Ticket Submission: How To Get Fast Results

Imagine following your normal work routine. You attempt to use one of our Nova Tools and suddenly … something peculiar stops you from proceeding. You browse through our knowledgebase, but you don’t find an answer. Now you have to submit a Nova Support Ticket. That’s where we come in to help. But as much as we want to help you resolve your issue in a timely, efficient manner, sometimes, we cannot provide you with a quick solution to the ticket.

Why? The ticket needs to help us understand the issue you're experiencing. We understand your frustration but at the same time, we need detailed information to help us understand your issue and isolate the cause of it. Submitting a straightforward and precise support ticket will hasten this process. It saves us a lot of time in going back and forth trying to obtain additional details and as a result, we can get things working on your end much faster.

Keep Calm

Before submitting a support ticket, try to stay cool and collected. It helps to have a clear thought process. You might find this piece of advice funny, useless, or even insulting but having a calm state of mind, helps you to explain your issue in an organized and logical manner. These issues can really strike a nerve for some. If you need to, step away for 5 minutes. Have a short walk, grab some coffee from the break room, or something similar that can take your mind off of the issue for a short time. When you return, it will be easier to collect your thoughts and provide the best information needed to start resolving your issue.

Write a Short But Descriptive Subject Line

The subject line is one of the most important parts of the support ticket. Why? You may ask. Because, if done properly, it can help us understand what type of issue you are experiencing right away.

Let’s look at two subject lines. Which one do you think provides the most useful information?

Without a doubt, subject line B is the best. Both subject lines show an issue with the Data Validation Dashboard, but the 2nd one also reveals the context of the issue.

Clear and Precise subject lines are short and get directly to the point of the matter. These are the subject lines that help us understand what’s going on right away and they allow us to address your issue right away. Also, when you describe the problem in the subject line, it makes it easier to prioritize, especially if the issue is urgent.

Choose The Best Category

Assigning the Agent most qualified to help with your issue can be a long process when we are unsure of the full context of your issue. To help streamline this process, we have provided several category types to choose from. This allows you to point out very specific issues you are having. Choosing the category that highlights the specific issue allows us to route your ticket to an Agent who specializes in that specific area.

Since we will know which Agent to assign your ticket to, we can allow the system to auto-assign your ticket, based on the skillset needed. This helps with response and resolution times since we don’t have to manually review each ticket to figure out who can help. There are 42 categories so we understand that this can be a daunting task, but if you spend a couple of minutes to find the category that best describes your issue, it can keep you from waiting hours or even days because it went to the wrong Agent and had to be reassigned.

Provide a Detailed Description of Your Problem

The Description is one of the most important parts of the support ticket. We can’t stress this enough. The more details in your support ticket, the easier it is for us to help you.

Many people who submit tickets want help but fail to include all the information we need to understand what’s happening. We don’t need every detail, but we need you to include the significant ones. There are a few things that we need to know, to move forward with any type of troubleshooting that will lead to a solution.

Here’s what a detailed and meaningful description should include:

• Your Long-Term Objective - What were you trying to accomplish before you started having issues? A good example would be, “I was about to [Assign a few Staff IDs in the Unique ID System] but when I got to the SSO Application Launcher Site [My password that has always worked in the past would not allow me to log in]...”
• Technical Attributes - Include the details that would be helpful to us in diagnosing the issue. These could include the Web Address or URL where the issue occurred, the device you are using (Laptop, Office PC, Mobile Device, etc.), The Operating System on that Device (Win 7/10/11, MacOS 13/14/15, Android 14, etc.), and the Browser that you use (Chrome, Edge, Firefox, Safari etc.).
  
  
• Time of Occurrence/Frequency of Issue - Did your issue happen in the morning, afternoon, or evening? Did it happen only once or multiple times? Make sure to specify the time it first occurred and if the issue persisted. It could be as simple as a service outage at the time of the incident.
• Previous Steps Taken to Troubleshoot - If you tried to troubleshoot the issue, what steps did you take? Did you try a different device to see if it works? Have You Cleared Cookies, History, and Cache? Have you restarted the Device? What were the results?

Add a screenshot or screen recording

To give us a visual representation of your description, it is highly encouraged to upload a screenshot or screen recording showing the issue. A picture is worth a thousand words. It’s very simple to take a screenshot or screen recording.

1. Press the Windows + Shift + S keys all at once to start a region capture using Snip & Sketch.
2. Hold down the left mouse button and drag the mouse over the area you want to take a screenshot of.
3. Let go of the mouse when the area is selected. This will copy the screenshot to the clipboard for you to paste into a document.
   You can also click on the notification that pops up in the bottom right of the screen to edit the screenshot or save it to a file.

If you don't want to use the keyboard shortcut or if it isn't working for you, look for Snip & Sketch in the Start menu. If you can't find Snip & Sketch, you can use its predecessor, Snipping Tool. the following will work on Windows Vista (SP2 and above):

1. Open the Start Menu.
2. Type "Snipping Tool" into the search box.
3. Choose Mode > Rectangular Snip.
4. Hold down the left mouse button and drag the mouse over the area you want to take a screenshot of.
5. Let go of the mouse when the area is selected. This will open a window showing you what was captured.
6. Click the grey floppy disk or click File > Save Snip to choose a location to save the image.
   
   

Additional Tips to Remember

As you can see, submitting a ticket that gets results doesn’t have to be difficult. Before you start submitting tickets, here are a couple of tips concerning ticket creation, along with some important information to keep in mind regarding the Nova Support Portal:

We Are Not a Traditional Help Desk

In a regular Help Desk, one Agent is staffed for every eight to twelve customers. That is their only role. Nova Support was started to offer LEAs support in a more efficient manner than we were previously able to provide. Please remember that our Agents have regular job duties they are responsible for, and handling tickets is one of many. If an Agent doesn’t respond immediately, it’s because they have several roles to balance.

It’s Okay to Request an Update

We are always doing our best to ensure timely responses. Our goal is to respond within 48 hours. Wait times may occur during busy periods like data submission or if the issue is complex. You can request an update 24 hours after ticket creation. You can email TJ, our Help Desk Admin at Timothy.Lockwood@ped.nm.gov. He can request an update and if the Agent is behind, he may find another Agent to help depending on the issue.

Don’t Create More Than 1 Ticket for the Same Issue

Please avoid creating duplicate tickets for the same issue. Duplicates will only delay the process. We work on tickets in the order we receive them. We will begin working to resolve your ticket as soon as we can. Instead, feel free to ask for an update on your current open ticket.

We Would Love to Hear From You

There is a Feedback Form on the bottom right-hand corner of every Page in the Nova Support Portal. You can use it to provide any feedback you have for us. If you want to report an issue with the Support Portal, request a feature you would like to see added or mention an Agent you have recently worked with. It can be praise or criticism, just please keep it constructive so we can use this Feedback to help the Agent improve. Please do not submit tickets using this form.