Prerequisites

To configure a new instance of BOSSDesk, you will need to have:

  • a Privileged User in BOSSDesk
  • a privileged Domain User account with Active Directory Read permissions for use by the service
  • a Server within your Domain running Windows 2008 SP1 or later, with .NET Framework 4.6 or later installed (.NET FrameWork Download)

Please log in to your privileged BOSSDesk account prior to attempting the configuration steps below.

Basic Configuration

  1. Select the "Settings" option from the BOSSDesk sidebar menu.

  2. Scroll to the "Account Management" section of the "Settings" page.

  3. Select "General".

  4. On this page you can personalize your BOSSDesk by setting the following:

    • Company Name – This information appears on web pages, reports and e-mails.

    • Welcome Text – Displayed on the BOSSDesk login web page.

    • Time Zone – Dropdown list of world wide time zone regions. Identifies the time zone for the central location where services will be managed.

    • Currency – Dropdown list of international monetary identifiers.

    • Begining of Week - Specifies the day your work week starts on.

    • Header Color - the base color of your web portal header.

    • Brand - the logo to appear in place of the BOSS logo.

    • Company Logo – Displayed on all BOSSDesk web pages.

Once you have set each of these items click "Save" to apply them.


Click the "Settings" item in the BOSSDesk sidebar and scroll to "Email Settings"

  • Header and Footer: Configure the e-mail format used on all e-mail correspondence generated by BOSSDesk. you can use HTML as well as BOSSDesk placeholders here
  • Postboxes: you can add additional email addresses to the BOSSDesk application by selecting the “add” button in this menu
  • Templates: Customize the e-mail content for specific process trigger points, such as user notification templates, the new Agent ‘Welcome’ e-mail message and the ‘Forgot Your Password’ e-mail response.
  • Notifications: you can change the settings governing what types of changes notify your technicians or users here.

Installing and Configuring the SiteAgent Service (Required):

  1. Select the "Settings" option from the BOSSDesk sidebar menu.

  2. Scroll to the "Configuration Management" section of the "Settings" page.

  3. Select the "SiteAgent" option.

  4. On the "SiteAgent" Page on the right-hand side, select the "New SiteAgent" button.

  5. Enter a name for this instance of the SiteAgent (We recommend using the name of the domain) and click "Save".



  6. copy the displayed API key to somewhere for later use in the server installation.



  7. Return to the main "SiteAgent" page by clicking the "SiteAgent" tab at the top of the screen.

  8. Select "Download SiteAgent".

  9. Move the downloaded installer to the prepared Windows Server.

  10. Run the installer and complete the installation steps. Once the installation is complete and you click finish, a window should open prompting you to configure the agent.



  11. In the configuration window, enter the name of your BOSSDesk instance (what preceeds ".bossdesk.io" in your url) and paste the API key you copied earlier into the designated fields, and select the TLS version you would like to use. (1.2 is reccomended). Click Next.

  12. Enter the hostname for the domain controller, as well as the credentials for the domain user mentioned in the prerequisites into the allotted fields, choose whether you are importing Computers and Users or Users Only and click next.



  13. You will need to choose what type of grouping you want to use in BOSSDesk on this screen. Select either group by Location, Department, or AD Security group (unless filtering is turned on in a later step, this will not govern who is imported, only what resources they can view, and their appearance in certain reports.). Click "Read Groups items" then select the list of groups you plan on using. once that is done, click Next.

  14. You should now be on the "Computer Synchronization" page. Click the "Refresh" button at the top of the page to load your AD OU list.

  15. Select the OUs for the Computers you would like to import. once selected, click the GREEN arrow between the 2 boxes to move them to the Import List.

  16. Click the Blue Cloud Sync button to sync the computers with the BOSSDesk Database.

  17. click Next.

  18. Repeat the previous steps for the Users you would like to import and click Next.



19. Enter any IP ranges you would like to scan with SNMP, and the community string (the default is usually "public") in the format \ - \ and click add.
20. Once you have added all the ranges, click the magnifying glass to scan.
21. When the scan has completed, Select the devices you wish to add to your BOSSDesk and click the cloud button to sync them.



22. Once the sync is complete, click next.



23. Select which scheduled tasks you would like to turn on, and select what time and which days you would like them to run on. (Note: scheduled tasks cannot be run within 30 minutes of one another). Once the schedules are correct, click the green check mark in the bottom right corner to finalize these settings.



24. After the Sync is run for the first time, you should be able to see details listed next to the SiteAgent in your BOSSDesk SiteAgent Settings page.

Additional Configuration of SiteAgent

You can also change several additional settings related to the SiteAgent by doing the following:

  1. Go to the server the SiteAgent is installed on.

  2. Navigate to the system tray on the taskbar.

  3. Right click on the BOSSDesk icon.

  4. Click "Settings".

Here you can edit how often the agent communicates with BOSSDesk, checks for updates, and specify prefixes to ignore in Active Directory

You have now completed the Basic Setup.

Ticket Management Configuration

Document the business process rules which will be used to aid with the completion of service requests.

General Settings

  1. Go to Settings | Incident Management | General Settings.
  2. Choose a default Priority, default Teams for Tickets, the default Business Hours and Default Holiday Calendar.
  3. Save these General Settings.



Ticket Types

  1. Go to Settings | Incident Management | Ticket Types.
  2. Click add new Ticket Type in the top right corner.
  3. Assign a meaningful name and a shortcut for the new Ticket Type.
  4. Save this new Ticket Type.



Priorities

  1. Go to Settings | Incident Management | Priorities.
  2. Click add new Priority.
  3. Give the Priority a meaningful name.
  4. Assign a default highlighting color to this priority. The color will be displayed when reviewing ticket lists.
  5. Save this new Priority.



Extended Statuses

  1. Go to Settings | Incident Management | Extended Statuses.
  2. Click add Extended Status in the top right corner
  3. Give the new Extended Status a meaningful name
  4. Save the new Extended Status.


Task Type

  1. Go to Settings | Incident Management | Task Type.
  2. Click "New Task Type".
  3. Give the new Task Type a meaningful name
  4. Save the new Task Type.



Routing Rules

  1. Go to Settings | Incident Management | Routing.
  2. Click add new Routing rule in the top right corner.
  3. Assign a meaningful name to the new Routing Rule.
  4. Provide a brief Description of this new Routing Rule.
  5. Enable this Routing Rule.
  6. Define the Condition(s) that will enable this Routing Rule.
  7. Define the Action(s) to be taken when the Conditions are met.
  8. Save this new Routing Rule.



Service Catalog Categories

  1. Go to Settings | Incident Management | Service Catalog Categories.
  2. Click the "New Service Request Category" button.
  3. Assign a meaningful name to this Service Request Category.
  4. Save this new Service Request Category.



Service Catalog

  1. Go to Settings | Incident Management | Service Catalog.
  2. Click the blue "New Service Request" on the top right.
  3. Assign a meaningful name to this Service Catalog item.
  4. Select a Category from the Drop Down field.
  5. Assign an image to this service Catalog item.



  6. Provide a Short Description for this Service Catalog item.
  7. Provide a very specific Description of this Service Catalog item.
  8. Enable this Service Catalog item.
  9. Choose whether this Service Catalog item is visible to all Users or to specific User Groups. If groups, you will be given a Drop Down to select any number of groups.
  10. Choose whether this Service Catalog item requires approval. The request may be reviewed/approved by the Requester's manager or by an Approval Board.
  11. Choose whether this Service Request item is automatically assigned to a specific Category.



  12. Drag and drop Custom Fields from the left sidebar onto the form to create your form.
  13. fill out required information for each field when prompted. (This form will be presented to the requester when they choose this Service Request item from the Service Catalog.)
  14. Click "Add a Task" to add Tasks to this Service request item.
  15. Save this new Service Request item.



Agent Teams, Groups and Approval Boards

Group your Agents and users into work groups, assign roles, and define the Approval Board.

Teams

  1. Go to Settings | User Management | Teams.
  2. Click on New Team.
  3. Give the Team a meaningful name.
  4. Select any number of Members from the Drop Down to be a part of this team.
  5. Select any number of categories for this team to manage from the Drop Down in the Ticket Categories field.
  6. Use the ‘Round-robin assignment’ checkbox to rotate new ticket assignment to each member of this team.
  7. Choose which set of Business Hours defines when this Team will respond to service requests.
  8. Choose which Holiday calendar defines the work days for this Team.
  9. Save this Team.

Groups

  1. Go to Settings | User Management | Groups.
  2. Click on New Group in the top right corner.
  3. Give this Group a meaningful name and save this new Group.
  4. Assign Groups to individual Users and to Categories.
  5. Save this Group.

Roles

  1. Go to Settings | User Management | Roles.
  2. Choose Add A New Role.
  3. Give the Role a meaningful name.
  4. Choose the permissions granted to this role. Note: If an Agent has multiple Roles, the role with the higher level of permissions will be used.
  5. Save this new Role.

Promoting Agents

  1. Go to Users.
  2. Review the Users list and click on the User you wish to assign a role to.
  3. Click the promote button in the top right corner.
  4. Select the roles you wish to assign to the User.
  5. Click "Promote".

Approval Boards

  1. Go to Settings | User Management | Approval Boards.
  2. Click "New Board"
  3. Assign a meaningful name to this Approval Board.
  4. Select any number of members from the Drop Down in the Members field.
  5. Save this Approval Board.