Needs you: pings and the focus card

A ping is the dispatch board telling you that a ticket, or a person's workload, needs a decision. The Needs you tab, the first tab of the rail, lists your pings with the most urgent first. Select one to open its focus card, which says why it fired and offers the actions that fit. Dispatchers, service desk managers and customer success staff use it.

Before you start: you need the Administrator, Service Desk Manager, Dispatcher or Customer Success role, and the board has to be open (see The dispatch board at a glance). These actions need a QuantumOps login that is linked to a HaloPSA agent: assigning and reassigning, accepting AI triage, nudging an owner, posting a notice, notifying the service desk managers, investigating an insight and sending a reply. Without a linked login you can still read pings, open a ticket in the cockpit or in HaloPSA, track it, snooze it and dismiss it.

Read the Needs you tab

The tab opens with its name, Needs you, and a count such as 2 now · 2 later. Under it, one line says what the tab is for in your role:

Each ping is a card with a rank number, a chip that names the signal, how long it has been waiting, the ticket number and client, and one sentence that says what is wrong. The most urgent pings are P1, act now: on the field their hexagon gets a continuous ripple. A P2 is check: it rings twice when it starts and then keeps a thin outline. The ring colour tells you the kind of problem: red for an SLA breach or customer impact, amber for time pressure or an ownership risk, and grey for something worth a look.

Around the cards you may also see:

• A chip such as +3 waiting when more pings are live than the board shows at once. The rest wait behind it and move up as you clear the top ones.
• One line for each snoozed ping, such as Snoozed · #48211 · back in 14 min, with a Wake now button that brings it back at once.
• Later, a collapsed group of low-priority pings. It is hidden when Noise is Calm or when you switched the list off in your workspace settings.
• All clear, with how long it has been quiet, and the caption Nothing needs you. Go do something else. when nothing needs you.
• The attention queue is off. when you switched the ping queue off. Turn it on in the Workspace tab. The other rail tabs work as usual.

Which tickets can ping you, which signals are on and how loud they are depend on your role and on the Workspace tab. See Workspace: how pings reach you.

Why a ping fired

The chip on a card names the signal that fired. A card can carry more than one reason, and the chip shows the main one.

The card also has a Why line, for example Why P1 · Breach signal · VIP client, that names the signal and anything that raised its priority, such as a VIP client, a watched client, a HaloPSA SLA or an owner who is unavailable.

Work a ping from its focus card

1. Select a ping in Needs you, or select its pinging hexagon on the field. The focus card opens beside the hexagon. In a narrow field it opens under the card in the rail.
2. Read the card. Under the headline it gives at most two facts, the Why line and a small grid with the Owner, the SLA and the Last activity, plus cells that fit the signal, such as how long the ticket has been unassigned or how long the owner has been silent. If a Q-Notice is on the ticket, a chip such as 1 notice says so.
3. Choose an action. The card shows at most four, with the recommended one first and in colour. See the table below.
4. Confirm it. An action that changes a ticket or sends a message does not run on the first press. The button turns into a confirmation such as Confirm assign to Sam with a bar that drains over four seconds. Press it again within that time to run it, or leave it and it reverts. Actions that only open something, and Track this ticket, run on the first press. Choose technician… and Draft a reply open a panel under the buttons instead.
5. Watch HaloPSA confirm the change. For a few moments the card says Waiting for Halo to confirm the change. The ripple stays quiet meanwhile. When HaloPSA confirms, the ping clears. If HaloPSA has not confirmed within a minute, the ping returns marked Action did not take effect, with a note that you can try again or choose someone else.

Every card also has Snooze, Dismiss… and Open in Halo along its foot. The Close details button on the card puts it away without doing anything to the ping.

After a message action (a nudge, a notice, a reply or an investigation), the ping goes quiet for 15 minutes and the board tells you when it returns. If nothing has changed by then it comes back with a note such as Nudged 15 min ago, no change.

Snooze a ping

1. On the card, select Snooze.
2. Choose 15 min, 1 h or Tomorrow at the start of your working day, for example Tomorrow 8:00.

The ping leaves the list and shows as a snoozed row until its time is up. It comes back only if the problem is still there, with the note Back from snooze. In Strict mode only 15 min is offered and each ping has a limited number of snoozes. When they are used up, the card says No snoozes left for this ping.

Dismiss a ping

1. On the card, select Dismiss….
2. Choose why: Handled, Not mine or Stop showing this. In Gentle mode, while Ask why when I dismiss is off, the menu also offers a plain Dismiss that needs no reason. In every other case the board asks for one and says Pick a reason to dismiss this ping. if you try without.

A dismissed ping returns only if the situation changes. If you choose Stop showing this on a ping about a client, the board offers to mute that kind of ping for that client for seven days. Select Mute to accept (the mute is saved in your settings) or No thanks to decline. While Quiet a signal I keep ignoring is on in the Workspace tab (it is by default), choosing Stop showing this three times in a row for the same kind of ping quiets that kind for the rest of your session without changing your settings. Any other choice on that kind resets the count.

When you ignore a P1

A P1 you leave alone does not stay quiet. How far the board goes depends on How pushy in your workspace settings; Choose how pushy the board is describes the modes. The steps, in order:

1. In every mode the board makes the ping louder the longer it waits.
2. In Standard and Strict mode, when the ping has waited longer, the board gets louder again and, when you have linked Slack or Teams and Nudge me in chat is not Off, sends you a reminder there.
3. Last, in Standard and Strict mode, while Tell my lead about a ping nobody answered is on, the board tells your team lead that the ping is still waiting.

In Gentle mode the board stops at the first step and sends nothing. The reminder and the message to your lead need a QuantumOps login that is linked to a HaloPSA agent. The minutes between the steps are set in the workspace settings. See Nudges and escalations in Slack and Teams for the messages themselves.

Draft a reply to a waiting customer

The reply goes to the customer, so you review it before it is sent. Nothing leaves until you press Send reply.

1. On a ping about a waiting customer, select Draft a reply. The panel says Drafting a reply… while the AI writes the draft.
2. Read the draft. The panel shows who it is to, a Subject field and a Reply field. Edit both as you like. A counter shows how much of the reply's length limit you have used.
3. Select Send reply, or press Ctrl+Enter while you are typing in the reply. A plain Enter adds a new line.
4. The board sends the reply by e-mail through HaloPSA. It then tells you the reply went out, and the ping goes quiet for a while in case the customer answers.

If something goes wrong, the panel says what:

• Could not draft a reply. Write one or open the ticket in Halo. You can write your own reply in the same panel.
• This ticket has no email channel. Reply in Halo. The board cannot send this one. Open in Halo takes you to the ticket.
• If your organisation's communication policy refuses the reply, the panel shows the policy's own message and keeps your text so you can change it. See Communication policy for AI replies.
• The reply was not sent. Try again. Select Try again. If the first attempt may have gone through, the board recognises the retry and does not send the reply twice.
• Replies from the board are not available yet. Reply in Halo. This appears on a server that does not support replies from the board yet.

Select Cancel, or press Esc, to go back to the card. The text you edited is kept for the rest of your session. The reply goes through the same communication-policy checks as a copilot reply suggestion; see Copilot suggestions and reply drafts.

Keys and older servers

You can move through pings and run actions from the keyboard. Every key is in Board shortcuts, notices and troubleshooting. That page also explains the Using local mode notice. On a server that does not send ticket facts yet, pings about customer replies, reopened tickets and VIP clients do not appear, and everything else works as before.

Related pages

• The dispatch board at a glance
• Workspace: how pings reach you
• The ticket cockpit and assigning work
• Board shortcuts, notices and troubleshooting
• Nudges and escalations in Slack and Teams
• Communication policy for AI replies