MSPintegrations Blog

Several users have asked that we add the ability to route an inbound email based on the “Reply-To” address of the message instead of the “From” address. This is now available:

A few months ago, we released a very cool feature which used the client access portal to add notes to tickets. We also introduced a couple bugs in the process. I am thrilled to announce that these bugs have since been fixed.

New Contacts Created when “Auto Create Contacts” is Disabled

A number of users reported that they were seeing new contacts created in their Autotask accounts even if Email2AT was set to not create new contacts. Email2AT was incorrectly creating new contacts when customers replied because Email2AT needed a client portal user account in order to add the note.

We’ve now updated Email2AT to be more intelligent on these replies. When an email is received to update an existing ticket, Email2AT will attempt to locate an existing contact in Autotask for the sender. If Auto Create Contacts is disabled, and a contact is not found, then Email2AT will add the reply via the API (not the client portal). If a contact is found, then Email2AT will add the note via the portal for that user (and Email2AT will activate the portal if needed, too).

Internal Resources Created as Contacts

When an internal resource (an Autotask user) sends a ticket update to a customer’s ticket, Email2AT was creating a contact and a portal account for that Autotask user. This meant that Autotask users had a bunch of contacts on all sorts of accounts in their own Autotask.

Email2AT will no longer use the portal to add notes to tickets if the note is being sent in by an Autotask resource. Email2AT will always use the API for these notes.

Thanks for your patience as we worked through these fixes.

When we first started using Email2AT ourselves, it didn’t take long to realize that our own internal Autotask account was going to be bombarded with contacts. Every time we received an email from someone that Email2AT couldn’t associate to another Account, we’d get a new contact created for our own account.

After a few months and a couple hundred contacts later, we figured there had to be a better way to do this. What we really wanted to do was to just move those contacts to their correct account. Unfortuneately, though, the Autotask web interface doesn’t allow contacts to be moved between accounts.

But we all know that these sorts of issues rarely stop us…

After some poking around, we figured out how to move the contacts via the web-services API. We wrote a little tool and have been using it internally for a few months, and we think it’s nothing short of a miracle. It’s finally time to unveil this little baby!

All user accounts of MSPintegrations now have a link on their left menu for the new Contact Mover. Basically, this tool allows you to choose an account, and then a contact on that account, and move that contact (and optionally any tickets for that contact) to another account. We check a few things to be sure that it won’t mess up any opportunities, projects, or other items, and then we move them all for you.

But wait, there’s more!

For the first 25 callers (I kid, I kid), we’ll throw in a free LiveLink. The LiveLink is installed on the ticket entity within Autotask and will let you choose “Move Contact and Ticket” from that ticket without having to search around.

Now, when you get a new ticket and contact created on your own Autotask account (since the email address didn’t match an existing account or contact), you can move the ticket and contact in one quick step.

Here’s how it works:

From the MSPintegrations control panel, click Contact Mover from the left menu. You’ll need to login with your Autotask credentials (or pick from the pull-down). Then step through the wizard to pick the old account and contact, and then the new account, and we’ll do the hard part.

To create the LiveLink, visit the Admin pull-down from within Autotask and choose LiveLinks Designer. Create a new LiveLink and set it up as follows:

As with most of our free tools, this is released as-is. We expect it to work flawlessly, but we can’t guarantee that you won’t run into an oddity. If you find something funny, just let us know.

Email2at is built atop the technologies provided by Autotask’s WebServices API. This API allows Email2AT to create new tickets, update tickets, add notes to tickets, and even lookup Accounts and Contacts from an Autotask database.

Like any technology, the Autotask API has a few quirks, some of which directly affect Email2AT. In particular, the API acts “on behalf of” a particular Autotask Resource, so all actions performed by the API actually appear to have been done by the user who originally setup Email2AT for the Autotask company.

This behavior is perfect for interactive applications such as dashboards or other interfaces to Autotask since the user is indeed the person performing the action.

In automated systems such as Email2AT, though, this behavior can be troublesome. For example, when a customer replies to an Autotask email notification, Email2AT adds the reply as a note to the existing ticket. The ticket history will show that the person who added the note was the Autotask Resource who setup Email2AT, when, in actuality, the person adding the note was the customer who sent the email.

Today, we’re thrilled to announce that we have overcome this quirky behavior in Autotask’s API.

Here’s the skinny.

Email2AT now has the ability to add notes via Autotask’s Client Access Portal interface instead of just using the WebServices API. This means that notes added via a reply email can now be displayed in the ticket history as being added by the actual person who sent the email. This makes the ticket history much easier to read and follow, and helps to drastically reduce confusion among Autotask users and customers alike.

This change also fixes another quirky behavior: dual workflow notifications.

Previously, Email2AT had to call the API twice when a customer replied to a notification: once to edit the ticket status to something like “Customer Added Note”, and then again to actually add the reply as a note to the ticket. This would cause Autotask to fire any pertinent workflow rules twice which would generate redundant notifications from Autotask.

Now, Email2AT can add a note via the Portal interface instead of the API, and the Portal can change the ticket status. This means that Email2AT doesn’t make any API calls, and that the workflow rules fire only one time. Autotask users who receive these notifications will be much happer as they will have much fewer emails from Autotask.

This new feature is enabled by default on all new Email2AT inbound addresses. To enable this on your existing addresses, simply edit the Email2AT inbound address and change the pull-down “Create notes via” to “Client Access Portal”.

It’s 11:00 PM the night before you fly to an industry conference, and you need to get your customer invoices emailed tonight if there’s any hope of your customers receiving them by the first of the month. Unfortunately, you’re at home and Quickbooks is on your Accountant’s office PC. If you don’t export the invoice batch to Quickbooks tonight as you generate them, you’ll need to manually, and individually, export each and every invoice to Quickbooks when you get back from your trip.

Does this situation sound familiar? Autotask doesn’t make it easy to batch-export invoices to Quickbooks unless it’s done at the time the invoices are created. And, sometimes it can be a pain to try to schedule so that Quickbooks is available at the time of invoice creation.

MSPintegrations noticed this problem in our own workflow. In order for our automated billing to occur, we must have invoices created in Autotask. But the person who creates the invoice isn’t the same person that handles Quickbooks.

To solve this dilemma, we created a new tool called the Batch Quickbooks Export Link Generator.

In a nutshell, this new tool allows a user to generate a URL which will export all the needed invoices from Autotask to Quickbooks. It’s performed in 3 very simple steps:

1. Enter search criteria for the invoices (such as Invoice ID or Date)
2. Check off the invoices which need to be transfered to Quickbooks (any invoice which has no “Invoice Number” set is automatically selected) and click “Export”
3. Copy the generated URL to a new browser window and watch as the invoices are transfered over

This tools has already saved MSPintegrations a few hours this month, and we hope it will help you, as well.

A few months ago, we released a proof-of-concept we called the “Configuration Item Manager”. This tool allows for a bulk update of Configuration Items (also known as Installed Products) within Autotask. A user can easily download a Microsoft Excel spreadsheet which details all of their Autotask Configuration Items, then make any adjustments to the spreadsheet, and upload the modified spreadsheet. The tool will then update any modified Configuration Items based on the new spreadsheet.

When the tool was released, it had a limit of being able to process only 500 Configuration Items, and had no support for User-Defined Fields.

Today, we released a major update to this tool. We have removed the 500-item limit, and the tool now fully support User-Defined Fields.

Give it a whirl at www.mspintegrations.com and let us know what you think!

With the recent release of AuthAnvil authentication by Autotask, MSPintegrations has added an extra layer of security for our users, as well. All MSPintegrations accounts can now be protected by AuthAnvil two-factor authentication.

Here’s how it works:

From within the MSPintegrations site, click the new “AuthAnvil Settings” link on the left sidebar. On this screen, complete the fields for AuthAnvil Server URL, AuthAnvil Site ID, and AuthAnvil Username(s).

Once saved, AuthAnvil authentication will be required for this account. Note: only users with with an AuthAnvil username will need AuthAnvil authentication.

When a customer replies to an Autotask notification, Email2AT can add that reply as a ticket note to an existing ticket. Email2AT can also modify the status of that ticket.

Many users configure a workflow rule to send a notification to the ticket’s assigned resource when that ticket status is changed, but that used to mean two notifications would fire: one when the ticket status was changed, and one when the ticket note was added.

We’ve now added the option to configure Email2AT to add the note before the ticket is edited, resulting in a single notification.

(Note: if your Autotask workflow notification includes the description of the note, then you will need to keep this set to edit the ticket first, and you will continue to receive two notifications from Autotask)

We just added a feature that we’re VERY excited about!

When you receive an email in your Microsoft Outlook inbox that belongs in Autotask, you can now move it to Autotask with ONE click and NO pop-up windows.

Here’s how to set it up.

In Microsoft Outlook 2010, navigate to the “Home” tab of the ribbon, then create a new Quick Step

Give the Quick Step a unique name (such as “Send to Autotask” or even simply “support@mydomain.com”)

Configure 3 steps:

1. Step one should be “Forward message as an attachment”
   1. Set the “to” address to an Email2AT-bound email address
   2. Click the “Show Options” button (the screenshot shows “Hide Options”)
   3. Select “Automatically send after 1 minute delay”.
2. Step two should be “Mark as Read” (optional)
3. Step three should be “Move to folder” (optional)

Now, when you receive an email in your inbox that needs to go to Autotask, simply click this “Quick Action” button, and it will sent to Email2AT to be converted to a ticket. Since it’s forwarded as an attachment, we’ll parse the email as if the person had sent it directly to your Email2AT address (it will show as “from” the original sender, and will be assigned to their account, etc).

As always – questions? Ask us at support@mspintegrations.com.