The portal assistant
Let the people at a customer ask a question about their own tickets and projects and get an answer that shows the records it came from.
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The portal assistant answers a customer's questions about their own tickets and projects, such as "which of my tickets are waiting on me?" It reads only what that person can already open in the portal, and every answer shows the records it came from, so they can open the ticket or project and check.
Who can use it
Two things decide it. The person needs the switch Ask the portal assistant, which the Requester, IT team and IT admin presets hold. And the assistant has to be on for their company: the Portal assistant switch on the company's Portal tab. Settings › Customer portal sets whether it starts on or off for a company you switch on later.
What it answers
- Tickets the person can see: where each one is, who is on it and when it last moved. On a ticket from your service desk it can also read the conversation the customer already sees.
- Projects the person can see: name, status, progress and due date.
It never reads more than the person's own pages show. Your internal notes, a customer IT team's notes, other companies and anything about cost are out of its reach.
How a customer uses it
- 1Press AskThe button and the panel's title name what that person can ask about, for example Ask about your tickets and projects. Someone who can open only projects sees Ask about your projects.
- 2Type a questionUp to 500 characters, in their own words. The panel says up front that it answers from their records, can't change anything and can't pass a message on, and that asking you for help means raising a ticket.
- 3Read the answerUnder From, the answer lists the tickets or projects it used. Each one opens that record.
- 4Ask a follow-upTwo follow-ups per question. After that, Start a new question clears the panel.
When it can't answer
The assistant does not guess. It answers with one of these fixed sentences instead. The first two name only what that person can ask about, so someone with tickets only reads "your tickets":
| It says | Why |
|---|---|
| This only answers about your tickets and projects. To ask for help with something else, raise a ticket. | The question is about something else. The second sentence shows only when that person can raise a ticket. |
| Nothing in your tickets and projects matches that. | Nothing that person can see matches. |
| You've asked all your questions for today. Try again tomorrow. | They reached the daily limit. |
| The assistant isn't available right now. | It is switched off, or the answer could not be written. Asking again later is fine. |
Limits
- Each person gets 30 questions a day. The panel shows how many are left once 10 or fewer remain.
- Your workspace as a whole gets 3,000 questions a day across every customer.
- A question that fails before an answer is given back to that person's 30. It still counts toward your workspace's 3,000, and a person can start at most 60 questions a day, failed ones included.
- The assistant can't change anything. It can't raise, reply to or close a ticket; the person does that on the ticket's own page.
- Nothing is kept. The conversation lives in the open panel and is gone when it closes. Current stores a count of questions per person per day and nothing of what was asked or answered.
Turn it off
For one customer, switch Portal assistant off on the company's Portal tab; the Ask button goes for everyone at that company. For one person, pick a preset without Ask the portal assistant. Taking the switch out of the company's ceiling removes it for everyone there, whatever their preset.