Support Ticket Progression

Most Common Status progression for Support Requests

Seq	Status	Definition
1	Submitted	The request has been received and a Ticket # has been assigned but the Ticket has not been reviewed, updated, and/or assigned to a member of support. This is the default status for a new support request. A Ticket with a status of Submitted is not being worked on by NLP Support.
Potential Next Statuses To Do: The most common next status. In Progress: The ticket has been assigned but work is expected to span multiple days. Waiting for Customer: There are questions that must be answered before the ticket can be assigned. Customer Approval: The work has finished (for relatively simple support issues). Resolved: The customer has confirmed it is finished or has indicated it can bypass Customer Approval upon completion. Closed: Unlikely but possible.
2	To Do	The Ticket has been reviewed, updated, and assigned to a member of NLP Support.
Potential Next Statuses In Progress: The most common next status. Waiting for Customer: There are questions that must be answered before the ticket can be assigned. Customer Approval: The work has finished (for relatively simple support issues). Resolved: The customer has confirmed it is finished or has indicated it can bypass Customer Approval upon completion. Closed: Unlikely but possible.
3	In Progress	Work has been started but the solution is expected to go past the current day.
Potential Next Statuses Waiting for Customer: There are questions that must be answered before work can continue. Customer Approval: The work has finished (for relatively simple support issues). Resolved: The customer has confirmed it is finished or has indicated it can bypass Customer Approval upon completion. Closed: Unlikely but possible.
4	Waiting for Customer	Work on the Ticket is on hold pending receipt of additional requested information from the customer. Tickets that remain in this status for 60 days will be moved to Closed.
Potential Next Statuses In Progress: The questions have been answered and work can continue on the ticket. Waiting for Customer: There are still questions that must be answered before work can continue. Customer Approval: NLP believes the work has finished. Resolved: The customer has confirmed it is finished or has indicated it can bypass Customer Approval upon completion. Closed: A resolution is not possible.
5	Customer Approval	NLP believes everything necessary to solve the Ticket is complete and we are awaiting confirmation/feedback from the customer. Tickets that remain in this status for 5 days will be moved to Resolved.
Potential Next Statuses In Progress: The customer has indicated the ticket is not ready to be resolved. Resolved: The customer has confirmed it is finished or has indicated it can bypass Customer Approval upon completion.
6	Resolved	The ticket was solved to the satisfaction of the customer.
7	Closed	The issue was not resolved but no more work can be done.

Support tickets will advance through a set of pre-defined statuses. The most common workflow will contain the following sequence of status changes:

Submitted
To Do
In Progress
Customer Approval
Resolved

Occasionally, it may be necessary to move a support ticket outside the normal workflow. To accommodate this, additional statuses have been added that include:

Waiting for Customer
Closed

Open

Our first step will be to qualify ‘Open’ support issues. In order to qualify an issue we must understand the severity and have enough information to effectively troubleshoot and subsequently solve it. New support issues will either be moved to:

To Do: If we believe we have enough information to begin working on the issue, then we will assign it to someone on our team.
Waiting for Customer: If we do not have enough information, then the sender will receive an email indicating that the issue has been updated to ‘Waiting for Customer’ along with an indication of the additional information needed.

To Do

Once ‘To Do’ support tickets have been reviewed, they will be updated to one of the following statuses:

In Progress: If we are beginning work on a support issue and the solution has been determined to go past the current day, then we will update the issue to ‘In Progress.’
Customer Approval: In some instances, we may solve a support ticket in the current day. If this happens, then we will fix the issue and update the status directly to ‘Customer Approval.’
Waiting for Customer: As we begin work on a support ticket we may need additional information. If this happens, then we will update the status to ‘Waiting for Customer.’
Closed: In some situations, a support request may never be resolved. If this happens, then it will be moved to ‘Closed,’ indicating that it is no longer in consideration although it was not resolved.

In Progress

Once ‘In Progress’ issues have been reviewed, they will be updated to one of the following statuses:

Customer Approval: When we fix an issue we will update the status to ‘Customer Approval,’ at which time the sender will receive an email indicating the solution to the issue and a request for confirmation from the reporter on whether the change was effective or needs more work.
Waiting for Customer: As we begin work on a support ticket we may need additional information. If this happens, then we will update the status to ‘Waiting for Customer,’ at which time the sender will receive an email indicating the change along with the request for the additional information we need.
Closed: In some situations, a support request may never be resolved. If this happens it will be updated to ‘Closed,’ indicating that it is no longer in consideration although it was not resolved. When this happens, the sender will receive an email indicating the change.

Customer Approval

Once we believe we have done everything to solve the support ticket, it will be updated to ‘Customer Approval’ and the sender will receive an email indicating the solution. This will ensure the sender agrees the issue has been resolved. We will allow up to 5 days for the sender to approve the issue before we automatically update it to ‘Resolved.’

Resolved

Once an issue has been approved by the sender it will be updated to ‘Resolved.’

Waiting for Customer

Issues that ‘Waiting for Customer’ are on a soft hold because they cannot be advanced without additional information from the sender. Issues ‘Waiting for Customer’ will automatically be changed to ‘Closed’ if there has not been any progress for 60 days.

Closed

In some situations, a support request may never be resolved. If this happens it will be updated to ‘Closed,’ indicating that it is no longer in consideration even though it was not resolved. When this happens, the sender will receive an email indicating the change.

When a ticket is not scheduled for resolution within 3 business days:

Occasionally, support tickets are submitted that span beyond the scope of completion in three business days. When these tickets are submitted, the following will occur:

NLP will assign an identical ‘task’ to the reported support ticket in NLP’s consulting JIRA project titled ‘NLP Tasks.’ It will outline the user’s issue exactly as the support ticket and indicate any necessary tasks to complete it;
The submitted support ticket will then be updated to a status of ‘Closed’ as it is being handled in a different project;
An NLP user will comment on the submitted support ticket, notifying the user of the submitted support ticket’s corresponding consulting project item number. This comment will notify the reporter via email.

Note: Users will be able to view the status of NLP Tasks items that they have reported by logging in using their company’s https://northlake.atlassian.net/login and password.