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Manage

System > Orgs/Groups/Depts > Manage

The Manage page defines the organizations you do business with. Typically an organization is a customer, but an organization could also be a business partner. Organizations are associated with Scopes, tickets and with service desk definitions.

Within an organization you can define:

  • Machine Groups - Machine groups associated with this organization.
  • Departments - A unit of administrative responsibility within an organization.
  • Staff - Personnel assigned to a department.

General tab

Click New to display the Add Organization window, or click a row in the middle panel, then click Edit to display the Change Organization window. Enter the following attributes:

  • ID - The record identifier. Can't be changed once you save it.
  • Org Name - The display name for the identifier.
  • Org Type - The type of organization. See Organization Types.
  • Default Dept. Name - The default department for the organization.
  • Default MachGroup Name - The default machine group for the organization.
  • Org Web Site - The organization's web site.
  • Number of Employees - The number of employees in the organization.
  • Annual Revenue - The annual revenue of the organization.
  • Preferred Method of Contact - The organization's preferred method of contact: Phone, Email, Mail, Fax.
  • Parent Organization - The parent organization of this organization. The parent organization must be previously defined to display in this drop-down list.
  • The address of the organization:
    • Country
    • Street
    • City
    • US State
    • Zip Code

Pre-Defined Organizations

Three pre-defined organizations are provided:

  • myOrg – The org of the service provider using the VSA. The name should be renamed to your company or organization name. The myOrg name displays at the top of various reports to brand the report. Agents installed to internally managed machines can be assigned to this organization.
  • Kserver – The org to assign to agents installed on your KServers. This makes it easy to apply specialized settings to KServers, which are typically maintained differently from other agent managed machines.
  • Unnamed – The default organization to assign an agent. Maintaining multiple agent install packages in Agent > Deploy Agents, one for each organization, can be time consuming. Instead some server providers use a single agent package for the unnamed organization and perform all installs using this package. System > Naming Policy can reassign new agents to the correct organization.group ID automatically—the first time the agents check in—based on each managed machine’s IP or connection gateway. Agent > Copy Settings may be scheduled afterwards, to copy specific kinds of agent settings by machine ID template to the type of machine revealed by the initial audit. This can be automated using agent procedures.

Departments

Define the departments within an organization. All staff members are defined by the department they belong to. You can define multi-level hierarchies of departments by identifying a parent department for a department. You can reassign a staff member to any other department within the same organization.

For a new department enter the following attributes:

  • Name - The name of the department.
  • Parent Department - The parent department. Optional.
  • Manager Name - The name of the department manager. Optional. You must create a staff member before you can assign that staff member as the manager of the department.

Machine Groups

Define the machine groups associated with this organization. Machines are always defined by machine group and machine groups are always defined by organization. You can define multi-level hierarchies of machine groups by identifying a parent machine group for a machine group.

You can also move a machine group and all of its associated machines to a different parent machine group within the same organization.

For a new machine group enter the following attributes:

  • Name - The name of the machine group.
  • Parent Group - Parent machine group. Optional.

Staff

Create staff members within departments and maintain contact information for each staff member. Contacts and their phone numbers can be associated with tickets and with service desk definitions. Staff member information can also be updated by Active Directory using Agent > View AD Users.

  • Full Name - The full name of a person within the organization.
  • Department - The department the person is associated with. The department must be previously defined to display in this drop-down list.
  • Supervisor - The person this staff member reports to. The Supervisor must be previously defined as a staff member in the same department.
  • Title - The person's title in the organization.
  • Function - The function the person performs in the organization.
  • Phone Number - The person's direct phone number.
  • Email Address - The person's email address.
  • User Name - VSA user ID associated with this staff member.
  • View all tickets - If checked, the VSA user associated with this staff member can view all tickets in his or her scope as well as tickets associated with this specific staff member record. If blank, this VSA user can only view tickets associated with this specific staff member record.

Visibility of Service Desk Tickets by a Staff Member

If a VSA user name is associated with the staff member record of an organization, then that VSA user has visibility of tickets associated with that staff member record even if the VSA user's scope does not allow it. Any tickets created by that VSA user are automatically associated with their staff member record and organization. This method primarily supports machine users using Portal Access to create and manage their own tickets. Machine users expect to have access to all the tickets they create and to any tickets created on their behalf, but may have no scope privileges defined for them. If a scope does exist for a VSA user associated with a staff member, checking the checkbox called View all tickets in the staff member record provides visibility of those additional tickets by scope.

Example: Dale is the main customer contact for the XYZ organization. He is provided a scope that allows him to see all tickets related to his organization, even tickets not created by him, so the View all tickets checkbox is enabled. Brandon from the XYZ organization contacts the service desk to submit a ticket as well. Initially it's unclear whether Brandon should have access to any other tickets beyond the tickets he himself creates, so the View all tickets is left unchecked. Later, if Dale okays greater access for Brandon, the service desk provider can assign a scope to Brandon and check the View all tickets checkbox.