Correspond With the HelpDesk Team
The Conversation
The life of your ticket will be filled with a series of comments made by you and the HelpDesk Team. Your initial email provides the first comment. Whenever someone from the HelpDesk Team adds a comment to your ticket, you will receive an email that contains this new comment.
Replying
You can post a comment to your ticket, or upload a file to your ticket, by replying to one of the emails related to that ticket that has arrived in your inbox. Don't modify the Subject line of the email, as this is used to connect your reply to your ticket.
Whatever you write in the message body of your email is added to your ticket as a comment. Also, files can be attached to your ticket by attaching them to your email reply.
Because of restrictions in the University email server, .ZIP files cannot be attached to your ticket this way when your email is being sent from your University email account. This is because the University email server strips .ZIP files out of all outbound emails. As a workaround, you can upload .ZIP files to your ticket using the HelpDesk page for your ticket. See the Opening the Ticket Page section (below) for details.
Whenever you are posting to your ticket by sending a reply email, take care to only include as much text in the body of your email as you want to add to the ticket as a comment. If your email client is configured to include a copy of the entire email chain below your reply, please take the time to delete this content before sending your reply. Otherwise, your ticket will become cluttered with redundant text. Your ticket already contains a history of all of the comments that have been made on it (including the text of your email that initiated the ticket).
Opening the Ticket Page
When you send an email to the HelpDesk server to open a ticket, it responds by sending a confirmation email. When the confirmation email arrives in your email client, it appears to have been sent by the name of the queue to which you sent your email (ie. IS430 A-Section or Recommendations). This email contains enough information for you to confirm that your email was received and the ticket was created. Nevertheless, you may click through on the link provided in this confirmation email and navigate to the HelpDesk page for your ticket.
Having navigated to the HelpDesk page for your ticket, you may use this page to enter comments. Enter comments by typing them into the Comment / Resolution text box. Be sure to click the Update This Ticket button to save your changes before you navigate away from the ticket page.
While on the HelpDesk page for your ticket, you may also upload a file to the ticket. At the bottom of the page, click the Attach File(s) button. Then, click the Browse button. Use the file selection dialog to select the file that you wish to upload. Finally, click the Update This Ticket button to make sure that your file is uploaded.
Closing and Re-Opening Tickets
Tickets are closed by the HelpDesk team. This signals an expectation that the issue represented by the ticket is resolved. While you can't close the ticket yourself, you can indicate in your reply that you are ready for it to be closed.
It is important to know that you can re-open a closed ticket whenever you realize that you want to resume the conversation. Just reply to one of the emails related to this ticket that has arrived in your inbox. The ticket will be automatically re-opened, the message body of your email will be added to your ticket as a comment, and the conversation will continue.