How one Security firm uses OneDesk to both support their customers and develop their own product

This article is part of an ongoing series where I discuss how a particular customer in a specific industry uses OneDesk.

As our lives get progressively more and more entrenched in cyberspace, we see the rise of cyber security firms intent on looking out for our online well-being. These companies can be based anywhere in the world, tackling issues for customers all over the globe. Cybersecurity is a moving target, and so it follows that cyber-security firms need to stay on the cutting edge to protect their customers as new threats arise. However, these firms’ user bases can also run the gamut and some of their customers don’t stay up-to-date on the latest security patches. Because of this, a client came to us looking for a solution that allowed them to support their current customers as well as enable the development of new software they can sell to their user base.

Our client is a cyber security firm that offers their services to customers all over the world. Their core offerings include outsourced security solutions as well as full security programs. On top of these, our client also recently released software they’ve developed in tandem with their existing services. For all of these offerings, our client provides support whenever their users report issues and bugs. Previously, our client has used Atlassian’s Jira product to manage tickets and tasks, but were frustrated by Jira’s inability to handle incoming customer support items without our client doing additional work to bridge the workflow. Ideally, our client wants a customer ticket portal, as well as a Scrum board for their internal use.

With our client’s needs in mind, we knew that OneDesk could offer them the perfect tools to handle both the development of their own projects, as well as support work for existing products. One requirement outlined by our client was to have a customer portal. Out of the box, OneDesk includes a customer portal that can be customized to suit any team’s needs. Since Jira does not offer this feature, our client previously relied on email and some in-house routing magic to get their customer’s tickets into the system. With our customer portal, the workflow is simple and straightforward, getting the concerns of customers into the hands of the team. Customers can also track issues they’ve raised and discuss with the team directly as updates come up. A concern that our client had around the customer portal was whether it was a multi-tenant system, and they were pleased to learn that yes, our customer portal can support multiple customers from different organizations.

Aside from our customer support portal, OneDesk also includes a project management tool by default. Known in OneDesk as the “tasks” application, this project management software gives our client the ability to track all of the work required to accomplish their projects. In our project management tool, we allow work to be grouped into projects, which can further be grouped into portfolios. We also offer folders within projects so teams can group work-items together as they achieve milestones and approach project completion. For our client’s feature-driven work, they found our project hierarchy useful for organizing work under relevant functional areas. In terms of their process, our client noted that they follow a variation of Scrum and wanted that reflected in their project management tool. OneDesk’s flexibility enables our client to do so. With multiple views into project tasks, our client is able to pick how they want to view their project work. By using the Gantt view, they can set and see what dependencies there are between tasks. In the card/kanban view, our client can modernize their project board and focus on the status of the tickets currently in progress and lined up to be done for the current iteration or release. OneDesk also offers customizable views, so teams can create boards based on filters and criteria to show them what they need for their Scrum meetings and status updates.

Regardless of whether our client is focused on their support work or the development of multiple projects, OneDesk makes managing work easy. With workflow automations, our client is able to define what happens to tickets as they come into the system and move through different states. Based on whatever criteria our client wants, these automations can route tickets to the right people when needed. From our client’s previous experience with Jira, they were worried about how automations would work across projects as Jira had unique emails for every project that would assign work to these particular projects. Unlike Jira, OneDesk routes incoming email items based on the type (or sub-type); whether it’s a ticket or task, there is a unique email address for this particular type, and from there automation rules can be set up to route emails to the correct place. This gives our client more freedom for incoming requests as projects start up and end without worrying about email addresses going out of date and segmenting requests too early.

Our client was looking for a product that was a one-stop shop for both project management and user-facing support work. With OneDesk’s project management and customer portal software, we cover all our client’s bases, and we’re flexible in configuration for each of these tools. By handling all of the automation, OneDesk lets our client’s teams focus on the work that’s important to them, whether it’s developing new security software, supporting their existing tools, or fielding service requests and issues raised by their customers.