How Formstack and Zendesk work

Let's start from the beginning.  I will attempt to describe the workflow for your requests and where they go/what happens to them.  As far as forms, they are built and maintained on a piece of software known as Formstack.  This is a third party software that the state has purchased and we use it to build forms for various tasks.  For this article, we are going to only cover the IT Access Requests/Password Reset forms.  There are 9 divisions (or at least that is what we broke it down to) in the department plus the Password Reset form.  That makes 10 total.

Here are those forms:

1. Access Change Request - Admin (This covers Commissioner's Office, Communications, Finance and Facilities, Human Resources, Internal Audit, Information Technology, and Legal)
2. Access Change Request - Adult Education
3. Access Change Request - LWDA (Technically part of Workforce Services, but they aren't employeed by the department)
4. Access Change Request - TOSHA
5. Access Change Request - Unemployment Insurance
6. Access Change Request - WIRED
7. Access Change Request - Workers' Compensation
8. Access Change Request - Workforce Services
9. Access Change Request - Workplace Regulations and Compliance
10. Password Reset

The reason it was done this way is to limit the amount of information on the form to just what each division actually needed.  A little more work up front but would save everyone time in the long run.  Each form is integrated with Zendesk, which you all know (at least somewhat since you are on this article) is our ticketing system.  There are actually two instances of Zendesk as well, one I (personally) like to call "External" which is the one that the general public uses to get things like unemployment claims and jobs4TN password resets done.  In this article, we are going to just focus on the "Internal" Zendesk, which is the one you are on now and the one that handles all of the "internal" requests like the forms listed above.

Each of these forms is routed to the self-proclaimed IT Security Team.  These indiviuals set up new employees with some access while creating tickets that are sent to STS to create other aspects of the new employee's account.  The Security Team also changes access/facilitates the changing of access to applications, websites, and network shares.  Some of these require STS's help as well.  They also remove access and accounts for people that are leaving the department.  Basically, they are the gatekeepers to access stuff in the department.

Back to the workflow of the forms, the first thing that happens is you, or your supervisor, fills out one of the forms.  The form is then stored on the Formstack website and a ticket is created in Zendesk.  One of the Security Team will then handle the ticket.  We can't go into the different options and what happens based on the "Type of Request" as that would make this article longer than anyone would want to read, much less type.  But the team works the ticket and any updates are sent, by email, to the person that requested the email, or at least the email put in to the field "Requester's email" in the form.  Once someone from the team closes the ticket, it is put into a "Solved" state.  The ticket stays in that state for 14 days.  At any point in time, if the requester or anyone copied on the ticket responds back to the email or makes a comment on the ticket, the ticket can be reopened.  This is especially helpful if the access that was granted doesn't work, the requester can easily bring that to the attention of the person that solved the ticket.  After that 14 day peirod, if someone respondes to the email or makes a comment, it makes a "Follow-up" ticket.  This ticket is a separate ticket from the original, but all it does is point to the original ticket so that someone on the agent side of Zendesk can see what the issue may be.

That pretty much covers the ins and outs of Formstack and Zendesk.  At least as much as an end-user would need to know that is.  As always, if you have any questions, just ask!