osTicket: Post-Installation Configuration

This lab covers the essential configurations needed to set up osTicket as an efficient and fully functional ticketing system. If you haven’t setup osTicket, go to this post.

Configuration Steps #

After installing osTicket, it is now time to make configurations to use it as a ticketing system. One thing to note is that I switch between Admin and Agent panels as each panel has different configurations. To tell which panel is being used, look at the top right of the osTicket screen. If it reads “Agent Panel”, then the Admin panel is the one being used and vice versa.

Roles #

The first step is to create a new role called “Supreme Admin”. For the purposes of this lab, I am intentionally creating a role that has every permission that can be granted. To create a new role, open the Admin panel, go to the Agents Menu, and click on “Roles” to create the new role.

Departments #

Next, a new Department will be created for “System Administrators”. In the Admin panel, open the Agents menu and click on “Departments” to create the new Department within osTicket.

Next, a new Team will be created for “Online Banking” within osTicket. To create a new Team, enter the Admin panel, open the Agents menu, click on “Teams”, and add any new teams that need to be created.

Teams #

Agents #

New agents will need to be created so they can take tickets from the queue. To create new agents, enter the Admin panel and open the Agents menu. Click on “Add New Agent” and create the account credentials for each new agent. In this case, Jane and John Doe are created.

Users #

To allow anyone to create tickets, enter the Admin panel and open the User Settings. Uncheck the following options.

New users will be created so they can create tickets, which agents will receive and triage. To create new users, enter the Agents panel and open the Users menu. Click on “Add User” and create the account credentials for each new user. In this case, Karen and Ken have been created.

SLAs #

Service Level Agreements (SLAs) need to be created in order to categorize tickets according to their level of impact. To create new SLAs, enter the Admin panel and open the Manage menu. Click on “SLA” and create any necessary SLAs. In this case, SEV-A, SEV-B, and SEV-C have been created to categorize tickets that need to be resolved within 1 hour, 4 hours, and 8 hours respectively.

Help Topics #

Finally, Help Topics need to be created to help users select an appropriate category that describes their problem, allowing Agents to understand the issues described in the tickets. To create a new Help Topic, enter the Admin panel, open the Manage menu, click on “Help Topics”, and click on “Add New Help Topic”. In this case, I have added the following topics to be used later when creating new tickets: Business Critical Outage, Personal Computer Issues, Equipment Request, and Password Reset.

Now that the configurations are set, I can use osTicket as a proper ticketing system. I can create tickets and treat them as if I were in a real-world environment.