Part 2 – Technical SOPs

Type, Subtype, & Item (TSI) are powerful tools in ConnectWise Manage. When tickets are coded with these three items, three positive things become possible. In our previous article, we discussed how we can use it in reporting. In this article, and this my favorite, we will go over how and why we link TSI to your technical Standard Operating Procedures (SOPs).

My favorite use for TSI in ConnectWise Manage, is to point technicians to the most relevant SOPs, WIKIs, or help articles. To enable a culture of process, we do two things with TSI.

First, Service Type (Category) leads to SubType (a narrower classification), leads to an Item, which is the name of our SOP. ConnectWise Manage can then be set to auto-fire a template that applies the SOP or link to the SOP in your documentation system (such as IT Glue, Confluence, or SharePoint) straight into the ticket. Because of this, any technician who gets this ticket can have a starting point on how to work the ticket, even the new guy. It is important to note that TSI can be changed throughout the life of a ticket as new data is discovered in the troubleshooting process. This also means that that “final problem area” would be the TSI on the ticket and therefor accurately report where the problem was, versus where the symptom was. Not to mention, all the SOPs followed would be attached to the ticket, which is another great documentation tool.

As an example, let’s say we are using IT Glue and have a request for a new Office 365 user. Know that TSI can be ANYTHING you configure it to be! In our example we have set the Service Type to “Application”, the SubType to “Office 365”, and the Item is “Setup New User”. Once selected, we have our template set to automatically add the IT Glue URL in Internal notes (and for that matter we also update the ticket budget to 0.5 hours). Now when the tech works that ticket, he clicks the link to the IT Glue article, and he can follow step by step, on how WE want our tech to setup Office 365 users. A consistent, repeatable process that can be handed to some fairly green technicians freeing up your more expensive resources. “Delegate to elevate” applies to more than just owners!

This leaves us with the question, how do we setup all these things? Stay tuned for next article where we discuss how to build out your Types, SubTypes, and Items to meet your needs.

If you need help setting any of this up, of have any questions or thoughts, feel free to contact us.

We continue in our next article, linking TSI to templates to create a Culture of Process. See you there!

Allen Edwards is president of Eureka Process, a firm specializing in process and leadership for IT firms. He started in IT professionally in 1994 and has been in management since 1999. He started his own MSP in 2002 and sold it in 2011. Subsequently, he went on to grow and bring a culture of process to two other MSPs before founding Eureka Process to bring his skills and experience to IT firms like yours.