PBJ Helpdesk 2.4.0 — follow-up emails, caught
PBJ Helpdesk 2.4.0 is out. It catches the replies that do not look like replies, and it gives every ticket a timeline you can actually read.
The follow-up that arrives as a brand-new email
Half your customers will not press reply. They open a fresh email, type the same subject, and send it. Nothing in that message says which job it is about, so every helpdesk on earth files it as new work — while the ticket it belongs to sits open in the next column.
2.4.0 notices. When an email comes from the same address, about the same thing, as mail already on a ticket, it gets a caution mark in the inbox. Open it and you get a panel naming the ticket, its subject and its current status, with two buttons: Add to ticket HD-n and Not a follow-up.
It never attaches anything on its own, and that is deliberate. Matching on sender and subject is right often enough to save you real time and wrong often enough that acting on it unasked would eventually put a customer’s message on somebody else’s job. So it asks. Adding the email puts it in the ticket’s conversation exactly as a properly threaded reply would, and it stays filed with that ticket for good.
The whole life of a job, in order
Every ticket now has a Timeline tab next to the conversation. Oldest first, grouped by day: the ticket being opened, what the customer wrote, what you replied, internal notes, status and priority changes, reassignments, category and customer changes, missed response targets, and any follow-up emails you added by hand.
The conversation tab is unchanged and still the default, because the commonest job on a ticket is reading the last thing somebody wrote and answering it. The timeline is for the other case — the job that dragged on, where somebody wants to know what actually happened and when.
Tickets you raised long before this update get a full timeline too. It is built from records the helpdesk has always kept, so nothing had to be invented and nothing was lost. Internal notes stay staff-only there, and group-assigned tickets stay nameless, exactly as they do everywhere else in the plugin.
Upgrading
Update from Plugins as usual. The database updates itself; nothing is rewritten and no mail moves. A background job fills in the details needed to match older mail, and until it finishes, follow-up suggestions simply do not appear for that older mail — no prompt is the safe way to be incomplete.
PBJ Helpdesk is a module of PBJ CRM and requires it. See all PBJ plugins.
PBJ Helpdesk 2.4.0 is out. It catches the replies that do not look like replies, and it gives every ticket a timeline you can actually read.
The follow-up that arrives as a brand-new email
Half your customers will not press reply. They open a fresh email, type the same subject, and send it. Nothing in that message says which job it is about, so every helpdesk on earth files it as new work — while the ticket it belongs to sits open in the next column.
2.4.0 notices. When an email comes from the same address, about the same thing, as mail already on a ticket, it gets a caution mark in the inbox. Open it and you get a panel naming the ticket, its subject and its current status, with two buttons: Add to ticket HD-n and Not a follow-up.
It never attaches anything on its own, and that is deliberate. Matching on sender and subject is right often enough to save you real time and wrong often enough that acting on it unasked would eventually put a customer’s message on somebody else’s job. So it asks. Adding the email puts it in the ticket’s conversation exactly as a properly threaded reply would, and it stays filed with that ticket for good.
The whole life of a job, in order
Every ticket now has a Timeline tab next to the conversation. Oldest first, grouped by day: the ticket being opened, what the customer wrote, what you replied, internal notes, status and priority changes, reassignments, category and customer changes, missed response targets, and any follow-up emails you added by hand.
The conversation tab is unchanged and still the default, because the commonest job on a ticket is reading the last thing somebody wrote and answering it. The timeline is for the other case — the job that dragged on, where somebody wants to know what actually happened and when.
Tickets you raised long before this update get a full timeline too. It is built from records the helpdesk has always kept, so nothing had to be invented and nothing was lost. Internal notes stay staff-only there, and group-assigned tickets stay nameless, exactly as they do everywhere else in the plugin.
Upgrading
Update from Plugins as usual. The database updates itself; nothing is rewritten and no mail moves. A background job fills in the details needed to match older mail, and until it finishes, follow-up suggestions simply do not appear for that older mail — no prompt is the safe way to be incomplete.
PBJ Helpdesk is a module of PBJ CRM and requires it. See all PBJ plugins.