Note: Applicable only for accounts in which workspaces have been enabled.
With an aim to empower our customers to manage service desk administration with ease and unify service delivery across their organization, we are rolling out some exciting new capabilities in all the Freshservice accounts that are in service desk mode.
These capabilities would help you in extending the power of Freshservice beyond IT, to business teams such as HR, Facilities, Legal, Finance, etc. In case multiple teams within your organization are already using Freshservice to deliver employee services, it would make it easier for different teams to manage their data better and for admins to manage and delegate administration.
Wondering what’s new? We’ve split this article into two sections to help you understand how the capabilities work and how they will enhance your experience. Here’s a high-level overview:
TABLE OF CONTENTS
New Capabilities
Agent, Requester, and Admin Experience:
New Capabilities
Workspaces
(to enable more autonomy for IT and Business teams)
Why Workspaces?
A workspace is where members of each team can work together to manage employee requests without compromising on data security. Each team such as IT, HR, Facilities, Finance, etc. can have its own workspace, configure settings at the workspace level, and control access to its tickets and other data.
With pre-built workspace templates for IT and Business Teams, a purpose-built service delivery experience is provided for different departments in your company. Learn more about how IT and Business workspaces work.
What happens when we enable workspaces in your account?
While you get the ability to add multiple workspaces, all the existing data and settings in your account will be moved to a single workspace called ‘My Team’ without notifying your agents and requesters or impacting their experience. The option to manage workspaces will be available to all Admins, Account Admins, and users with the ‘Manage Workspaces’ permission.
Business Agent License
(licensing purpose-built for business teams)
Note: This license can be purchased only on Pro and Enterprise plans in Service Desk Mode.What is the Business Agent License?
The business agent license is a new add-on that lets you add agents from business teams such as HR, Finance, Facilities, etc at a reduced price, giving them full-time access to a distinct set of
features apt for business teams. With this, you can drive unified service delivery through a single
Freshservice instance.
Business agents can work on tickets in business workspaces whereas in IT workspaces, they can view tickets and add private notes but cannot be assigned those tickets. Here is a detailed article on what business agents can access.
Note: If Pro/Enterprise agents are converted to Business agents, existing incidents/service requests assigned to them will become unassigned and they will lose edit access to them. The tickets will remain assigned if they are first moved to a business workspace (which changes the ticket type to the ticket type enabled in the business workspace) and then the license is updated to 'business'.
Advanced Role Management
(for enhanced data security)
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With multiple teams operating out of the same service desk, data security is of utmost importance and it becomes essential for admins to have a way to provide granular access to data and settings. To facilitate this, roles will now be of two types:
- Admin roles - Roles with permissions needed to modify configurations within the admin section
- Agent roles - Roles with permissions needed to run everyday service desk operations across modules like tickets, problems, changes, etc.
What happens when we enable advanced role management in your account?
Prior to this, a role in Freshservice had both agent and admin permissions. With this new capability, each role that has both agent and admin permissions checked will be split into agent and admin roles.
Learn more about how existing roles in your service desk will be split without affecting the current permissions granted to users.
NOTE: In case you are using Freshservice APIs in workflows, custom apps or any custom service/middleware developed using Freshservice APIs to grant roles to agents in your service desk and the role-ids have been hard-coded, the role-ids may have to be updated in your API request(s) if the older role was split into an agent and admin role. This is because the older role-id will no longer be valid as new roles have been created after splitting the old role. You can get the new role-ids via the Agent Roles API after we enable advanced role management in your account. In case you are using the Okta/Azure AD/One-login SCIM integrations, you do not have to do anything as this is already handled.
Related Enhancements
Apart from the capabilities listed above, the following enhancements will also be rolled out in your account:
Enhanced Agent Profile
The agent details page has been upgraded to provide a more holistic view of agent information, assigned roles, permissions, tickets, assets, etc.
New Ticket Types
A new ticket type called ‘Case’ is being introduced in business workspaces to enable a more purpose-built experience for business teams. As an admin, you can choose a different prefix for tickets by choosing from 4 available options - Case, Query, Issue, and Request. Here is an article to know more about the difference between various ticket types available in Freshservice.
Modified Admin Permissions
The scope of the following permissions has been expanded:
- Manage Agents > Manage Agents, Agent Groups, Roles, and Workspaces
Going forward, any user with the ‘Manage Agents’ privilege will also be able to additionally manage roles, agent groups, and workspace settings in your account.
- Manage Workflow Automation, Business Rules, and Custom Objects > Manage Workflow Automation, Business Rules, Custom Objects and Priority Matrix.
Re-categorization of some Admin Permissions
Specific permissions have been re-categorized as admin permissions considering the location of the modules they are related to or the nature of the permission itself.
- View On-call Schedules
- Manage On-call Schedules
- View User Reports
- Edit User Reports
- Manage User Reports
- View Group Reports
- Edit Group Reports
- Manage Group Reports
- View Department Reports
- Edit Department Reports
- Manage Department Reports
- View Orchestration Transaction Reports
- Edit Orchestration Transaction Reports
- Manage Orchestration Transaction Reports
- View Virtual Agent Reports
- Edit Virtual Agent Reports
- Manage Virtual Agent Reports
- Manage Solution Categories and Folders
Introduction of New Admin Permissions
New permissions are being introduced to ease the delegation of administration.
- Manage Mailboxes and Email Notification
- Manage Fields and Tags
- Manage Business Hours, SLA Policies, and OLA Policies
- Manage Customer Satisfaction Surveys
- Manage Credentials
- View Audit Logs
- Configure Alert Management
- Configure Asset Depreciation
New Ticket Creation Verbiage Change: The following two nomenclature changes have been introduced in light of the introduction of new ticket types.
- ‘Incident’ has been changed to ‘Tickets’: Tickets will continue to allow agents to report issues as “Incidents” in IT workspaces. In addition to this, if a business workspace has been added to the account, they can report issues as “Cases/Queries/Requests/Issues” to them.
- ‘Service Request’ has been changed to ‘Request’: ‘Request’ will continue to allow agents to place requests for service items across workspaces.
Modifications in Ticket Views filters
These modifications are pertaining to the ‘Ticket Views’ filters that slide out from the left panel in the Ticket List section. This menu is split into two different sections: Default views (uneditable) and Custom views (editable).
Here are the newly introduced changes
- Incidents and Service Requests have been moved from Default views to Custom views. If there are any widgets that reference them, they will continue to function as expected.
- Whenever a new workspace is created, custom views are added depending on the ticket type set in the workspace. For example, for a workspace created using the HR workspace template, a custom view called HR Cases will be created.
Redesigned Scenario Automation and Canned Response settings
The Scenario Automation and Canned Response settings pages have been redesigned to make it easier for agents to access scenarios and canned responses from across their member workspaces.
Note: Only Agents who have permission to view tickets will be able to view their canned responses.
Agent, Requester, and Admin Experience
Agent Experience
Single workspace setup: Except for the updated terminologies that will now be used during the ticket creation process, agents will not notice any difference in service desk operations when these capabilities are released.
Multiple workspace setup: When the admin adds a second workspace, agents will be able to view the workspace their tickets, tasks, etc belong to and move them to another workspace.
Requester Experience
Single workspace setup: Requesters will not notice any difference when these capabilities are released into your account.
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Multiple workspace setup: When you add and publish a second workspace, requesters will be able to view service items and solution articles from both workspaces in your current support portal. In addition to this, you can give them the ability to select a workspace and report an issue to it or provide a generic “report an issue” form that directs all issues to the primary workspace or the first workspace. Such issues can be routed to the right workspace later using workflows.
Admin Experience
Single workspace setup: Admins will now see their existing settings under a workspace called “My Team”. The settings will continue to function as expected, and admins can update the workspace name and logo if required from “Manage Workspaces”. Apart from the new capabilities mentioned in the previous section, admins will not notice any difference in experience when there’s a single workspace in the account.
Multiple workspace setup: When the admin adds a second workspace to the account, the following takes place:
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- Introduction of Global and Workspace Settings: Settings are split into Global and Workspace Settings. This is to make it easier to apply settings at a workspace level as well as at an account-wide level.
- Elevation and Restriction of Permissions:
- Elevation: Agents with the “Play God with Super Admin Controls” permission also known as “Admins” and “Account Admins” will be elevated to “Account-wide Admins automatically. This means that they will be able to control the admin settings at the account-wide level as well as within each workspace.
- Restriction: Any other agent with admin permissions other than “Play God” will continue to remain admins within the first workspace and will not get access to the second workspace automatically. However, the following permissions can only be granted at an account-wide level in a multi-workspace account:
If any agent has a role assigned that contains these permissions, they will no longer be able to access them unless granted explicitly once again.
Example: A user has an admin role assigned that contains two permissions:
- Manage Workflows
- Create Departments
In an account with multiple workspaces, ‘Manage Workflows’ can be granted within a specific workspace as well at an account-wide level. ‘Create Departments’ can only be granted at an account-wide level. Since before the second workspace was created, the user’s permissions were limited to the first workspace, the same is applied after the second workspace is created. However, since “Create Departments” can only be granted at an account-wide level going forward, the user will no longer be able to access the setting unless access is granted explicitly once again.
- Restricted groups and workspaces: The capability to add 'Restricted groups' to different workspaces will be available. Besides, you can also restrict an entire workspace and its membership can be managed by the workspace admin.
- Freshservice APIs: Going forward, each workspace in your account can have its own:
Tickets
Problems
Changes
Releases
Agent Groups
Assets
Softwares
Contracts
Purchase Orders
Business Hours
Solutions
Service Catalog
SLA Policies
Custom Objects
Canned Responses
Announcements
Audit Log
In a single workspace account, APIs based on the above modules will continue to work as expected. However, if you’ve added multiple workspaces and you’re using Freshservice APIs for the above modules in the following areas:
→ Workflow Automator ( Web Request nodes and “Trigger Webhook” Action nodes
→ Custom apps
→ Portal Customization
→ Any custom services or middleware developed using Freshservice APIs
You may have to additionally pass the workspace ID in your API request if it’s trying to:
- Create new data within a workspace (Example: Create a ticket)
- Retrieve a list of items from a specific workspace (Example: List all agent groups in a workspace)
- If the workspace ID is not passed, the new data will be created in or retrieved from the primary workspace or the first workspace of your account.
For actions that do not require the workspace to be known, for example, fetching, editing or deleting a ticket by passing its ID, the APIs will continue to work as expected even in a multi-workspace account.
- Marketplace Apps:
- Public Apps: If any public app is based on data that will now reside within a workspace and performs at least one of the following:
Creates new data in your account. Example: Create a ticket
Syncs data with a third-party tool because it has fields mapped between your ticket/problem/change/release forms and a third-party tool
Retrieves a list of data from your account. Example: Fetch all the tickets in the account
Such apps will continue to function as expected in the primary/first workspace of your account. However, when you add a second workspace, they will continue to perform the above actions only in the first workspace.
The Freshservice Team is currently in the process of upgrading such apps by adding multi-workspace support to them. In case you want an app to be prioritized, please write to us at [email protected]
- Private Apps
If you’re using Freshservice APIs for the modules mentioned in the “Freshservice APIs” section and you’re creating multiple workspaces in your account, you may have to update the app by passing the right workspace id so that the app continues to work as expected.
- Sandbox
- When workspaces are enabled in an account with an active sandbox, any preference saved while resolving sandbox conflicts will be refreshed. The conflicts will have to be resolved again by the admin.
- If a sandbox is created in an account with a single workspace, a second workspace cannot be added unless the sandbox is synced and destroyed. This is because the settings will split into Global and Workspace settings in the main account whereas the sandbox will remain in the single workspace mode.
- Similarly, a multi-workspace account that has an active sandbox cannot be converted into a single workspace account until the sandbox is destroyed.
