BellRung documentation

BellRung warns your support team in Slack before a Freshdesk ticket breaches its SLA. An agent takes the alert with one click on Acknowledge. If nobody acknowledges it within the minutes you set, BellRung escalates it to another Slack channel or to a team lead in a direct message.

Install

You need a Freshdesk account with an SLA policy and a Slack workspace where you can install apps.

1. In the Freshworks Marketplace, open BellRung and click Install. Slack opens: choose your workspace and click Allow.
2. In Channel for alerts, type the name of a Slack channel, for example #support-alerts.
3. Click Install.
4. For a private channel, type /invite @BellRung in that channel in Slack.

Alerts start about 5 minutes after the installation, for tickets that are created or updated from then on. Until you save your own rules, a built-in rule alerts 30 minutes before the first response and resolution due times and when a ticket is overdue.

To change the channel later, open the settings of BellRung in Freshdesk under Admin > Apps.

Rules

Rules live on the BellRung page in Freshdesk, in the Apps menu. Each rule has four parts:

• When: the SLA (first response, resolution or both), Minutes before due from 1 to 1440, and Alert when overdue.
• Which tickets: Priority and Tags. Leave them empty for all tickets.
• Send to: a Slack channel by its name, or a Slack user by email.
• Escalate to: a Slack channel or a Slack user, after Minutes to acknowledge.

Every rule that matches a ticket sends its alerts, but a Slack channel or person gets only one alert per ticket and threshold. To see where a rule posts, click its bell icon, Send test alert.

Working hours

With Hold alerts outside working hours on, an alert that comes due at night or on a day off goes out when working hours start, and the minutes to acknowledge count only working time. Set the days, the hours and the time zone under Working hours on the rules page.

Acknowledge

An agent clicks Acknowledge on the alert in Slack, or in the BellRung section of the ticket sidebar in Freshdesk. One Ack covers every alert sent for the ticket so far, in every channel and direct message, and each of them shows who took the ticket and when. A later alert, for example when the ticket becomes overdue, needs a new Ack.

Escalation

If nobody acknowledges an alert in time, BellRung posts a new message to the escalation channel or person of the rule, for example "Not acknowledged for 15 min · First response overdue". Each alert escalates once.

Slack permissions

BellRung asks Slack for four permissions:

• Send messages as @BellRung: to post alerts and to update an alert after someone acknowledges it.
• Send messages to public channels: to post to a public channel without an invite.
• View people: to show the name of the person who clicked Acknowledge.
• View email addresses: to find the Slack user for an email that you type in a rule. BellRung looks up only those emails.

BellRung cannot read channels or messages, cannot list your channels and cannot create channels.

Limits

• BellRung checks due times every minute, so an alert can come up to a minute after its time.
• BellRung sends alerts to Slack only.
• The interface is in English.

Support

Write to support@xoma.me. We answer Monday to Friday, 9:00 to 18:00 Kyiv time, and aim to reply within one working day.