Freshservice is an online IT service desk with a fresh twist. It puts a refreshing user experience on top of powerful ticketing and asset management capabilities, and is the most user friendly app in the space.
In addition to core functionalities like Incident, Problem, Change, Release, Service Request and Asset Management, Freshservice also lets you put your Knowledge Base on the cloud.
Freshservice offers a plug and play ITIL solution for organizations looking to align themselves with best practices without getting any expert implementation help. It has been developed by the team of experts behind Freshdesk, the leading customer support software that is currently being used to support over 15 million customers across the world.
This user guide is designed to help you get started with Freshservice.
Apart from walking you through the basics and help you configure your IT service desk, our guide will also give you tips and best practices to help your team give out its best.
Setting up your Freshservice Account
When you sign up for Freshservice, you will be offered a 21-day free trial will all the features. Once you’re satisfied, you can choose from one of the available plans: Sprout, Blossom, Garden and Estate. To know more about the difference between each plan, click here.
Creating an account in Freshservice is simple and takes less than 30 seconds. To create a new account,
Go to www.freshservice.com and click on the Sign up button on the top right corner
You can either sign up using your existing Google account, or create a new account by filling the details mentioned in the sign up form.
The service desk name you enter in the sign up form will be the URL through which you and your requesters will be accessing your service desk. For example, if you enter example.freshservice.com as your service desk name, it will be the standard URL for others to access your service desk.
Once you’re done with filling all the details, click on Sign up for FREE.
You’ll be taken into your account, where you will asked to setup your service desk.
Configure your Service Desk in 3 Simple Steps
Now, that you’ve created you signed up, the next step is to set up your service desk. You can do it in three simple steps:
1. Add Primary Helpdesk email
The first step is to add your primary helpdesk email address. If you’re given your service desk name (while filling up the signup form) as example.freshservice.com, your helpdesk email address will then be helpdesk@example.freshservice.com. This will also be the default reply-to address when you send emails from your service desk.
If you wish add a custom email address as your primary helpdesk email address, you can do so by entering the new email address in the input field.
Once you’re done, you will have to configure the helpdesk mailbox to forward all the emails to your service desk. In order to do that, click on link that says ‘how you can do it’ and you will be shown the necessary steps.
You can also check if the set up is working by sending a test email. To send a test email, click on the Send Test Email button.
2. Add Agents
The next step is to add agents to your service desk. Enter the email addresses of the employees you wish to add as agents. If you’re adding multiple email addresses, add them using a comma and click on Send Invite. An email will be sent, through which they can gain access to the service desk.
3. Rebrand Your Helpdesk
The next and final step is rebranding your service desk with your company’s logo. You can enter a fancy name for your service desk, and also upload the logo of your company by clicking on Change Logo.
You can also change the color scheme of your helpdesk to align with your brand. You can do that by click on the color palettes present in the Preview section.
With that you’ll be done with the basic setup of your service desk. To go to your service desk dashboard, click on Jump right in!.
Know your Way around Freshservice
Before learning about each individual modules, it is essential to know they key components of the Freshservice UI. This will help you in effectively navigate once you log into the application.
Sidebar - You can access all the key modules like Incident, Problems, Change, Release, Reports, Settings, etc. from the sidebar. You can’t customize or rearrange modules in the sidebar.
Ticket Summary - This section gives you a glimpse of tickets that come into your service desk. Apart from giving you the number of overdue tickets, it also gives you stats on tickets that are unassigned, open, on hold and due today.
Recent Activity - Right below Ticket Summary, you can see a list showing the log of recent activity that happened in your service desk.
Global Search - With our enhanced global search, you can easily find the information that you’re looking for. To know more about how effective our search is, check out the solution article.
Calendar - The calendar icon next to the search bar takes you to the ITIL calendar that lays out all the tasks that are being scheduled by you as well as other teams.
Quick Create Button - The small + New button next to the global search allows you to instantly create an incident, request, problem, change, or release.
Announcements - All internal service desk announcements will be displayed here. If you’re an admin, you can post the announcement and all the agents who are part of the service desk will be able to see the announcement on their dashboard.
Agent Availability Status - You can get a list of all the available agents in your service desk. This will allow you plan your day accordingly.
Now, that you’ve set up your service desk and know your way around, let’s jump right into Admin Settings as the module offers several options to configure your service desk based on your requirements.