Polar Help Desk Professional :: FAQ

Polar Help Desk FAQ Categories

1. Top FAQ
2. General FAQ
3. Installation FAQ
4. User Interface Customization FAQ
5. Users FAQ
6. Active Directory & NTLM Integration FAQ
7. Incidents and E-mail FAQ
8. Service Level Management (SLM) FAQ
9. Knowledge Base FAQ
10. Reports FAQ
11. Licensing FAQ
12. All FAQ In One Page FAQ

Incidents & E-mail FAQ

Scheduler is not working/no mails are received. What is the problem?

There could be several causes to for this problem:

• In Polar Help Desk go to Administration->Email Automation and test your POP3/IMAP settings. If test fails then your settings are probably wrong and you should check them.
  
  
• In Polar Help Desk go to Administration->Scheduler and Enable scheduler
  
  
• Go to Start->Run and type Services.msc and check ih Polar Help Desk Scheduler Service is started, if not, start it.
  
  
• Go to Polar Help Desk installation directory (default is c:\Program Files\Polar\Polar Help Desk) and open directory services and edit schedulerConfiguration.xml file. Scheduler URL should look like this: http://localhost:80/PolarHelpDesk/SchedulerTrigger.aspx where PolarHelpDesk is name of virtual directory in which Polar Help Desk is installed. If you have SSL encryption on your web site scheduler URL should be changed to http://localhost:443/PolarHelpDesk/SchedulerTrigger.aspx
  
  
• Firewall is blocking access; try disabling firewall to check if that is the problem.
  
• Another web site is running on same port as Polar Help Desk, you should change Polar Help Desk web site port into something else.
  
  
• If error in Event Viewer is the following: 'Scheduler failed to execute trigger: 'http://localhost:80/polarhelpdesk/schedulertrigger.aspx'. Error description: The remote server returned an error: (400) Bad request.' you should download .NET Framework 1.1 Service Pack 1 from here.
  and install it.
  
  
• If error in Event Viewer is one of the following:
  
  
  • 'Scheduler failed to execute trigger: 'http://SOMETHING/SOMETHING'. Error description: Invalid URI: The hostname could not be parsed.'
    
    
  • 'Scheduler failed to execute trigger: 'http://SOMETHING/SOMETHING'. Error description: The underlying connection was closed: The remote name could not be resolved.'

You should open C:\Program Files\Polar\Polar Help Desk\Services\schedulerConfiguration.xml in some text editor change your scheduler URI because it is invalid. Note that file path might be different if you installed Polar Help Desk in some other directory. By default, Polar Help Desk will use this URL to trigger the Scheduler: http://localhost:80/PolarHelpDesk/SchedulerTrigger.aspx where 'PolarHelpDesk' is name of Polar Help Desk virtual directory selected during installation.

E-mail are being received in Polar Help Desk only after clicking on "force scheduler". How to solve that problem?

1. Please go to Start > Settings > Control Panel > Administration Tools > Services and find Polar ServiceDesk Scheduler. Check if the service is started, if not, start it. The scheduler runs emails check every 5 minutes.
   
   
2. Go to Polar Help Desk installation directory (default is c:\Program Files\Polar\Polar Help Desk) and open directory Services and edit schedulerConfiguration.xml file. Scheduler URL should look like this: http://localhost:80/PolarHelpDesk/SchedulerTrigger.aspx where PolarHelpDesk is name of virtual directory in which Polar Help Desk is installed. If you have SSL encryption on your web site scheduler URL should be changed to http://localhost:443/PolarHelpDesk/SchedulerTrigger.aspx.
   
   
3. If that won't help then you should go to Control Panel > Administrative tools > Event Viewer and see if Polar Help Desk Scheduler is throwing any exceptions, if it does please send us complete error info so we can give you further assistance.
   
   

We would like to have it setup so if a certain user emails our support@email.com email account, then the system automatically sets up a support incident and potentially automatically assigns it to a certain service person (and potentially notifies the service person at the same time by email), is all of this possible via templates etc.?

After sending an email the application opens a new incident for this user. If this is a new user (email address not in the database) than the new user is first created and an incident is opened on behalf of this user. If a customer replies to an email that was sent from the Help Desk then this is recognized as a part of the previous incident and it is added to the conversation history. The level of automation can be set up in the admin part of the product. Email notifications are also sent to the customer as well as the support technicians. So, after a customer has opened an incident your support team (or any other group - depending what you set up in the preferences) would receive a notification. Time when the notification is sent and the recipients of the notification can be configured from the admin center.

How often does Polar Help Desk scheduler check for mails?

It checks for mail every 5 minutes by default.
You can change this setting in this file:
c:\Program Files\Polar\Polar Help Desk\Services\schedulerConfiguration.xml (this is the default location).You have to change this setting: interval="5"
The intervals are expressed in minutes.
Do not change any other settings or scheduler will not function properly.

How can I turn the notifications in Polar Help Desk?

You have to choose the notifications you want to be sent to help desk users. By default none of them is selected but you can configure Polar Help Desk to send many combinations of notifications. The notification rules are defined in a currently selected default Service Level.

To change this “Bronze” Service Level you should go to Administration Desktop > SLM > Service Level and open “Bronze” in an edit popup. On tab “Notifications” choose notifications you want to be sent to your users and support personnel.

Different notification rules can be defined per each Service Level. Notifications about an Incident will be sent according to the service level defined for that Incident.

You will also need to enable email sending. The email sending can be enabled from Administration Desktop > SMTP Server settings. Specify all the required fields and make sure you have checked Enable E-mail Sending checkbox.

Is it possible to customize the email subject and body text of the notifications?

In the current version of Polar Help Desk it is not possible to customize the email subject and body text of the email notification that is sent to customers and support technicians. However, you can customize (i.e. set in the preferences of the system) when the notification will be sent and to who (which group of users).

Can notifications be sent once certain priority ticket is received?

After a customer has opened an incident your support team (or any other group - depending what you set up in the preferences) would receive a notification. Time when notification will be sent and recipients of the notification can be configured from the admin center.

In order to manage Polar Help Desk , I would like to understand the different between all incident statutes.

An incident will change statuses during the course of its lifecycle. Various users will change the status of the incident from New status all through to Closed status. Every status has a state so that you can have better visibility and control over the lifecycle of specific incident. This state is used so that you can measure the time it took to start working or the time for solving the incident which is important for SLA time measurement.
There are two possible states in Polar Help Desk:

1. Accountable - This state means that the responsibility for the incident is on support staff. The counted time in this state is used to see how much time it has take from the beginning to the end of giving the support to a customer. The SLA time is active in this state.
   
   
2. Not Accountable – This state means that the responsibility for this incident isn’t on support staff, it is on a customer that has opened the incident (e.g. support staff is waiting for his response or confirmation for good issue solving). The time for giving the support to the customer is not counted in this state. The SLA time at this state is inactive, so no priorities will increase to a higher level in this state by themselves.

Here are the descriptions for every incident status and its state in Polar Help Desk:

• New – All new incidents and the ones that are reopened get this status. The state for this status is Accountable.
  
  
• In Progress – The incidents where support staff is working on a solving the issue. The state for this status is Accountable.
  
  
• Waiting – The incidents where support staff is waiting for feedback from customers. This state for this status is Not Accountable
  
  
• Resolved – This incident is solved but the support staff is waiting for the customer to answer if the solution suits him. The state for this status is Accountable.
  
  
• Completed – This status have all the incidents that are solved. The state for this status is Not Accountable.
  
  
• Closed – This status is used for incidents that were completed. The state for this status is Not Accountable.

How can I turn off e-mail notifications that Polar Help Desk sends me?

If you would like to turn off the e-mail notification from this (Polar support) helpdesk as our customer, please click on My profile on the left menu of the help desk desktop. A user popup will open. Please uncheck Receive E-mail notifications. You will no longer receive e-mail notifications.
Elsewhere, if user has Admin privileges he should follow:
ADMIN->SLM->Service Level->Notification and turn off the notifications.

Polar Help Desk is not automatically escalating incidents when the time limits are exceeded. How often should this be occurring, and what could be preventing it from escalating incidents?

First of all, you will need to check Working Hours for your Service Level. Incidents will only be escalated during Working Hours for your service level.
Incident also will not escalate while it is in Not accountable Statuses (Waiting and Resolved Status).

Is there any way for the Polar Help Desk to automatically refresh the incident page so that support representatives can see when new incident (new e-mail) is created?

You cannot adjust the refresh rate in Polar Help Desk. This can only be done by pressing the refresh button and if a support representative makes an update to the incident.