You are reading the documentation for an outdated Corteza release. 2024.9 is the latest stable Corteza release.

Service Solution

Corteza Service Solution is a highly flexible, scalable and open source solution for keeping up with customer cases.

Home

The home page is accessible by clicking on the Home section in the main navigation bar on the top of the screen.

The home page is a dashboard for your business; it gives a quick overview of your cases, so you know what is going on.

It shows you essential statistics regarding your cases. They may be sorted by priority, status, and category.

Cases

The Cases page is accessible by clicking on the Cases section in the main navigation bar on the top of the screen.

There are three pages dedicated to cases:

  • Cases shows all of the cases in the system,

  • All New cases shows only the cases that have the `status of being new,

  • My new cases shows only the new cases that you are responsible for.

A typical case flow:

  1. A client contacts the company with an issue,

  2. the service agent checks the clients account to see if their entitlements permit support for the issue,

  3. if the client is entitled to support, a new case is created, directly from the account page,

  4. the agent inserts any relevant parameters to the case, assigns a category (the default is "problem"), links any related products, contacts, and assigns an agent,

  5. the assigned agent works on the case, creates updates and finally closes the case.

Adding a new case

  1. Navigate to the Cases,

  2. click on the + Add button to open the form,

  3. populate the data and press the Save button in the bottom right corner.

Each case has an automatically generated case number, which starts with "ticket#" followed by a number. An example case number is ticket#20191025094353420.

The ticket number provides a unique identification which is used within the system. To make the ticket understandable, provide a good subject. A good subject alone allows you to get a general idea of what the ticket is about. Make sure that the subject is short, clear and straight to the point.

The key parts of a case

Case Description

This is where you find the base information regarding a case; its status, priority, and a related product.

Case Details

This is where you can find essential relations, such as the related account, contact, case owner, and it’s cost.

Updates

This is where all the updates related to the case are kept. It can be anything from receiving updates from the clients to us contacting the client and gives you a clear picture of what is going on. It is posiible to add a new update by clicking on the "Add Update to this Case" button. Case status changes automatically when you create an update.

Knowledge Base

This is where you can quickly search through the knowledge base to find relevant information in order to get a better understanding of the task at hand.

Email template

Refer to the Integrator Guide  Templates for details on how to add a new or modify existing templates.

Accounts

The Accounts page is accessible by clicking on the Accounts section in the main navigation bar on the top of the screen.

Accounts are entities (companies or other) that you currently do business with. An account stores essential data regarding the company, along with a set of contacts, entitlements and cases.

Adding a new account

  1. Navigate to the Accounts,

  2. click on the + Add button to open the form,

  3. populate the data and press the Save button in the bottom right corner.

Adding a case for an account

  1. Navigate to the Accounts  select account,

  2. scroll down to the "cases" page block,

  3. click on the + Add button to open the form,

  4. populate the data and press the Save button in the bottom right corner.

Refer to the cases section for additional details.

Adding an entitlement for an account

  1. Navigate to the Accounts  select account,

  2. scroll down to the "entitlements" page block,

  3. click on the + Add button to open the form,

  4. populate the data and press the Save button in the bottom right corner.

Contacts

The Contacts page is accessible by clicking on the Accounts  Contacts section in the main navigation bar on the top of the screen.

A contact belongs to an account; you can think of them as employees for a specific company that you are allowed to contact.

Adding a new contact

  1. Navigate to the Accounts  Contacts,

  2. click on the + Add button to open the form,

  3. populate the data and press the Save button in the bottom right corner.

The key parts of a contact

A contact has two particular elements that indicate how and if you can contact them:

  • Do Not Call,

  • Email Opt Out.

The agent should check these fields before trying to make any contact.
Personal Data

Here the essential information regarding contacts, such as their name, title, phone, and email are stored.

Contact Address

Here their contact address (if it is necessary to generate any quotes, send packages or dispatch maintainers) are stored.

Contact Twitter Feed

Here you can keep track of the contact’s latest updates via Twitter.

Cases related to this Contact

Here the cases that are related to the contact; either created by the contact, or those which it are responsible for are stored.

Emails

Here, in chronological order, the emails that you have previously sent to the contact are stored. These are usually generated based on cases.

Adding a case for a contact

  1. Navigate to the Accounts  Contacts  select account,

  2. scroll down to the "cases" page block,

  3. click on the + Add button to open the form,

  4. populate the data and press the Save button in the bottom right corner.

Refer to the cases section for additional details.

Entitlements

The Entitlements page is accessible by clicking on the Accounts  Entitlements section in the main navigation bar on the top of the screen.

Entitlements are types of customer support, such as phone support or email support. You can set up entitlements to help support agents determine whether a customer is eligible for support or not.

Entitlements are related to an account and a product. For a fixed amount of time (defined by the start and end date), they are entitelled to certain services provided by the seller.

An entitlement can be created either manually, or from an account.

Adding an entitlement

  1. Navigate to the Accounts  Entitle  ents,

  2. click on the + Add button to open the form,

  3. populate the data and press the Save button in the bottom right corner.

You can define an entitlement template under a product to automatically supply some of the data beforehand. Refer to entitlement templates for more information.

Products

The Products page is accessible by clicking on the Products section in the main navigation bar on the top of the screen.

A product can be a physical or a software product, as well as a service provided by your company. Products allow you to keep track of how much turnover a specific product or a product family provides. You also get an overview of all cases for a specific product.

Adding a product

  1. Navigate to the Products,

  2. click on the + Add button to open the form,

  3. populate the data and press the Save button in the bottom right corner.

The key parts of a product

Product Description

Here the essential information regarding the product, such as it’s product code, name, family and optionally an entitlement template are stored.

You can use entitlement templates to automate the creation of more common entitlements, such as a hardware warranty for a product.
Case totals

Here the total time and cost that a specific product has required so far can be seen. The system calculates these fields, so there is no need to worry about that!

Cases related to this product

Here you can find all the cases created for the product. It can help us identify the most problematic products and the most common issues.

Entitlements for this product

Here you can find all of the entitlements created for this product.

Knowledge Base items related to this product

The knowledge base allows us to provide some information regarding the product, so our support agents can provide quality answers without the need for experts.

The knowledge base is accessible from the case creation screen.

Entitlement templates

The Products page is accessible by clicking on the Products  Entitlement Templates section in the main navigation bar on the top of the screen.

A product or service typically comes with entitlement to support. For example, a software license may allow the client to contact you by phone when they have issues or questions. Or, when you sell hardware, you may need to offer a period of guarantee, allowing the client to contact you when in case product breaks within that period.

Service Solution provides an easy way of defining the most common entitlements as entitlement templates. After creating a template, you bind it to a product. Now, whenever an entitlement is created for that product, the template will be used to prefill the base information regarding the entitlement.

Adding an entitlement template

  1. Navigate to the Products  Entitlement Templates,

  2. click on the + Add button to open the form,

  3. populate the data and press the Save button in the bottom right corner.

Adding an entitlement template to an existing product

  1. Navigate to the Products  select a product,

  2. click on the Edit button in the bottom right corner,

  3. select the "entitlement template" in the "product description" page block,

  4. press the Save button in the bottom right corner.

Adding an entitlement template to a new product

  1. Navigate to the Products  Entitlement Templates  select a template,

  2. navigate to the "Products that use this entitlements template" page block,

  3. click on the + Add button to open the form,

  4. populate the data and press the Save button in the bottom right corner.

Knowledge base

We use KB as a notation to reference to the knowledge base.

The Knowledge Base page is accessible by clicking on the Knowledge Base section in the main navigation bar on the top of the screen.

The KB stores various information regarding your products, services and other so that you can solve repeating cases faster.

Adding a knowledge base entry

  1. Navigate to the Knowledge Base,

  2. click on the + Add button to open the form,

  3. populate the data and press the Save button in the bottom right corner.

The KB number gets calculated by the system.

The key parts of a knowledge base entry

Details

Here the essential information regarding the entry, such as the type, related product, description, its status and some other metadata are stored.

Cases with this KB Item as Solution

Here you see all the cases that you solved with the help of this entry. This helps you distinguish good entries from bad ones to improve the KB. It also allows other agents to solve similar cases much faster.

Tips for improving quality

Implement reviews

You can use the status field of the entry to indicate if it needs to be reviewed by an expert, or if it’s accepted or rejected.

Departments

The Departments page is accessible by clicking on the Departments section in the main navigation bar on the top of the screen.

Companies usually consist of multiple departments that may have different costs when performing their tasks. One hour support by the service department is not the same as one hour support by R&D. This allows the system to calculate the cost of a particular case automatically.

A department is not directly assigned to a case, but rather its update. This allows multiple departments to work on the same case.

Adding a department

  1. Navigate to the Departments,

  2. click on the + Add button to open the form,

  3. populate the data and press the Save button in the bottom right corner.

The key parts of a department

Department details

Here the essential information regarding a department, such as its name, list of employees, and it’s hourly cost are stored.

Total time and cost of department related to work on cases

Here you can see some quick statistics regarding total consumed times and the total cost of the department. The system calculates this, so that you don’t have to worry about this.

Case updates related to the department

Here you can see all of the case updates that are assigned to this department. This can help us determine what department has the most significant load so you can properly adjust our business process.

Changing the hourly cost of a department only affects new entries. Old entries and their costs remain untouched unless they are updated.

Settings

The Settings page is accessible by clicking on the Settings section in the main navigation bar on the top of the screen.

Available settings

The following number for a KB item

This indicates the following ID that is used for the adjacent KB item (entry). Unless you migrate from another system, this value doesn’t need to be changed.

The default cost per hour

This is used if a department doesn’t define its hourly cost or if you don’t assign a department to the case update.

We strongly advise that each department explicitly specifies an hourly cost.

The default department for new ticket

This is the default department that will be assigned to a ticket if no other department is selected.

The default time for a case update

This is the default time that is used when working on case updates.

You can calculate the average spent time and use that value here.

The default case link

This is the base URL that is used when generating links to cases.

If you have an external portal that is able to display cases stored by Corteza, you can change this link to point to that portal.

Step by step configuration

The following number for a KB item

If you’ve migrated from another system, insert the next number that should be used. If not, you can leave this as it is.

The default cost per hour

Enter a default cost that should be used when working on a case update.

The default department for new ticket

Select the default department. You should first create departments if you don’t see any.

The default time for a case update

Enter a default time that should be used when working on a case update.

The default case link

  1. Navigate to the "Pages" of your admin panel,

  2. find the page called Record page for module "Case",

  3. copy the page ID (this is the long number at the end of the address, similar to the above channel ID),

  4. insert https://your-corteza-instance.tld/compose/ns/service-solution/pages/<page_ID_here>/record. For example: https://your-corteza-instance.tld/compose/ns/service-solution/pages/111502308285612036/record

If you have an external portal that is able to display cases stored by Corteza, you can change this link to point to that portal.

Dashboards

The Dashboards page is accessible by clicking on the Dashboards section in the main navigation bar on the top of the screen.

Dashboards help you to visually understand changing business conditions, so you can make decisions based on the real-time data of your Service Solution. Refer to the Integrator Guide  Low Code configuration if you wish to add additional dashboards.

You can easily define new dashboards to expose the data you care about the most.