In this guide we will cover:
– The basics of each part of HaloPSA along with the appropriate terminologies
Associated Admin Guides:
- Actions
- Agents
- Custom Fields
- General Settings (Asset Management)
- General Settings (Tickets)
- Items & Stock Control
- Recurring Invoices
- Self Service Portal
- Services
- Service Level Agreements
- Statuses
- Views
Related Guides:
- Actions
- AI Report Builder
- Customer, Site and User Records
- Custom Fields
- Organisation Basics
- Recurring Invoices
- Reports and Scheduling
- Report Builder
- Self-Service Portal Customisation
- Service Level Agreements (SLA's)
- Sites
- Statuses
- Step-by-Step Configuration Walk Through
- The Service Catalogue
- Ticket Views
- Top Levels
This guide will go through the basic definitions of terms that are used within HaloPSA, and a few commonly used features within them. To learn about these areas in more detail, guides have been linked above. "Admin" guides focus on laying out buttons and settings, and what each one does. "Related" guides give a more overall view of the area. If you would like clarification on how something works, please contact our support team at support@halopsa.com who can assist you.
Note: These features are interconnected with each other, so having a basic understanding of each will help you when configuring your setup. There are mentions of each feature in this guide within other features, but reading the guide in order will flow best to make sense of each.
What is a user?
Users are the people who raise tickets in Halo, and they each have a user account associated to a customer. The term "user" represents the employees of your customers, the people who are being supported with their issues. This is an example of how a user account looks from the agent portal (which will soon be explained). Agents will also have a user account associated with them – a user account is used to access the Self-Service Portal/User Portal and to match emails, so that when the user emails the service desk, Halo can instantly match them to their existing user.
You can see recent activity on their tickets, what customer they are associated with, and information such as their name and email address in the "Details" area on the far right side.
Note: The details tab may show to the left of the overview tab, this can be changed within Configuration > Advanced Settings >*Scroll to the setting named "Details screen display mode"*:
Fig 1. User profile overview.
1) User's name.
2) Configuration tabs.
3) Current open tickets from that user – opportunities are tickets for potential sales.
4) Recent activity on that user's tickets, showing any actions done by either the user or an agent.
5) Details about the user such as name and email address.
There are multiple tabs underneath the user's name and profile picture, which can be customised based on your needs or the customer's.
The "Tickets" tab shows every ticket that user has raised. By default, it will only show tickets that are open and not on hold, but you can change this filter to view closed tickets, or every ticket ever logged by opening the dropdown in the red box in Fig 2.
Fig 2. Tickets tab on a user.
The "Preferences" tab is for customising the user's experience depending on what they want. You can select if they want acknowledgement emails if they log tickets for example, in the "Email/Marketing Settings" dropdown, which is the most commonly used option here. In "Customer Level Notifications" and "Site Level Notifications", you can set whether the user receives acknowledgement emails for tickets logged by other people in their company. This is a useful setting for managers to look at what their team is logging tickets for.
Fig 3. Preferences tab on a user
You can select what the user has access to view in the "Permissions" tab. Here, the most common setting is the "Web Access Level", which is shown at the top of the list in Fig 4.
Fig 4. Permissions tab on a user.
The "Web Access Level" refers to the ticket visibility of the user when they are on the self-service portal, the setting can be e.g. "This users tickets" which will show that user only their tickets when viewing tickets in the self-service portal. Alternatively if you have a group of customers that get billed separately but all exist under the same parent organisation, you could allow them to see every ticket within the top level of the organisation (all tickets within each company of the top level).
What is an agent?
Agents are Halo's technicians, and are the name for your company members who work within the platform. You can view your agents in Configuration > Teams & Agents > Agents. Here, you will see a list of your agents and some basic information about them.
Agents use licenses in Halo, and each agent requires a license to log in – either a named license for a specific agent or a concurrent license that can be shared, although only one agent can use it at a time. Your license count can be seen at the top of Fig 5 next to "Agent accounts". Requests for additional licenses can be made through the Halo support portal in the area called "License Request".
Each agent is assigned Roles and Teams, which can be used to restrict access to certain areas.
Fig 5. Agents list.
By clicking into an agent, you can set information, permissions and preferences to their account in the same way you can with users.
Fig 6. Agent configuration.
1) Agent's name and job title. The job title can be set on the "Details" tab.
2) Configuration tabs.
Agents are assigned tickets to work on and can complete actions on these. Agents are the accounts you and your employees will use to communicate with your customers.
What is a customer?
Customers are your clients, and what your users are associated with. The Customers area can be accessed from the highlighted box on the left side, and provides a list of your customers upon opening. Here is where you can also access your Sites and Users.
Fig 7. Customers area.
Clicking into a customer brings up an Overview screen similar to the user overview. Here you can see tickets raised by users under that customer, details about the customer at the right side, and tabs that show extra information.
Fig 8. Customer overview.
1) Customer name and profile picture.
2) Configuration tabs.
3) Current open tickets from that customer.
4) Recent activity associated with that customer – actions done on their tickets.
5) Customer details – Note: Can also be shown in a configuration tab in some instances.
The "Sites & Users" tab is an important one here. By toggling the dropdown shown in Fig 9, you can see sites or users that are associated with that customer.
Fig 9. Sites & Users tab on a customer.
What is a site?
A site is a location under a customer. The customer is split into sites, and users are split into those sites under the customer. You can view sites within the Customers area, as well as in the dropdown under a customer in Fig 9.
Fig 10. Sites list.
The site overview gives a similar layout to the customer overview.
Fig 11. Site overview.
What is a top level?
Top Levels are a way of creating a group of customers. If enabled, it will show in your "Customers" area.
Fig 12. Top Level within Customers area.
Customers can be assigned to the Top Level within the "Details" area of the customer configuration, and will then appear under the group.
Fig 13. Customers list added to a top level called "Areas".
The "Overview" tab shows the same layout as customers, except it shows the tickets and actions across every customer within that list. This feature can be useful for tracking actions and tickets for VIP customers for example.
Fig 14. Overview tab on a top level.
What is an organisation?
An organisation in HaloPSA is your business, and stores information such as its name, billing details, and the organisational chart of your employees. You can have multiple organisations by enabling multi-tenancy, which can be useful for multiple departments in larger businesses, but we will stick to single-tenancy in this example.
Fig 15. Organisation details.
The "Departments" tab shows the departments under the organisation, and agents can be added as members of these. In the "Organisational Chart" tab, this then shows your agents and their job titles, sorted into a chart based on which departments they are a member of.
Fig 16. Organisational chart of an organisation.
What is a ticket?
Tickets are the main area your agents will work on within HaloPSA. Tickets can be created manually by agents, by users within the self-service portal, or by users from emailing the mailbox set up in your instance.
Fig 17. Ticket screen.
1) Action buttons used to work on the ticket.
2) Ticket ID and summary.
3) Stages set from the workflow the ticket is using.
4) Progress feed showing actions completed on the ticket.
5) Service Level Agreement/SLA area.
6) Ticket information area showing details about the ticket and who it is assigned to.
7) Additional system actions.
8) Timer that tracks time spent viewing the ticket.
9) End-User details area showing information about the user's account.
What is an action?
All work on tickets within HaloPSA is done through actions. The actions show on the ticket in order with most recent at the top by default, and a majority are created by the action buttons on a ticket. Let's take a closer look at the actions on the ticket example just shown, which shows the most commonly used.
The "Email User" action is the most recent in the list. By default this is configured to send emails to the email address assigned to the user account who raised the ticket. A majority of communication on tickets will be done this way.
The "Private Note" action is also very commonly used. This is a note that by default will be hidden from the user unless changed, so is a useful method of agents leaving notes to either themselves or other agents on the ticket. You can see whether an action is hidden from the user by the small crossed-out eye icon next to the action name.
The Opened action is done automatically when the ticket is opened, and is not done through action buttons like the other two.
You can also see which actions have changed the status of a ticket by the status box underneath the action name. The "Private Note" action did not change the status from "New", so it does not have a status listed. However, the "Email User" action changed the status to "With User", shown by the blue status box on that action.
Fig 18. Actions on a ticket.
What is a status?
Statuses are set on a ticket to track its progress. These can be created and customised to your needs, but we will go over the out-of-the-box ones here as a general overview of their use.
Statuses show in the "Ticket information" area on a ticket. They can be changed manually on the dropdown here, or automatically through actions like we just saw.
The "Email User" action we looked at changed the status to "With User". By default, this status puts the ticket on hold so the SLA timer pauses, and the ticket does not show in your agents' open tickets list. If the user responds to the ticket, by default this will then change to "Updated" and this takes the ticket off of hold, and puts it back in your agents' lists.
Fig 19. Status dropdown in Ticket information area.
What is a system action on a ticket?
System actions are like actions, but ones that the system has created rather than your agents. They appear stating that the action was done via the system instead of an agent name, and show in the Progress Feed the same way regular actions do. In this example, the system has opened a child ticket from a parent ticket.
Fig 20. System action on a ticket.
What is an service level agreement/SLA?
Service level agreements, or SLAs, are what are used to track timely response and resolution to the tickets your customers raise, and your agents work on. SLAs will appear on tickets, and based on priority, you can set different timed targets for response and resolution.
"Response Target" is the time your agents should aim to send a response to the customer.
"Resolution Target" is the time your agents should aim to have the ticket completed and closed by.
Upon logging the ticket, the grey bar shown in these figures, will show the response target. This is the time your agents should aim to respond within, and the bar will count down until they do.
Fig 21. SLA on a ticket that has not been responded to.
After sending a response, the response bar switches to the resolution bar as the response target is only to track the first response. Responses can go back and forth during this time, and the timer will only pause when the ticket is "On Hold" (seen with the blue text underneath). The Response Target line will either show a green tick or a red cross next to it, to indicate whether the target was met or not.
Fig 22. SLA on a ticket that has been responded to but not resolved/closed.
The color will change from green, to yellow, to orange the closer to these targets it gets to. If the target is missed, the bar will turn red and a red cross icon will appear next to the target time instead of a green tick. In this example below, the response target was met, but the resolution was not.
Fig 23. SLA on a ticket that has met response target but not resolution.
What is a custom field?
Custom fields are a way of adding your own information fields with whatever information you would like them to contain. You can have different formats such as text, single selection, multiple selection and checkboxes.
They can be added to a large list of areas, including customers and assets, but this example shows them in tickets as their most common use.
The "Software" field below is located in the "Additional Fields" tab of a ticket, which is their default area to appear if not set elsewhere. Since it is a multiple selection field, we can choose multiple options from the dropdown.
Fig 24. Multiple Selection custom field.
What is a view/list/filter profile/bulk action?
Views, filters, lists and bulk actions all refer to configuration options for ticket lists, so we will discuss these together.
Views refers to how the list of ticket appears sorted. A default can be set for every agent in Configuration > Tickets > Views > Views section, or per agent in their account > Preferences tab > Tickets dropdown.
You can switch between views regardless of defaults by clicking the current view at the top (currently "Tickets by Team") and the list underneath will appear.
Fig 25. Views area on a ticket list.
If you click "My Lists" in this dropdown, you can then access your lists as well. These are custom from Configuration >Tickets > Views > Configure Lists button, where you can create lists and add filters of which tickets are included.
Fig 26. My Lists view.
Filter profiles dictate which tickets appear in these dropdowns.
Fig 27. Filter profile dropdown.
Custom ones can be created and the built-in ones can be edited in Configuration > Tickets > Views > Filter Profiles. This "Open Tickets" profile has criteria to exclude tickets closed or on hold.
Fig 28. Open Tickets filter profile.
Bulk actions can be used to change something about a group of tickets, often like status changes to close a few a once. The checkboxes at the left side of the tickets in the list can be selected to choose the tickets, and selecting the box in line with the column titles will select every ticket.
Fig 29. Edit button when tickets are ticked.
Hovering over the "Edit" button then gives the options of what can be done.
Fig 30. Change options.
What is an asset/configuration item?
Assets are tangibles your company owns (Note: Not the items you sell). Opening the "Assets" area shows a list format similar to tickets, and the views are configurable on the left side in a similar way.
Fig 31. Assets list.
Opening an asset provides information and details about it in a similar format to the customer overviews. Assets can be linked to tickets, so tickets related to them will show here. You can also set relationships between assets, note warranties, and assign the asset to a site.
Fig 32. Asset overview.
What is the service catalogue?
The service catalogue is where a list of services is stored in HaloPSA.
Fig 33. Service catalogue.
The services can be configured to either show or be hidden to end-users in the self-service portal, and a ticket type can be linked to them to raise tickets regarding the service. Services can also be a "monitored service" meaning their service status is tracked and that status can be shown to users.
What is an item/product?
Products are the items that are added to invoices to invoice your customer for. The Products area can be accessed either by hovering over the three dots like in Fig 34, or within the module bar above it.
Fig 34. Products module.
This will bring up a list of any products within your Halo system, and information associated with them sorted into columns.
Fig 35. Products list.
Clicking into a product will bring up its details and associated configuration options. Here you can set names, pricing, cost
Fig 36. Product overview.
1) Product name, which comes from the "Name" setting at the top of the "Details" tab.
2) Configuration tabs.
What is a recurring invoice?
A recurring invoice is an invoice that is set to generate repeatedly based on the schedule assigned to it. This can range from weekly to every five years. On its scheduled creation, it will appear in the "Recurring Invoices" section of the "Ready for Invoicing" area and can be invoiced.
Fig 37. Recurring invoice screen.
What is the reporting suite?
The reporting suite is the area in HaloPSA where reports on data within your instance can be created and stored. If you have knowledge of SQL, you can use this to make your own advanced reports.
However, do not worry if you do not! There is a query builder where you can enter fields to add, as well as an AI query builder where you can describe what you want to create. There is then also the system data sources you can add.
Fig 38. Reporting suite.
1) Report groups to organise reports, My Reports shows ones an agent has saved to their own section.
2) List of reports within that group.
3) New report button.
4) Data sources that can be used to make query builder reports. These can be downloaded from the Online Repository.
5) Composite reports joins multiple reports in one save, which can then be sent.
6) Online Repository holds a number of pre-made reports to choose from that can be saved to your own instance. Looking at the SQL of these can be helpful if you are unsure how to create something.
What is the self-service portal?
The self-service portal is the place where users can complete actions within Halo tickets, or view anything made available to them.
Fig 39. Self-service portal.
1) Organisation logo.
2) Navigation bar showing buttons to quickly access an area.
3) User profile.
4) Search bar that searches everything the logged-in user has access to.
5) Tiles to navigate to areas of the portal.
For instance, clicking on the "Report an issue" tile takes the user to a page to log a ticket with whatever fields have been set on the ticket type.
Fig 40. Ticket logging screen for users.
The tiles can be used to log tickets, view existing tickets, view the knowledge base, log a service request from the service catalogue, look at documents, quotations or invoices, view their assets, link to an external URL… it's really customisable.
