The Need:
Requesting a service or support from another team (or person)
Common Approaches:
Add a service or support request item to a SharePoint list.
Why is email bad for service and support requests?
Email is a terrible way to submit support requests. Email is easy to miss, easy to misfile, and hard to track. Information embedded in the body of an email is hard to pull metrics from, and aggregating information from a month of email is labor intensive. Queries about status updates for a request submitted by email generate more email. Email is overwhelming. Everyone agrees there is too much of it.
Why is a shared Excel document bad for service and support requests?
Shared Excel is terrible. The online version is ugly and lacks features you expect. When too many people are in it at once they get in each other's way. It is very easy to overwrite cell contents. You can have an Excel expert spend a lot of time doing data validation and locking cells this way and that way, but the best they can do is make a mediocre solution barely usable. Yes, you can set views and filters and permission and access, but it never gets better than "tolerable."
Excel has many wonderful uses, but submitting service and support requests to a shared Excel spreadsheet is not one of them.
Create a SharePoint list for submitting and tracking service and support requests.(It's a ticketing system you can design and manage yourself!)
If your company has Office 365 and shared Excel documents, very likely you have access to SharePoint lists. You can create a SharePoint list inside a SharePoint site or a Teams page. Anyone with access to the SharePoint site will have the same access to the list. It has customizable views; its filtering/grouping functions are far superior to Excel's--especially in setting with a high number of people submitting and fulfilling support requests.
Additional advantages include:
The image below is of a SharePoint Communications site. Go to "Site Contents" from the gear in the upper right, and select "New: List" from the drop-down options on the left.
I usually create new Blank lists, but sometimes I copy an existing list when I want to tinker with Microsoft Flow on it. I don't find creating a list from Excel very useful. It assumes what kind of list columns you might want and there aren't good options for changing to other column types. I've tried twice to make this work and both times deleted the list and started from scratch.)
"Title" is a required column. You can change its name; it's more or less a single line of text field. There are columns you can show/hide that will contain information not inputted by the user, and there are columns you can add to gather input from the user.
There are five automatic columns on the Show/hide menu that I always show for a support request list:
When you first show "Created" and "Modified" date columns you will get the "Friendly" version (which I loathe). I prefer to see actual dates and times, not "yesterday" or "a few hours ago." To set these columns to "Standard," click on the gear icon, then click on List Settings, then click on the actual Created and Modified settings to change it. Other date/time columns give you the option to set standard when you create them.
A typical support ticketing list might include:
A SharePoint list, in combination with Microsoft Flow, can automatically push information to stakeholders. It is very easy for an individual to pull information from the list when needed (without waiting for an email reply across time zones). You can customize and save views, and individuals can create personal Microsoft Flows and set up personal alerts to support their own productivity.
A note on a text:
Possession by A. S. Byatt. A suspenseful and romantic tale of an important letter than ends up in an unexpected place, is found by an unintended recipient, and disrupts a system.
Requesting a service or support from another team (or person)
Common Approaches:
- Send an email asking for help
- Adding a row to a shared Excel spreadsheet
Add a service or support request item to a SharePoint list.
Why is email bad for service and support requests?
Email is a terrible way to submit support requests. Email is easy to miss, easy to misfile, and hard to track. Information embedded in the body of an email is hard to pull metrics from, and aggregating information from a month of email is labor intensive. Queries about status updates for a request submitted by email generate more email. Email is overwhelming. Everyone agrees there is too much of it.
Why is a shared Excel document bad for service and support requests?
Shared Excel is terrible. The online version is ugly and lacks features you expect. When too many people are in it at once they get in each other's way. It is very easy to overwrite cell contents. You can have an Excel expert spend a lot of time doing data validation and locking cells this way and that way, but the best they can do is make a mediocre solution barely usable. Yes, you can set views and filters and permission and access, but it never gets better than "tolerable."
Excel has many wonderful uses, but submitting service and support requests to a shared Excel spreadsheet is not one of them.
Create a SharePoint list for submitting and tracking service and support requests.(It's a ticketing system you can design and manage yourself!)
If your company has Office 365 and shared Excel documents, very likely you have access to SharePoint lists. You can create a SharePoint list inside a SharePoint site or a Teams page. Anyone with access to the SharePoint site will have the same access to the list. It has customizable views; its filtering/grouping functions are far superior to Excel's--especially in setting with a high number of people submitting and fulfilling support requests.
Additional advantages include:
- You can export the content of the SharePoint list to Excel whenever you want.
- Integration with Microsoft Power Automate and Flow lets you automate reminders and alerts to users of the list.
- It is much harder to accidentally overwrite information on a SharePoint list than it is to do in shared Excel.
- It improves transparency, accountability, and reporting.
The image below is of a SharePoint Communications site. Go to "Site Contents" from the gear in the upper right, and select "New: List" from the drop-down options on the left.
I usually create new Blank lists, but sometimes I copy an existing list when I want to tinker with Microsoft Flow on it. I don't find creating a list from Excel very useful. It assumes what kind of list columns you might want and there aren't good options for changing to other column types. I've tried twice to make this work and both times deleted the list and started from scratch.)
"Title" is a required column. You can change its name; it's more or less a single line of text field. There are columns you can show/hide that will contain information not inputted by the user, and there are columns you can add to gather input from the user.
There are five automatic columns on the Show/hide menu that I always show for a support request list:
- ID
- Created by (person)
- Created (date)
- Modified by (person)
- Modified (date)
- Single line of text
- Multiple lines of text
- Person
- Date and time
- Choice
When you first show "Created" and "Modified" date columns you will get the "Friendly" version (which I loathe). I prefer to see actual dates and times, not "yesterday" or "a few hours ago." To set these columns to "Standard," click on the gear icon, then click on List Settings, then click on the actual Created and Modified settings to change it. Other date/time columns give you the option to set standard when you create them.
A typical support ticketing list might include:
- ID
- Created (date--standard--automatic)
- Created by (person--automatic, relabeled "Requested by" or similar)
- Title (Product or process name, or brief description of support needed. You cannot delete this field and it always must contain information.
- Choice ("Support requested")
- Task status ("Requested" "In progress" "Needs more info" "Completed" "Duplicate" "Rejected", for example
- Person ("Assigned to")
- Person ("Assigned by")
- Date ("Due date")
- Multiple lines of text ("Notes")
- Date ("Date completed")
- Modified by (person--automatic)
- Modified (date--standard--automatic)
- When an item is created, send email to manager of the support team
- When an item is assigned, send email to the person assigned to the task
- When an item's status is changed to "Completed," put today's date in the "Date completed" column
- When an item is marked "Completed," copy the item row to a backup Excel table on the SharePoint site
- Each day, get items from the list. If any are status = Completed and Date Completed = 60 days ago, delete from SharePoint list
A SharePoint list, in combination with Microsoft Flow, can automatically push information to stakeholders. It is very easy for an individual to pull information from the list when needed (without waiting for an email reply across time zones). You can customize and save views, and individuals can create personal Microsoft Flows and set up personal alerts to support their own productivity.
A note on a text:
Possession by A. S. Byatt. A suspenseful and romantic tale of an important letter than ends up in an unexpected place, is found by an unintended recipient, and disrupts a system.
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