The Helpdesk Agent is ONE working on your IT tickets. Use it to answer requests your data can already settle, either on tickets you pick or on every ticket employees open.

Feature/Functionality

Overview

ONE replies with what your data already holds and works the ticket itself. When a request would change something outside the ticket, it asks for approval first. When a person has to finish the job, it leaves a task for your team.

There are two ways to hand tickets to it:

How to use

Manual mode: put ONE on a ticket

1. Go to Tickets and open the ticket.
2. In the ticket panel, click AI agent (it reads Assign an AI agent when empty) and pick ONE.

ONE goes through the ticket and the messages on it, then gets to work in the way this article explains. The timeline records who added the agent.

Only admins who may edit every ticket can change which AI agent a ticket has.

Automatic mode: every ticket employees open

The automatic mode is being rolled out account by account. If IT support agent is missing from your ticket settings, it is not yet enabled for your organisation. Contact your Factorial IT representative.

1. Go to Helpdesk > Settings and scroll down to Ticket defaults.
2. Switch on IT support agent.
3. Click Confirm.

From then on, every ticket an employee opens gets the IT Support tag and ONE as its AI agent as soon as it is created. This covers email, the employee space, Slack and Microsoft Teams. See the Email, Slack and Microsoft Teams articles to set up each channel.

Only tickets created after you switch it on are covered. If you later switch it off, new tickets no longer get the agent and it is removed from open ones too. Your team carries on from there.

Requests ONE handles

For questions that need none of your Factorial IT data, ONE can still answer using general knowledge or a web search, and cites the source page. For anything else, it says the request is outside its scope.

If a request comes with no reason, such as a renewal, a purchase or a paid seat, ONE asks the employee why before going on.

What ONE does alone and what it proposes

ONE is free to work on the ticket. Anything that changes your company outside the ticket, it proposes and then waits.

Done alone, visible on the ticket and reversible:

• Public comments to the employee or internal comments to your team
• Creating, scheduling and reassigning tasks on the ticket
• Updating status, priority, assignee, subscribers and linked objects on the ticket

Proposed, then held until approved:

• Device orders, assignments and retirements
• Accessory assignments
• Adding or taking away a SaaS seat
• Software installs and removals
• Device locks and wipes
• Temporary admin rights on a device
• Edits to your list of ticket tags

ONE answers through whichever channel opened the ticket. Public comments on Slack or Teams tickets land in the original thread, and on email tickets they are sent as a reply in that email conversation. Internal comments are only visible in Helpdesk.

Approving a request

A proposal is a single comment on the ticket. It states the action, what it costs, and @mentions the person who decides. That person is notified and added as a subscriber.

Temporary admin rights are the exception: they need an IT admin's approval rather than the manager's. See Who approves temporary admin rights below.

To approve or refuse, reply with a comment on the ticket. ONE picks up the answer and follows it.

• The manager and the assignee have equal say. A yes from one of them is enough, and a no from one of them closes the request.
• Self-approval is never allowed, even for admins.
• A manager asking on behalf of their own report counts as approved. ONE goes ahead without asking anyone.
• Only a comment from the decider counts. Someone else writing that the manager said yes, or posting for them, does not count.
• ONE asks only once. It sends no reminders and does not mention anyone again. The request waits until someone answers. Nothing expires.
• A conditional or "not now" reply triggers a single clarifying question.

Once approved, ONE confirms the item can still be had, performs the action, lets the employee know the next steps and records what it changed in an internal note.

Temporary admin rights

Sometimes an employee needs admin rights on their own device for a short while, for example to set up a printer driver, VPN software or a work tool. ONE grants these rights on macOS and Windows for a fixed number of hours and removes them afterwards. The device takes the rights away on its own at the deadline, even if it is offline then.

1. The employee asks in a ticket. They give the device, the number of hours (1 to 24) and the reason. If the hours or the reason are missing, ONE asks for both in a single reply.
2. ONE checks the device. It confirms the device belongs to the employee, or to someone they manage, and finds the account they sign in with. If the device is offline, ONE asks the employee to switch it on and connect, then waits for them to reply.
3. An IT admin approves. ONE posts one comment with the employee, the device, the account, the hours and the reason, and @mentions the approver.
4. ONE grants the rights. It tells the employee they are an administrator until a given time. On a Mac, the rights take effect within a minute if the device is online. On Windows, the employee types their own username and password when Windows asks for an administrator, or signs out and in again once.
5. ONE removes the rights at the end. After the deadline, ONE checks the rights are gone, tells the employee in the ticket and closes it. On Windows, an app already running as administrator keeps those rights until it is closed or the employee signs out.

The ticket stays In progress until ONE confirms the rights have ended.

Who approves temporary admin rights

Admin rights affect device security, so an IT admin approves them, not the employee's manager.

• ONE asks the ticket's assignee. If there is no assignee, or the assignee is the person who would get the rights, it asks the administrators with the Admin role.
• The assignee or any administrator with the Admin role can reply. One approval is enough. A refusal ends the request, and ONE tells the employee.
• Nobody approves rights for themselves. An administrator requesting rights on their own device waits for another administrator.
• Approving fewer hours grants that shorter time.
• ONE asks once and sends no reminders.

Ending the rights early

If the employee says in the ticket that they have finished, ONE removes the rights at once, with no approval needed, and confirms in the ticket.

When automatic demotion is on

An Admin management control with Automatically demote non-compliant admin accounts switched on removes extra administrators every time the device syncs with Factorial IT. Temporary rights are removed too. ONE still grants them, but warns the approver and the employee that they may end before the approved hours are up. Any new request ends the same way while the control applies to the device.

Limits

• ONE only grants rights to the account the employee signs in with. It never touches a built-in account or an account your team reserves for IT.
• A grant lasts 24 hours at most. For longer needs, ONE offers 24 hours and leaves a permanent administrator account to your team.
• A grant cannot be extended. The employee asks again once it ends.
• If the account is already an administrator, ONE says so and changes nothing.
• If the account is the last administrator on the device, ONE does not remove its rights and leaves a task for your team. It does the same if the rights cannot be removed.

Granting temporary admin rights from the chat

An administrator can also ask ONE in the chat, for example: "Make jdoe an administrator of MAC-A1B2C3 for 2 hours."

• The administrator asking is the one who decides. ONE shows the action. Click Accept to run it or Cancel to stop. Nobody else is asked and no ticket is opened.
• ONE checks the device and account in the same way as for a ticket. It warns you before granting if automatic demotion applies to the device. If the device is offline, it tells you the rights will start once the device is back online, counted from then, and waits for your go-ahead.
• The device removes the rights by itself at the deadline. ONE sends no message when they end.
• To end them early, ask ONE to take them back. It only removes rights it granted for a set time, never those of an account that was already an administrator. To remove those, open the device's Users tab and click Demote on the account.

When your team takes over

ONE hands a ticket back when it lacks the information or the tool to finish. It writes an internal comment saying what it checked and why it stopped, and creates a task on the same ticket for your team. It never opens a new ticket.

ONE stays on the ticket after handing back. When the task is completed or the employee writes again, it picks the ticket up, tells the employee the request is sorted and closes it.

ONE takes itself off a ticket in two cases:

• The employee asks to talk to a person.
• The employee rejects its answer. If the ticket was closed, ONE reopens it first.

To take over a ticket yourself at any time, open it and set AI agent to None.

Ticket status

What employees can see

ONE reads your data with admin access, so it is careful about what it repeats in public comments. An employee only reads their own records, those of people they manage when the request is about them, and whatever their own permissions already show.

A request about someone else needs the right standing: the person themselves, their manager or the device owner. Without it, ONE turns the request into a proposal to the person who decides and tells them the requester lacks standing.

Troubleshooting and FAQ

Troubleshooting

• IT support agent is missing from ticket settings. Automatic mode is not yet enabled for your organisation. Contact your Factorial IT representative.
• You cannot change a ticket's AI agent. You need admin access and permission to edit all tickets.
• A request is waiting with no reply. ONE asks once and never reminds anyone. Check who was @mentioned on the ticket and ask them to reply in a comment.
• Temporary admin rights ended early. An Admin management control with automatic demotion is probably applied to the device.
• An app on Windows still runs as administrator after the deadline. It keeps the rights until it is closed or the employee signs out.

FAQ

1. Does switching off automatic mode affect open tickets?
   Yes. ONE is taken off open tickets as well as new ones, and your team takes over.
    
2. Can ONE order a device without approval?
   No. Anything outside the ticket, including orders, is proposed and waits for approval.
    
3. Who approves temporary admin rights?
   The ticket's assignee or an administrator with the Admin role, never the person who would get the rights.
    
4. How long can temporary admin rights last?
   From 1 to 24 hours. They cannot be extended, but the employee can ask again once they end.
    
5. How do I stop ONE on a ticket?
   Open the ticket and set AI agent to None.
    
6. Where does ONE send a reset email password?
   To the personal email address on the employee record, never into the ticket.