Did you know you can collaborate on customer tickets with people that don't have an eDesk account, such as suppliers or third-party services? eDesk allows you to safely share a link to a ticket thread with a verified collaborator. Customer and order information is excluded by default.

 


This help file will guide you through sharing a ticket thread with a verified, external user.

Before you start

 
  • You’ll need a login to eDesk. If you don’t have a login, you can request one from an Admin user within your business.
  • You'll also need to have External share permission enabled for the user you would like to access this feature. Admin, Team Leader, and Agent roles have this permission by default. For users with other roles, the permission may be requested from/enabled by an Admin user within your business via Settings > Company Settings > Users. To find out more information about enabling custom permissions for roles, click here.
  • Ticket Share is only available on the Performance+, Enterprise and Professional plans. To find out more, click here.

01 Sharing tickets externally

eDesk's Share feature enables you to safely share the conversation in a ticket with a verified collaborator that doesn't have an eDesk account, such as a fullfilment service or supplier. The purpose of this feature is to allow an agent to give the collaborator a one-off view of the messages in a ticket to provide the background context to a request.

For example, a customer is upset about a received item because it is labelled with the correct size but is much smaller than expected. The agent writes a message to the supplier in the Share tab of the Reply Box in the eDesk ticket and sends it to the supplier. eDesk notifies the supplier via an email that contains the agent's message, which company they work for, and a link to a webpage that displays the shared ticket. The supplier reads the message, verifies their access to their email and opens the webpage to view the ticket, then responds in an external note in the ticket to say they will replace the item. The agent can then inform the customer that a replacement will be sent. These external notes will appear on the ticket thread inside eDesk but will not be sent to the customer.

02 What can the collaborator see and do?

The collaborator cannot access the messages in eDesk because they don't have an eDesk account. Instead, the agent shares a secure link to a webpage that is populated with all incoming and outgoing messages in the ticket, and the collaborator will receive the link by email.

By default, the webpage will contain no details about the customer or their order; however, the agent can choose to include the customer name and order details.

Note: The responsibility for adhering to GDPR lies with the agent.

The collaborator can respond to the agent by leaving an External note, and nothing they enter will be visible to the customer. They will also have no means of contacting the customer through eDesk.

03 How does it work?

The agent must follow these steps:
  1. In the Mailbox, open the ticket.
  2. ​​In the Reply box, select Share.
    The Share option in the Reply Box.
  3. Enter the collaborator's email address, a subject for the email, and a message containing an explanatory note. This message won't be shared with the customer.
  4. If you want to share the customer's name and order information with the collaborator, select the Include Customer information checkbox at the bottom of the Reply box.
  5. Select Send.
    The recipient, subject and message will appear as an External note in the ticket thread that you can see inside eDesk. The collaborator will be sent an email containing the link. 
The collaborator must then:
  1. Open the email.
    The email sent to the Collaborator.
  2. Select the View conversation link in the email.
    A browser is opened to show a verification message and an email containing a verification code is sent.
    Verification page
    Enter the emailed verification code into the text field in the verification message.
  3. The ticket view page is opened in the browser.
    In the example below, the agent has ticked the Include Customer information checkbox in the Reply box, so some basic customer and order details are on the right-hand side of the view.
    The ticket view that is seen by the collaborator.
  4. The collaborator types their reply into the Reply Box. They can include attachments or hyperlinks, and can format the text. They can also select a checkbox to receive a copy of their message via email.
    Collaborator's Reply Box.
  5. The collaborator selects Send to send their reply.
    They will see a confirmation message.
    Collaborator confirmation message.
    They will also receive a copy of their reply via email if they selected the checkbox in the previous step.
    Email sent to collaborator containing a copy of their reply.
    The collaborator's reply will be added to the ticket in eDesk so that the agent can see the collaborator's message. The customer will not see the collaborator's message.
    The collaborators's response in the agent's view of the ticket in eDesk.Note: The link will expire 3 days after it has been shared. If the collaborator needs access to the messages in the ticket after this point, an agent will need to share the ticket again. However, when the ticket is re-shared for a second time, the collaborator won't need to verify access to their email once again.

04 Can I cancel the share?

Yes, an agent can cancel the share with immediate effect. If you want to cancel the share for any reason, for example, if you've shared the ticket with the wrong email address, or have changed your mind about sharing, then select Cancel in the ticket.
Cancel button in the share message.
This will immediately invalidate the link and the collaborator/s will no longer be able to access it. The ticket is updated to show that the link is now invalid.
Invalid link in the ticket.
If a collaborator tries to open the link in the email after it has been cancelled, they will see an invalid link message.

05 Customization options

For companies on our Enterprise plans, Admins have the ability to customize the initial email that the collaborator will receive.

Customized email format:
The email sent to the Collaborator.

Default email format:
Default format for email sent to Collaborator.

To customize the email:
1. Go to Settings > Company Settings > Collaboration Settings
Customization settings.
  • Select the Delete company logo checkbox if you don't want to include a company logo in the email sent to the collaborator.
  • Select the Company Logo field to upload a logo to the email. The image size must be 250x100px maximum.
  • In the Logo URL field, enter a URL that will be opened if the collaborator clicks the logo.
  • In the Company name field, enter the name of your company. The company name will be used as the From name in the email, and will also be in the body of the email where it reads "[Agent name] from [Company name]". 
  • In the Brand color field, enter the hex code for the View conversation button in the email. 
2. Don't forget to save!

Further Readings


eDesk has lots of useful features that support collaboration between users.  

To find out more about alerting another agent to tell them that you need their help with a ticket, click here.

Want to learn how to send a simple email to an external collaborator without sharing customer messages? Click here.