What
Posted by MikeWright on Nov 3, 2009
Every now and then I get asked about some of the basic objects in IssueTrak. Most of the questions revolve around the Organization, Departments and Locations. So in the next couple of paragraphs, I will attempt to clear away some of the fog and make the view a little clearer. Now remember, while Organizations are required, Locations and Departments are optional features, so they do not have to be used in an IssueTrak site.
Let’s begin with the Organization. An organization is simply the company where you work. I work for IssueTrak, so when a User record is created for me, we add the Organization “IssueTrak” to my profile. As a member of the IssueTrak Organization, every issue I enter will be submitted under the IssueTrak Organization. In a site that has only one organization, that may not be important, but in some sites we use many Organizations, so their importance is greatly enhanced. Other Organizations could be customers of IssueTrak, companies who have bought our products or services and who need to report issues to us. This is how the IssueTrak support site is set up. Each of our customers has an Organization record created in the Support site and their user records then have their organization associated to it. This provides a way for us to know what customer Organizations are submitting issues to us and allows us to report on it. Additionally, we can limit the view of the issues to members of the submitting organization only. By using internal Organizations, a checkbox parameter on the Organization record, we can filter the view of a user to only issues submitted by others in their Organization. So users who work for Customer A can see all issues submitted by other Customer A users, but not see issues entered by users in the Customer B’s Organization.
Now let’s look at Departments. A Department is a work unit in a company. For example, the Sales Department sells products and services while the Payroll Department processes payroll and handles payroll issues. By associating a Department to a user on their user record, we will then be able to see which department has submitted the issues, as well as which departments have been assigned the issues. Many times a manager needs to know what Departments are submitting issues to his department. Other times, it is important to assign an issue to a Department. If the issue has to do with payroll, we assign the issue to a user who is associated to the Payroll Department and now IssueTrak can report on the issues that are assigned to that Department. There are also times when we need to assign to a specific Department and split the work in the site. Usually we do not want users of the Sales Department to view issues that have been assigned to the Payroll Department. By checking the internal checkbox parameter on the Department, we can filter the view of the issue to only members of the Department of the Assigned User on the issue. This gives us the capability to use IssueTrak for multiple Departments separately within one site.
A Location is generally defined as the place where a user works, for example Central Office, Warehouse, Store 14049. Each user can be associated with a Location just like an Organization or a Department. The Location information will fill into the issue automatically at submission just like the Department and Organization. This tells us where the issue is being reported from, allowing us to dispatch personnel to the correct location, or just report on issues coming from a particular location. Unlike Department and Organization, a location can be changed when the Issue is submitted, allowing a user to be associated with a home location, but report issues at another location. Locations cannot be used to filter Issues like Departments and Organizations.
IssueTrak allows you to choose whether Departments and Locations are used in your site. Each site is different according to what you want to accomplish. Some examples of typical setups are listed below.
IssueTrak used as an internal Help Desk at a company: One Organization, no Departments or Locations
IssueTrak used for IT Help Desk and Facilities Management at a company: One Organization, two Departments and no Locations
IssueTrak used in a school district for IT Help Desk: One Organization, many Locations for each school within the district
IssueTrak used for IT Helpdesk and Facilities Management at a school district: One Organization, two Departments, many Locations
IssueTrak used for Customer Support at a company: One Organization for the Company and an Organization for each customer
IssueTrak used for Internal Support and Customer Support: One Organization for the Company and an Organization for each customer, two or more Departments
IssueTrak used for Customer Support of multiple customers with multiple locations: One Organization for the Company and an Organization for each customer and a location record for each customer location.
IssueTrak used to support a large multi-Department, multi-Location Company: One organization for the company, multiple Departments, and multiple Locations
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