5 Filter Recipes For Super-charging Your HelpSpot Workflow

Filters are an extremely powerful tool in HelpSpot. Filter’s allow you to build dynamic, custom lists of request based on criteria. You can also customize the data that is displayed in a filter. Filters have almost limitless flexibility. Follow this guide to learn 5 filter recipes to speed up your workflow and make your team more efficient.

1. Manager Dashboard

Filters can be used to build dashboard-like functionality. For this recipe we’ll build a filter that will monitor all open requests and organize them by category and currently assigned agent.

1. Create a new Filter and give the filter a name
2. Click the options tab
3. Select Order by Assigned To
4. Group Requests by Category
5. Add “Latest Public Note”, “Status”,”Public Update Count” and “First Response Speed (biz hours)”
6. Click Save Filter

You now have a dashboard showing you all the open requests across your instance. The requests are neatly organized by category and then ordered by the agent handling the request.

2. Escalating Requests

Often support organizations have multiple levels of support teams. When level one support needs to escalate a request to the next level support team, they may not know exactly who should take the requests. It’s great to be able to create a second “inbox” for your level 2 team to be able take request from.

1. Create a Status in Admin → Organize → Status Types titled “Escalated”
2. Create a new filter and give the filter a Name
3. Add a criteria for Status Is Escalated
4. Choose to share this filter with a specific permission group or with everyone.
5. Check the Display Count in Workspace box
6. Select the “Options” tab and add the “Take It” button in the columns list so that the level 2 team can easily grab tickets.
7. Save your Filter

You now have a filter that can act as a Queue for your level 2 support staff. You may want to have your Level 2 support staff set this filter as their default workspace using the gear icon in the upper right hand corner of the filter display.

3. Building Secondary Inboxes

Helpspot contains an inbox which is designed to be the location from which helpdesk staff take new requests and begin working. In some cases this built in inbox may not be flexible enough for your use case. For example, you may want to create more than one inbox with different criteria, or you may want to use advanced filter features like grouping and sorting. You can build a pseudo inbox with a few extra configuration steps.

1. Create your filter and configure it how you want your “inbox” to look
2. In the filter details area choose “Show Count in Workspace”
3. On the options tab select the “Display filter above Inbox in left navigation” checkbox
4. After saving your filter, click on the configuration gear on the right-hand side and select “Make Default Workspace”.

Each user that wants to use this filter as their pseudo inbox will need to do this last step.

4. View a Particular User’s Queue

It is often helpful to be able to view another staff member’s queue. It can help manager’s with determining workload.  It can also be helpful for agents who are looking for a request that another agent is working on.

1. Create a new Filter and give the filter a name
2. In the filter details area choose “Show Count in Workspace”
3. Click the green plus sign to add a new criteria
4. Select “Assigned To” and then choose the name of the user who’s queue you want to view
5. Save your Filter

5. Identifying Stagnant Requests

Often you will want to be able to quickly identify requests that have not received any attention for a certain period of time. This may be due to an SLA that you have in place with your customers. Or, you may just want to not let requests stagnate. A filter can be used to quickly build a list of requests that have not received an update in a predetermined time period.

1. Create a new Filter and give the filter a name
2. Add a criteria for Minutes Since Last Public Update and select greater than your desired time period. (You can also use Minutes Since Opened or Minutes Since Last Update depending on your use.)
3. Choose the options tab and select order by “Last Public Update”
4. Save your filter

You will now have a quick filter that will expose all of the stagnant requests in your HelpSpot instance.

Hopefully these recipes give you a few ideas for what can be done with HelpSpot filters. There are plenty of other uses, such as, building reports for CSV export, organizing automated emails that you receive and prioritizing requests. With HelpSpot’s flexible filter architecture, the sky is the limit!