Set up pods and staff so dispatch works

What you will have

• Add a new tech and set their permission group so it actually sticks.
• Create a pod, choose Owner or Specialty, and give it skill tags.
• Add a tech to that pod as a member.
• Turn on Elise Dispatch Mode so tickets can route on their own.
• Watch an unassigned ticket land on a pod member through the real waterfall, not on you.

Why it works this way

Steps

1. 1

   Open Team > Staff and click Add Staff.

   Northwind Managed Services already runs one pod, Help Desk, with jordan.reyes and renee.castillo in it. Adding your very first hire and inviting them is its own walkthrough (Add your first client and invite your team); this one adds a second tech, marco.ellis, a synthetic hire, and gives him a real place in a pod.

   

2. 2

   Type the new tech's email address, and see that Add is still greyed out.

   [email protected] is the whole of what this dialog asks for by way of identity; there is no name field. An email on its own is not enough to add him: the Role field, labeled Role (required), opens on "Select a role..." with nothing picked for you, and Add stays greyed out until a real group is chosen. This walkthrough picks Viewer here, the read-only group, and then sets his real permission group from the Staff list in the next step, to show that door too. Whatever you pick in the dialog is the group the account is created with.

   

3. 3

   Back on the Staff list, set his Group to Help Desk Tech.

   Marco already shows Pod Help Desk before you touch anything else: Help Desk carries this tenant's System badge, so every new hire joins it automatically. Group is the door that actually grants access; jordan.reyes and renee.castillo both carry Help Desk Tech, so Marco gets the same one. Group assigns one of this tenant's permission groups, built-in ones include Full Admin, Service Manager, Senior Tech, Help Desk Tech, Account Manager, Billing Admin, and Viewer, the read-only one, and each one sets a tier, None, View, Edit, or Admin, for every section of the nav; setting a parent section's tier caps every child section under it at that tier or lower. A custom group beyond those built-ins is built in Team > Staff Roles.

   

4. 4

   Open Team > Pods and click New Pod.

   Help Desk already shows 3 members, jordan.reyes, renee.castillo, and Marco, and 1 client, Bluebird Dental. New Pod is where a second pod gets built, one that does not own any client of its own but steps in on skill alone.

   

5. 5

   Name the pod, set its Type to Specialty, and fill in Skill tags.

   Escalations is named for the work it exists to catch. Owner pods own clients and are the default routing target; a Specialty pod owns no clients at all, it only receives a skill-routed handoff when a ticket's inferred skill matches its tags. network, security tells dispatch this pod steps in whenever either skill is needed.

   Note: Auto-escalate on SLA risk stays off here, which is the shipped default. Turned on, Elise can escalate a ticket on her own, a tier climb, a cross-pod handoff, or a management surface, the moment its SLA timer is at risk, with no one to approve it first. Off, she proposes the escalation as a card on the Command Center instead and waits for a person to say yes.

   

6. 6

   Back on the Pods list, confirm Escalations was created.

   Escalations shows as Specialty with the network and security skill chips, 0 members and 0 clients, since a Specialty pod owns no clients by design. Help Desk stays Owner with its 3 members and 1 client, untouched.

   

7. 7

   Open Escalations > Members and pick marco.ellis to add.

   Marco is the only tech this new pod needs for now; a tech can belong to more than one pod at once, so joining Escalations does not pull him out of Help Desk.

   

8. 8

   Click Add and confirm marco.ellis is now a member.

   The Members count reads 1. Can triage flags a tech as eligible to clear tickets Elise routed to the triage queue because her confidence was low; Can review flags one who can sign off on Elise's proposed resolutions. Both stay off here since Marco is new to the team.

   Note: Tier is optional. Leave it blank and the pod stays flat, Elise picks by availability, skill, and load; type a number in and dispatch runs a tier waterfall inside this pod instead.

   

9. 9

   Open Settings > AI Assistant > Actions & Automation and set Elise Dispatch Mode to On (live).

   Off means no auto-dispatch at all. Preview has Elise record who and when she would schedule, with no calendar writes, for grading on the Dispatch > Preview page. On dispatches live, though only for a pod whose own Auto-Dispatch toggle is also on. Settings > Dispatch & Scheduling > Dispatch Rules shows this same value read-only with a link back here; this page is the one place it actually saves.

   Note: Leaving a pod's own Auto-Dispatch toggle off does not turn dispatch off for that pod. It still self-serves the plain waterfall pick; the toggle only decides whether Elise goes on to book the tech's calendar herself.

   

10. 10

    Unassign the new ticket, then click Dispatch with Elise.

    Waiting room monitor stuck on setup screen (ticket #5, Bluebird Dental) self-assigned to Northwind Setup on creation, the same admin self-assign every ticket made from the admin UI gets. Setting Assigned To back to Unassigned and clicking Dispatch with Elise, in the Scheduling card, ran the Help Desk waterfall for real: it landed on renee.castillo and booked her calendar that same afternoon.

    Note: Dispatch with Elise is a manual, per-ticket action. It runs the pod waterfall and books the calendar whether or not that pod's own Auto-Dispatch toggle is on; the toggle only gates whether Elise dispatches new tickets for that pod automatically the moment they're created.

    

If it did not work

• If Add Staff says "This user is already on staff," that email is already active staff; use the search box on the Staff list to find and edit them instead of adding again.
• If a pod's Config tab shows no Delete pod button at all, it is this tenant's seeded System pod (Help Desk here); a System pod can never be deleted, no matter how many other pods exist. If the button shows but stays disabled, at least one client still points at this pod as its owner and has to move first.
• If a client's tickets keep landing on the same one tech no matter which pod or skill tag is set, check that client's Default Ticket Assignee (Clients > that client > Edit > Settings); it outranks every pod until it is cleared.
• If Elise Dispatch Mode is Off, nothing dispatches on its own; every new ticket falls back to whatever its creating door does, the same admin self-assign ticket #5 got here before it was manually dispatched.
• If you go looking for pod setup under Settings instead of Team, two doorway pages explain rather than do: Settings > Administration > Pod Configuration and Settings > Dispatch & Scheduling > Pod Scheduling Rules both say a pod's members, boards, tiers, and hours belong to the pod itself, and link straight back to Team > Pods, the same door this walkthrough already used.

Questions this page answers