bump

Any thought on this?

So many of our emails are flagged as spam and or customers ignore them thinking they're spam because the subject line is so funky. Vs a friendly formatted ticket number in the subject (Ticket: 12345678) and maybe a longer db string hidden in the header or something.

Adding the ticket number to the header will not be guaranteed to work because we cannot ensure that the user's email system will keep the custom header on their reply. This would almost certainly result in replies being processed in as new tickets, requiring an agent to manually merge them into the existing ticket.

Further, changing the ticket number format would be a significant task. Because of the number of existing SmarterTrack installs, any attempt to modify the ticket number format would require that we process both the current number format and any new number format.

Seems you can simply add another db table or a field.

Field 1 Current ticket number

Link that to a new field = that is very friendly and simple more along the lines of other ticketing systems

ST gets the new number in the subject.

It translates it to the older format using the db.

Storing both number formats is not the most difficult part. Parsing the ticket number from an incoming email would be complicated by changing the number format because there would be a transition period during which we would have to look for both number formats in the incoming email.

In addition, there are search considerations. When using the quick search at the top of the ticket list (see below), SmarterTrack will automatically detect search values that match the ticket number format and modify the search accordingly. This would also be complicated by any changes to the ticket number format. There are similar issues in chats, where SmarterTrack automatically converts detected ticket numbers into links.

After further discussion, we are still interested in this idea. However, we are hesitant to proceed because of the significant impact it would have to existing installs.

We have also entertained removing the ticket number from the email subject line. However, doing so would require including the ticket number in a custom email header, which some email clients would not return. This would result in incoming replies being interpreted as new tickets, requiring them to be manually merged.

We are still talking about ways that the ticket number format could be simplified without causing problems for existing installs.

Any new ideas here?

We get a lot of feedback that our ST emails look spammy. It'd be wonderful if there was another way. 

I'd like to provide my 2 cents on this. 

Other ticket systems I use solved this by using 2 values. A ticket ID which is internal and incremental (1, 2, 3, 4, ... 2344, 2345, etc.) and then the public ticket number which is either random or set to a custom value (43942 or 2022-42345 or SUP-12942, etc.) and the system processes based on the ticket number which is linked to the ID in the database. And looking at one of the ticket URLs I have (frmTicket.aspx?popup=true&ticketid=34691), you're already doing this. The other systems I use let you customize the ticket number. That value only changes when the ticket changes departments that use a different value (for example, if Sales uses the format ###### and Support uses the format SUP-######, then if a ticket goes from Sales to Support, it gets a new ticket number and vice versa. But if Billing also uses ######, then when the ticket goes from Sales to Billing, it retains it's 6-digit number.). Perhaps that could be done here? Existing installs default to using the "ugly" (for lack of a better term) format with the option to switch to a friendly format that only applies on new tickets or if a ticket changes departments, and new installs default to the friendly numbering format.

Smarter Tools,

Any progress in this area re ways that the ticket number format could be simplified? We really like ST with the exception of ticket numbering. Recipients of our messages get super confused by the subject lines.

Team SmarterTools... any chance we might see the ability to slimily ticket number formatting in the near term? This remains our users and recipients #1 complaint. The real underlying issue is that recipients are super confused when they get our messages. Our subject lines are just not very standard looking. Travis's suggestions above seem on point. Maybe you guys have some more ideas on this?

Team SmarterTools, any updates here on if this is still on the board and any potential ETA?

As a Developer I fully understand the needs of unique IDs of Tickets.

As a User I find them annoying!  

I believe a very simple solution would be to just swap it around:

Right now the Subject could be something like

which makes little sense for the Recipient since the Subject has been moved to the end.

But if the Subject would be 

the Recipient would have no problem in recognizing the Subject and just dismiss the ID. 

IMHO SmarterTrack just would have to recognise if the the ID is LEFT or RIGHT (for previous versions) and proceed accordingly 

Cheers,

Mike

Moving ticket to the end of the subject would be a huge improvement. OR giving admins choice of start of end of subject, even better. Perhaps even something like "id:" before the ticket number would also be great too. Regular users just don't get it.

SmarterTools- any chance we might see some movement here?