Work Order management

[Sanjil]

I am new to the forum and new to the work order management role. Does anyone have any information on best practices for organization a work order management dept.? My company is currently in flux and we have a work order management team identify, but we need to figure out the best processes for "working" a work order. Any help is appreciated.

[The Phoenix]

---

Sanjil wrote:
I am new to the forum and new to the work order management role. Does anyone have any information on best practices for organization a work order management dept.? My company is currently in flux and we have a work order management team identify, but we need to figure out the best processes for "working" a work order. Any help is appreciated.

---

Hi There!

* It would be helpful to have more information on what are you trying to accomplish... Have you decided if a work order is going to be a custom object or managed from the opportunity?
* Have you thought about using the work flow?
* When does a WO kicks in? Is it at a particular opportunity stage?

Talk to you soon.

[Sanjil]

Thanks for your response. Basically we are an internal organization that is part of the overall tech dept. When a customer calls up the tech support line and wants to request a configuration change to there current system setup, the process is for the CR to create a work order, via a word template, and submit it to an email box. I then take that work order and manual enter it into another system and then place the work order in a spreadsheet (i.e. - that is our version of a queue) and then from there I have to assign someone the work order and follow up on it. Once it is complete, we notify the customer and then I get information together to send to accounting for invoicing.

Obviously this is a very manual task and we recently got salesforce to help with this and it is also a good opportunity to review our processes and see if we can change them. My idea is to have multiple forms based on the type of request the customer is making. I am looking for any best practices or ideas as to setting up an organization like this.

[successman]

Sanjil,

You should check out the Best Practice Event this Thursday on Support. Joel Martin is pro when it comes to setting up support orgs.

Just Dial in @ 11:00 AM PST

866-393-8073
Passcode *2582794*

webex info
http://salesforce.webex.com
Mtg# 731069138

[GarySmith]

Hi Sanjil

I recently configured salesforce for an internal IT helpdesk along similar lines to that which you describe. The Cases tab and associated functionally are well suited to your ambitions to re-design your processes.

I'n my case I made use of:
1. Record types (need Enterprise Edition). Enables you to log different types of case (or 'work item') with the user only seeing the data items relevant to that particular type of case.
2. Assignment rules. Automatically assign cases to people in your team based on the record type and other criteria.
3. Escalation rules. Automatically assign the case to another user or generate an email based on business rules (e.g. case is 2 hours old and status = not started).
4. Dashboard. For monitoring workloads and producing MI.
5. Self service portal. Load all your organisation staff as Contacts and give them self service access. That way they can log cases via your extranet, monitor progress etc.
6. Knowledge Base. Generate library of solutions, and make these available to Contacts via the self service portal.

Couple of 'best practices' we implemented
1. Include a set of underlying/root cause reasons which explain why the case arose on the Case Reason picklist. Display these items to the users only on the Close Case picklist. These are different to the picklist items which should be available on the New Case layout, and allow you to capture additional useful information.
2. Enable the feature to automatically send an email to the Contact when a new case is created and include the case#. We found this a) reduced progress chasing calls because at least the contact knew the team had the case and b) reduced the time taken to find the enquiry on those follow up calls which do arise because the contact has the case number.

One situation common to IT helpdesks which salesforce does not handle particularly well is when you have to give the Contact a solution (e.g. a patch or fix, or ask them to test a workaround) and then wait for them to confirm its worked. This can screw up your MI reporting on age of cases if you leave the case open because of course the Contact may take millenia to get back to you (if at all). One option is to close the case at the point the Contact is given a solution, but this isnt strictly accurate because of course the solution given may fail and you have to re-open the case. In my situation we kept the case open for 1 month and then closed it. For the MI, we export the 'age of case' data relating to all open cases to an Excel report, use a macro to calculate the average age of case excluding 'Awaiting customer acceptance' case status, and then manually update the high level averages into a custom object. We then use the custom object as part of the dashboard reports.

Hope this helps
Gary