#649: Getting Started

With this article, you can set up your new account in a few easy steps, add channels and employees, adjust the distribution of inquiries, and connect a task tracker.

Step 1. Basic settings

Set up languages, currency, and Email configuration.
Go to the Settings section in the side menu and select Swarmica Settings.

Choose the languages used in the interface, set the default language, the currency for calculating the support budget, and enable SMTP Email configuration.

Step 2. Connecting outgoing mail

Connect your corporate email account to send responses.

Go to Settings and then to the SMTP relay block.

A settings page will open. Below is an example of completed settings.

Enter the following data from top to bottom:

• Your mail server address.
• The port for outgoing mail on your server.
• The username through which outgoing mail will pass.
• User password.
• Encryption: none, SSL, or TLS.

Activate the Enabled switch if all settings have been entered and the server is ready to work.
Click "Verify settings" to make sure everything is working correctly.

Step 3. Connecting incoming mail

1. Go to Swarmica, then to the Settings side menu, select Channels, and click Email.
2. Click the button in the upper right corner.
3. A window will open to fill in the basic data:
   
   • Name: any name for your email channel.
   • Recipient: the email address where you receive mail.
   • Sender: the address from which you will respond to emails.
     The incoming and outgoing addresses may differ if, for example, you have several email addresses but send responses to all emails from all accounts using only one address. After filling in the basic information, click Save
4. A page with mail settings will open. Fill it out with your mail client data and other settings according to the example.
   

The following toggles should be enabled:

• Use the system SMTP server (set up in the previous step).
• Allow creating requests.
• Enabled.

Step 4. Creating employees

To create an employee, click in the upper right corner of the Settings - Manage employees section.
After clicking "Create," a selection will open.

We recommend inviting a user through the standard procedure. In this case, a special invitation is sent to the employee's email, they follow the link, and enter their data and password themselves. With this method of creating an employee, a window opens.

You need to enter the user's email, choose their role, and click Send invatation. After that, the invitation will be sent to the user.
For employees who will work with customer inquiries, set the role to "Agent."

Step 5. Connecting the Telegram bot

Go to Swarmica, then to the Settings - Channels section, and select Telegram. On the page that opens, click "Create" in the upper right corner.
Enter a name for the channel that will be convenient for you to use when processing requests and click.
A settings page will open.

First, enter your bot's token here. You can find it in the message that came in response to the successfully added bot nickname in the chat with BotFather.
For quick processing of requests from messengers, we recommend selecting "Create" - "Chats."
Activate the "Enabled" toggle to activate the channel and save the settings.

Step 6. User groups

You can divide employee users into groups for further distribution of inquiries and differentiation of statistics.
Go to Settings -> Manage groups.
In the upper right corner, click the "Create new" button.
Enter the group name.

If you want to exclude a group from the calculation of all metrics (for example, if it's a test group or not related to support), then select the checkbox "Exclude from calculation of all metrics."

Click the "Save" button.
A window will open.

In the right block, click "Add employee" and start typing their name, choose the desired user from the suggested list to add them. The presence of users in a specific group allows you to differentiate work with tickets in the desired group and group statistics by selected groups.
Leave the External ID blank.

Work mode: Optionally, if you want to tie the work mode of the group of agents to a specific schedule for accounting SLA counters only within this schedule.
If you want to exclude a group from the calculation of all metrics (for example, if it's a test group or not related to support), then select the checkbox "Exclude from calculation of all metrics."
Click "Save" to save the changes.

Step 7. Automatic assignment of requests

These settings can be done in the Settings - Automatic assignment of requests section.

Here, you can create different rules for assigning incoming requests to different groups. Rules are created according to the principle "If (condition 1), then place in the group (group) and assign an employee who meets the condition (condition 2)."

By creating several such rules, you can set their order of operation. Rules in the rule list work from top to bottom. If the first rule does not determine a suitable employee for a new request, the system applies the next rule to the request, and so on until a condition in any rule is met. Additionally, you can set up periodic redistribution of requests — it will periodically update information about the availability of an employee at the moment for the rules.

To create a new rule, click in the upper right corner of the section. A rule creation window will open. Here's an example of a completed window.

Enter a name — a brief and concise name for the rule that reflects its operation.
Add a condition for selecting requests using the button. First, choose the request field, then the operator, then the value.
Field — the field on the incoming request page.
Value — the contents of this field.
Operator — the relationship of the field to the value (equal to, not equal to, greater than, less than). The operator can be NULL — this indicates that the selected field should be empty.

For example, we want to apply the rule only to requests with the highest priority. We choose the Priority field, the "=" operator, and the "Urgent" priority.

Click to add the condition to the rule. To cancel an incorrect condition, click. To delete an ошибочно added condition, click the trash can icon to the right of it.
Choose the group where you want to place the request. You can create a new group and add employees to it in the Settings - Manage groups section.
By default, the request will be assigned to any agent in the group. To assign a request that meets the specified conditions to specific agents, you need to add a condition for an employee with a specific attribute. Attributes are set in the Settings - Additional attributes section.
Click in the "And assign to a user who meets the conditions" row.
Field — the name of the additional attribute.
Value — the value of the attribute.
Operator — the relationship of the field to the value (equal to or not equal to).

Click in the lower right corner of the window to save the rule. To close the window for adding a new rule without saving, click.
The rule will be added to the Available rules list. For it to start working, move it to the Active rules list by clicking the + next to its name.
Don't forget to save the changes using the button in the lower right corner of the window.

Step 8. Connecting the task tracker

You can connect a task tracker to Swarmica to link tasks with requests. Currently, the following trackers are available for connection:

• Yandex Tracker
• Jira
• GitLab
• YouTrack
• Upon request, Kaiten can be connected.

With the integration running, you can search for tasks in the tracker on the request page using the search field in the upper right corner of the request page. By keywords, a task is found.

If a task has a key relationship to the request, the employee attaches the task to the request using the "Add to request" option.
After attachment, the task is located on the right side of the request page. Directly from the request page without going to the tracker, you can see the title, text, and all parameters of the request: type, tags, status. In the lower part of the block, you can see the name of the employee who added the task to the request and the time since the task was added.

You can detach a task from a request using the trash can icon if it was attached by mistake or has become irrelevant. You can update the data of the attached task using the update icon.

To integrate with your tracker, go to the system settings in the side menu and select Task trackers.
On the page that opens, click on the name of your tracker.
A page with fields to fill out will open. Fill them in with your tracker data. Let's explain the meaning of the common fields:

• Additional fields — optional fields from the tracker that should be included in the task for its transfer to Swarmica.