Team process for support using FreshDesk

[choldgraf]

Summary

In #151 we converged on using FreshDesk to handle our support requests for 2i2c Hubs. This issue will keep track of our progress in setting up FreshDesk and building a team process around support.

User Stories

• As a Hub Representative, I want to know where to ask questions or provide requests about my hub, and where to look for updates as things are resolved.
• As the Support Steward, I want to minimize the places I have to look for support conversations and interact with Hub Representatives.
• As a Hub Engineer, I want to know when deliverables should be prioritized because they are related to support questions.

Important links

• Support steward process draft

Questions to answer

• When we create a ticket after a support request, do we still expect Community Representatives to communicate via FreshDesk, or is it OK for them to start responding in the GitHub issue?

Actions

• Set up a FreshDesk account for 2i2c
• Play around with FreshDesk UI and understand how it works. Decide if this is a good solution. #169
• Write up a process that suggests the Support Steward should use #hub-support to signal boost items for other team members
• Write up a short guide for the 2i2c team
• Designate our first Support Steward to try it out
• Designate a Community Representative to prototype FreshDesk questions
• ...add extra steps as necessary to refine this process
• Write up a support workflow in the Team Compass

[choldgraf]

OK @2i2c-org/tech-team - I've created a FreshDesk account and invited everyone on the @2i2c-org/tech-team to join it. You should have gotten an email to join the 2i2c FreshDesk team.

Can I ask that the @2i2c-org/tech-team give a shot at understanding the FreshDesk UI, the way that tickets work, etc, with the goal of deciding whether this system seems like a good solution for our support needs? I've created #169 to track this and would love feedback or thoughts.

[choldgraf]

We've set up a freshdesk instance and are playing around with it here: #169

We've also discovered that some ticketing-like features also exist in Google Workspaces (https://support.google.com/a/users/answer/167430?hl=en). This is an interesting possibility to think about as well.

However, @damianavila brought up a good point in conversation that, while a simpler tool like Google Groups might work for us right now, it will likely cause strain once we start to grow and take on more support burden. There's a reason that these dedicated support tools exist - this is a common problem that many organizations face, and a dedicated support system will almost certainly scale more gracefully.

[choldgraf]

2021-10-15 - Meeting with Damian

@damianavila and I just had a meeting to transfer the Support Steward role to him for our next sprint! Below are a few discussion and action points that I need to follow up on:

• Create an AirTable of currently running hubs that has a field we can cross-ref with the leads/sales table, and our hub configuration
• Create a section on what kinds of problems we do and do not provide support for (e.g. we can't debug generic python bugs, but can work with you to try and understand whether it's related to the infrastructure) Support information docs#108
  • Guidelines for our team: investigate with the person to understand whether the issue is related to our infrastructure, but if it is clear that this is an error on their side then we should let them fix it not us.
  • When we create a GitHub issue to track a support fix, we can include the community rep on that ticket and allow them to discuss with us in the github issue.
• Create an issue type for the "support steward transfer": Add support steward steps #268

[choldgraf]

2021-10-19

I've updated the AirTables that we were using for tracking community leads. They still need some work, but I invite feedback from @damianavila about whether this seems like a reasonable structure.

• Here's an AirTable of the communities that are in our "leads" pipeline: https://airtable.com/appDUEjjcSqHfilFD/tblxLUQ3ElIaaQuM8/viwXstuM3K48smZXW?blocks=hide
  • Its main goal is to track the status of a community that is interested in our hub, collect information about them, and make clear what is the next step in working with them.
• Here's an AirTable of the hubs we currently run: https://airtable.com/appDUEjjcSqHfilFD/tbljaAnHkE4Ry8j9J/viwVt9283ZKimUg4o?blocks=hide
  • Its main goal is to have a list of each hub we run that can be cross-referenced with our configuration via a unique value (in this case, the domain of the hub, as described in the hub list page)

Why an airtable?

Using AirTable means that everyone on the team will not have immediate edit access to the information. The reason that we're using it anyway is for three main reasons:

• Our fiscal sponsor, Code for Science and Society, uses AirTable and so we hope this makes it easier to coordinate
• If we have a dedicated sales person, they will probably be more comfortable with AirTable than with GitHub Projects
• It is useful to have something a bit more feature-rich than Google Sheets

[damianavila]

@choldgraf I was able to see the first airtable and it is great! I really like the structure.
But I could not access the second one (btw, I have already requested your access through airtable).
Now wondering why I could access the first one and not the second one, maybe because the first one is somehow public? I would probably change that status to private as the second one.

Btw, I concur with the idea of using Airtables for all the reasons you mentioned above.

[choldgraf]

I've granted access to your and Sarah (and will give access to anybody else that wishes!)

I believe i might not understand the airtable sharing story well haha. Agreed that this should be private we there's some personal information in the communities one

[damianavila]

I believe i might not understand the airtable sharing story well haha. Agreed that this should be private we there's some personal information in the communities one

Great!
I have removed the sharing setting and modified the above link to be a private one.

Btw, I like the active hub sheet as well, this is super useful @choldgraf, thanks for building it.

[choldgraf]

I'm going to close this one as we already have a lot of support steward prototyping done and documented, which I think was the original scope of this issue:

https://team-compass.2i2c.org/en/latest/projects/managed-hubs/support.html

We also have subsequent issues opened to track improvements to it:

2i2c-org/infrastructure#1068