Why It Matters
Understanding the distinct roles—or “actors”—in the ticket lifecycle ensures everyone knows their part. This makes it easier to route, approve, and monitor tickets without confusion, and allows you to configure your helpdesk to perfectly match your team’s workflow.
How It Works
There are four main actors who interact with your ITSM tickets from creation to resolution:
- Requester: The person who submits the ticket. If they create the ticket themselves via email or the portal, they are automatically set as the requester. For walk-ups or phone calls, the agent manually selects them.
- Technician: The person actively working to resolve the ticket. Technicians have dedicated views to track their queues. By default, whoever creates a manual ticket is assigned as the technician, but this can be overridden by default assignment rules.
- Approver: The person who must give the green light for certain requests (like software purchases or access changes). Any role—Admin, Agent, or End User—can be designated as an approver depending on the scenario.
- Observer: The silent watcher. Observers receive ticket updates and stay in the loop without being directly responsible for the ticket’s resolution (perfect for department heads or account managers).
Next Steps
Review your current notification templates to ensure each of these four actors is receiving the correct automated emails at the right stages of the ticket lifecycle.
