a means you already know, with Templates.

     

    Templates and Custom Forms

    If you're looking to apply a Lifecycle to a Ticket, you can do this with Templates. Just pick your Lifecycle and done! Now every time you apply the Template or Tikit Virtual Agent does, the Lifecycle engages.

    We've also introduced the ability to create Templates that do not have Custom Forms. Meaning you can now apply Templates to set several properties in a single go!

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    Once applied, not only can you see which Lifecycle is applied but you can also see where you are in the process.

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    And of course, as Phases begin relevant notifications go out to those parties for Approvals and/or Tasks. Plus, Tickets in Teams reflect these new properties as well.

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    As always, permissions throughout Tikit are respected based on the Team's you are a part of. But with Lifecycles, we're giving people throughout the organization the means to view information about a Ticket they are associated with. Whether that association be the Requester, the Assignee of the Ticket, the Assignee of a Task, or the Approver of an Approval. Everyone is brought into the know of what's happening with a Ticket that has a Lifecycle associated with it.

    And speaking of permissions, we're also going one step further with the introduction of RBAC for Tikit.

     

    Role Based Access Control (RBAC)

    This builds on a request from the roadmap giving you the ability to further breakout roles within Tikit. Now it's possible to setup roles for Admins, Super Agents, Agents, and Knowledge Agents. But what's the difference between an Agent and a Super Agent?

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    Previously, our Agents role that was provided out of the box had a lot of capability. But what we heard directly from our customers, through support channels, and here on the roadmap site is that it was too much. So now we've renamed them to Super Agents and created a new Agent role that can only work tickets and manage Tags.

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    Again, the Super Agent role is everything you're already used to and we've done the work of moving everyone into it so your permissions within Tikit continue to be followed. But now what this means is you can create other Teams/Groups with less access to some of Tikit's core configuration.

    And with Knowledge Agents, we're giving you a way to create a role for people who just need to create Knowledge entries, including Templates. Which means Knowledge Agents can create, edit, and manage Knowledge in full for Deflection or create Templates and link them up to serve your own Custom Forms for AI based routing.

     

    Wrapping up

    We're excited to have this out and still have plenty more updates on the way this year. As always, thanks for your feedback, your feature requests, and using Tikit!

     

  8. Localizations and Performance Improvements

    New Feature
    Improvement
    Fix

    We've been hard at work getting ready for the launch of our ITSM plan next month and while it's right around the corner, we've still got changes available to everyone right now!

    For starters, we've recently deployed a host of bug fixes reported by our own internal findings and of course you, our customers. But it's not just bug fixes, we've also made a few enhancements around...

     

    Creating a Ticket from Chat

    Faster load times when creating a new ticket from scratch

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     This one is right from the roadmap with support for even more of the ticket properties you're used to when creating a ticket directly from a chat.

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    Tikit Languages

    And we're also introducing support for complete localization of Tikit starting with French. In order to make the French selection available, just add French as one of the languages in your browser such as Edge or Chrome. Just head into Settings -> Languages -> and then Add languages.

     

    Edge

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    Chrome

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    Then just head back to your preferences on web.tikit.ai to select it!

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    That's all for now, see you next time...or at Technically Speaking this Friday!

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  9. Requester Improvements and Updates to Agent Preferences

    Improvement
    Announcement
    Fix

    This release includes updates to filters on ticket grids, agent preferences, and as always - fixes and general performance improvements for all of Tikit. Let's get into it!

     

    Ticket Grids

    This one comes right from the roadmap and it's the ability to find Requesters faster in your filters with the updated people picker now available.

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    And just like you'd expect, you can continue to add as many people as necessary

     

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    Agent Preferences

    You might remember that sometime ago we introduced Preferences to give Agents the opportunity to personalize their Tikit theme, and up next is the ability to customize your own experience when you arrive at web.tikit.ai by choosing how much of a Request you want to see. Honorable mention goes out to the following roadmap item :)

     

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    Changes are instant and happen on a per agent basis. Which means you can always change your mind whenever you'd like.

     

    Default - Ticket requests are displayed in full

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    Abbreviated - Ticket requests are condensed to fit on a single line. Hovering your mouse over the ID or Requester will reveal the full request without having to click into the ticket.

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    That's all for now, but we've got plenty more on the way. Happy ticketing and keep the ideas coming!

  10. Save and Reuse Filters with Custom Views

    New Feature
    Improvement
    Announcement

    If you joined us for Technically Speaking a couple weeks back, then you knew this was coming. But if you didn't manage to attend, that's alright! Because today Custom Views are now live in web.tikit.ai that let you build your own views that you and members of your Team can consume. Plus, if you find yourself frequently working out of web.tikit.ai we're also making a couple improvements here as well with view persistence so that whenever you come back to web.tikit.ai, we'll put you exactly where you left things last time. Plus - more filtering options. Let's get started!

     

    View Persistence

     From the roadmap, we heard that when it comes to styling a view as you see fit and then either refreshing/navigating away from the page those changes are lost requiring you to re-style them again. With this update, these edits are now maintained regardless if you refresh or navigate away!

    But maintaining your own personal look of the Tickets page is really just the beginning of things with this release. Because apart from maintaining view persistence for a single Agent we also have something that can benefit whole Teams of Agents.

     

    Customizing Views

    This one is also right from the roadmap and delivers on the ability to not just maintain view persistence, but now also offers the ability to wholly create dedicated views with filters, sorting, and the columns you want. We've got two ways to create Custom Views, so let's get started with modifying the one you see first when you arrive at web.tikit.ai by clicking on "Configure Columns"

     

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    Here you're free to add what columns you'd like to see in your view just by checking them off. You're also free to re-arrange to reorder the columns and which column (if any) you want to sort by.

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    Once you've clicked Apply, you'll see your new layout just for you. But what if you've done something that you think your fellow agents will benefit from?

     

    Creating a Saved Custom View

    Let's keep going with our previous example. You've ordered the columns how you want them, you've defined your sort order, you may have even filtered that view further down. In any case, once you're satisfied, click on Save View

     

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    Then, let's fill out some details about this new view of ours. Give it a Title, choose your filters, and further customize the columns if you so choose. Then click on Save.

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    Then, whenever you want to use this view, just select it from the dropdown. But we said there were two ways to create Custom Views. That's why you'll also notice here that there is also the option to "Add New View +" straight from this dropdown.

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    Clicking on "Add New View +" lets you create a new dedicated custom view from scratch. Best of all, Views provide unique URLs which means you can share them with teammates!

     

    More Filtering Options

    This update also brings with it the ability to filter on Due Date or Resolved Date. But we're delivering on another roadmap request with the ability to filter by Tags.

     

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    Plus, you can use those same filters on the board view!

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    Performance

    We've also released several enhancements this year that have made Tikit faster and that is a change everyone should be experiencing. Our thanks to Microsoft for continuing to improve the M365 platform and those we've worked closely with enabling us to make Tikit the absolute best it can be!

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