Panorama9 provides you with a multi-faceted dashboard that assists you with all your IT needs, including asset management, system monitoring and alerts, ability to track your IT policies, patch management, remote control and more. Replace multiple tools with one, easy to use, comprehensive solution; Panorama9.
With the Zendesk integration, issues detected by Panorama9 can generate Zendesk tickets, so you can easily manage who handles a case and track its progress. You may apply all the ticket management tools that Zendesk offers to any of the detected issues. And the Zendesk ticket will continually be updated with new information about the issue when Panorama9 detects changes.
Use the Panorama9 App from Zendesk Marketplace and enrich your Zendesk tickets with detailed information about the associated device. This way, you have all the information available about a device when trying to troubleshoot and fix a problem. This will help speed up the resolution time and relieve frustrations for end-users.
The Zendesk integration may be used as an addition to any of the Panorama9 notification abilities or be fully integrated so escalations or notifications are completely handled within Zendesk. Antivirus not installed on a machine? Automatically have Panorama9 create a ticket for follow-up by your IT team. Need more memory for your laptop? Submit a ticket and hardware details about your machine is automatically included.
Using the Panorama9 App in Zendesk
The Panorama9 App gives you detailed information about any asset directly inside your Zendesk dashboard. Association between a Zendesk ticket and a Panorama9 asset is done automatically. Should you wish to associate with another device, or if the link fails, you can search for the relevant asset and click on the "Link" icon.
When an association exists, the right side of your Zendesk ticket will contain the information pulled from Panorama9. You can see if the device is currently online and the user that is logged in. If there are enabled remote controls you can also find links to start a remote session to the device.
You may edit or remove the associated asset. To link a new asset use the "Search" option to find the asset and click on the "Link" icon (if already linked the ticket will be updated with the new selected asset). To remove an association click on the "Link" icon with the red delete button.
Install the Panorama9 App and enable Zendesk integration
To enable the integration you must login to Zendesk and install the Panorama9 App. Navigate to the Zendesk Marketplace through "Admin" -> "APPS" -> "Marketplace", select (or search for ) Panorama9 and click on "Install App".
Once installed you need to connect your Panorama9 account to Zendesk. The connection allows Panorama9 and Zendesk to talk to each other and display information stored in Panorama9 inside Zendesk or the other way around. You can revoke this permission at anytime - e.g. just uninstall the Panorama App. To connect, click on the "P9" icon in the Navigation bar on the left side of your Zendesk dashboard.
When connecting Panorama9 with Zendesk you'll be presented with two options - connect with your existing Panorama9 account or sign up for a new Panorama9 account. Select the option that matches your situation and fill in all required information.
IMPORTANT NOTE: During the process you will at one point be asked to authorize Panorama9 to access your Zendesk account. This requires that you are signed in to your Zendesk account.
In order for the integration to work the Zendesk user giving the authorization has to be an administrator or higher.
Panorama9 uses the Zendesk web API and requires administrator access to perform the necessary changes to set up the integration.
Once through the set up process your Panorama9 account is connected to your Zendesk account. If needed later on, you can reconfigure the connection in your Panorama9 dashboard "Manage" -> "Extensions" -> "Zendesk".
Account name: The account name is the site name you signed up with on Zendesk. Your account name is the first part (or sub-domain) of your Zendesk URL address, e.g. myaccount.zendesk.com
Requester name: Detected Panorama9 issues can generate tickets in Zendesk using this name as requester.
Requester email: Detected Panorama9 issues can generate tickets in Zendesk using this email address. IMPORTANT: Please make sure this email address is not equal to your Zendesk help-desk's reply address, otherwise Zendesk will not allow tickets to be created.
Add asset name to: Add an assets name to a Zendesk ticket in the tickets fields
User message to ticket: Convert user messages from the Panorama9 agent tray icon into Zendesk tickets
Asset info as comment: When enabled the Panorama9 system adds a comment to Zendesk tickets with information about the user, device used etc. You may disable this if you are using the Panorama9 App in your Zendesk account.
Auto login links: Allow links for assets and remote control to automatically log in to the Panorama9 dashboard. Only links in the Panorama9 app will be affected. A super admin user will be chosen at random for this feature. Note that this means your Zendesk agents will have full access to the Panorama9 dashboard. The links are active for three hours before becoming invalid. This is for security reasons. Reloading the app or browsing to another ticket will activate the links for another three hours.
Reconfigure Panorama9 App in Zendesk: If the link between Panorama9 and Zendesk is broken you can reconfigure it here. Reconfiguration will install or update the Panorama9 App in Zendesk as needed. IMPORTANT: Make sure you are logged into Zendesk as an administrator or higher before proceeding. In order for the integration set up to work you must use a Zendesk administrator or higher to authorize access for Panorama9.
Test: Click on "test" to check your account settings
Creating Zendesk tickets from issues detected by Panorama9
Panorama9 will detect issues within your IT environment and through the Zendesk integration you can quickly and fully control who should be notified and manage case escalation. Detected issues can be created as Zendesk tickets allowing you to fully control and track progress.
If you've connected your Panorama9 account to Zendesk using the Panorama9 App then server issues detected by Panorama9 will also be created as a ticket in Zendesk. In your Panorama9 dashboard you can configure in every detail which notifications and types of issues that should result in a Zendesk ticket. Need to see if a device is low on disk space? Antivirus not installed? Machine not reachable? Configure notifications for any of the issues to trigger the creation of a Zendesk ticket.
To do so, navigate to "Notifications"->"Notifiers" in your Panorama9 dashboard and create a new set of notifiers by clicking on the "+" and give it sensible name. Under "Settings" fill out the following fields:
Email(s): Email address(es) that should be notified when the event is triggered (optional).
Cell phones(s): Cell phone number(s) that should be notified when the event is triggered (optional)
Choose when to notify me: You can restrict this set of notifiers to only be active at certain times or particular weekdays or a combination of the two. If an issue is generated while this set of notifiers are active you receive a notification on either email, text message, Zendesk, Autotask or Desk.com. If the issue happens while this set of notifiers are inactive it will not produce any notifications, but you can always see the issue in your Panorama9 dashboard.
Only notify me about specific machines or groups (optional): Here you can add devices or group of devices, if this set of notifiers should only trigger issues for these.
Zendesk tab:
Choose type of issues that will trigger the issues by selecting from the listed issues under "Vulnerability", "Availability" or "Compliance" tabs.
The Zendesk ticket created by Panorama9 includes detailed information about the detected or resolved issue and provides useful links to your Panorama9 dashboard. You can additionally use this information to create Zendesk triggers/rules that applies different policies to different types of issues.
Information found in the subject field of the created ticket: [P9] device – area > category > issue type.
Required ticket fields - fill in values per notification
When Panorama9 tries to resolve a ticket all required fields must be filled according to the conditions you have applied on the field in Zendesk - e.g. numeric or phone pattern.
Active required Zendesk fields are displayed in the "Notifications" set up making it possible to enter fixed values to be applied if Panorama9 later tries to resolve the ticket.
Note that any changes in the required fields inside Zendesk such as changed conditions or addition of new fields must be addressed in Panorama9 to keep resolving of tickets working properly.
The field description in Zendesk will be used as error message if the user enters unacceptable data. E.g. "Enter a ROI percentage (integer only)" on a "ROI" field requiring a percentage and accepting only integer values.
If no description is found a default message is displayed using either the field type or the regular expression if any, e.g. "Please enter a value of type <integer>".
Setting up Panorama9 User messages to create Zendesk tickets
Computers that has a P9 agent installed can be used to send "User Messages". Through the Panorama9 Tray icon (Status bar on Mac OS X) the user can select "I need help from IT" and write a text describing the type of issue that requires your help.
By default Panorama9 will forward "User Messages" to a specified email address, but you can configure the Zendesk extension so a ticket is (also) created. Select the "User Messages" check box under "Manage" -> "Extensions" -> "Zendesk" in your Panorama9 dashboard.
In addition to the message text, the ticket will include detailed information about the computer from where the message was sent.
Appending user asset information to submitted Zendesk tickets (optional)
When a user submits a support ticket through Zendesk requesting your IT help-desk to troubleshoot and fix an issue, Panorama9 can automatically add detailed information about the computer the user is currently using. If you're using the Panorama9 App in Zendesk this is done automatically for you and you may skip these steps. If you for some reason are not using the Panorama9 App then you can configure Zendesk to pull the required information when new tickets are created.
You must create a "Target" in Zendesk that calls Panorama9 upon specific ticket events. Add a "Target" in Zendesk by first logging into Zendesk with an account with administrator credentials. Navigate to "Admin -> Settings" -> "Extensions" -> "Targets"->"add target" and select "URL target" from the list of available targets.
Required information to configure the Zendesk target:
Title: Name your Zendesk target here. We recommend something simple like "Panorama9".
Method: Should be set to "PUT".
Attribute Name: Set this to "value".
Username: Not required. Leave blank.
Password: Not required. Leave blank.
Once a "Target" for Panorama9 has been configured, you must create a Zendesk "Trigger" so tickets that match a defined criteria gets updated by Panorama9 with the appropriate asset details. Add a "Trigger" in Zendesk by navigating to "Manage"-> "Triggers & Mail notifications" -> "Add trigger".
Required information to create a Zendesk trigger:
Trigger Title: Give your trigger a meaningful name.
Conditions: Set conditions that match the user submitted support tickets which you wish to append asset information to. This can be anything you wish. If you wish to have this appended anytime a ticket is created or updated, then you can select the appropriate conditions. If you want this to be a manual process, then you can have the trigger execute based off a certain tag being present on a ticket such as "Panorama9".
Actions: This should be set to "Notify target" and select the "Panorama9" target (or the name you gave it) configured in the step above.
Message: Set this to “#{{ticket.id}}:#{{ticket.requester.email}}”
Once configured any new support ticket that matches the specified conditions will trigger Panorama9 to lookup what hardware the user is currently using and add information about the device to the ticket. Note: This requires that the user is using a computer with a Panorama9 agent installed.
Auto log in from Panorama9 app in Zendesk to Panorama9 dashboard (optional)
A key feature of the Panorama9 app is to enable a Zendesk agents to navigate directly to asset details in a Panorama9 dashboard or initiate a remote control session on a client machine.
This requires a manual log in or an existing session in the Panorama9 dashboard, into the account where the asset belong. If want to, you can allow your Zendesk agents access to the Panorama9 dashboard automatically with the Auto login links feature for asset detail and remote control links.
Go to "Manage"->"Extensions"->"Zendesk"->"Auto login links" to enable this feature.
Note that
for security reasons the links only works for three hours. The links are refreshed every time a ticket page is loaded or explicitly by pressing the app reload button in Zendesk.
the auto log in session is always created using an admin account which means the user has full access to the Panorama9 dashboard.
permanent links added to the ticket body are not included in this feature (see "Manage"->"Extensions"->"Zendesk"->"Asset info as comment")