Hide-and-go-seek with support tickets
Users will always need support. You could have a solid hub and the most excellent, thorough documentation, and someone will find a way to break it or just not read the information presented to them. Bugs will be found. Questions will be posed. It can be easy to start feeling a bit overwhelmed by the number of support tickets you can get.
To help hub support teams deal with the influx and, sometimes, frustration that can arise from even finding tickets, we’ve added various filtering and search options over the years. Most recently, we introduced custom queries.
Custom Queries
With the use of the query builder, each member can build and save their own custom search queries. Working much like a smart playlist in iTunes, we wanted to allow you to get to the data you want to see but in a fairly simple, flexible way.
Common default queries
Starting from another
Every hub comes with a default set of common queries (“Open tickets”, “New tickets”, “Unassigned tickets”, “Closed tickets) and frequently used queries specific to the individual logged in (“Reported by me” and “Assigned to me”). Each one has a small icon on the left of the title that allows for using the query as a base or template for a new custom query. Clicking the icon will bring up the query builder and pre-populate it with the rules from the selected query.
Starting from scratch
Clicking the “add query” button below the list of custom entries will bring up the query builder pane with an empty rule set for you to start building upon.
Building a query
To specify how the query matches specific criteria, choose “all” or “any” from “Match (any or all} of the following” then make your selections from the pop-up menus. Selecting “any” will perform an OR operation on the rules specified (e.g., resolution is ‘fixed’ OR owner is ‘carl’). Selecting “all” will perform an AND operation on the rules specified (e.g., resolution is ‘fixed’ AND owner is ‘carl’).
A simple rule for specifying ticket type
To add additional matching criteria, click the Add (+) button.
Sometimes, a straight list of “any” or “all” rules isn’t enough and you need a combination of both. For this, you can add a sub-set of rules by clicking the Rule Set (…) button.
A rule set that equates to owner='' OR owner IS NULL
This allows you to have a set of “all” rules with a sub-set of “any”. For example, you can construct a query to “Match all of the following: open/closed is closed AND owner is carl AND (resolution is fixed OR resolution is answered)”. The default queries already provide examples of sub-sets and are good examples to learn from and work off of.
Lastly, you can specify the default sorting order you want results to display in. Make any changes desired and save. The new query will appear under your “Custom” list. You can remove and edit any query you create, refining a list that helps you seek out the tickets the tickets you need.
The query builder in action
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