Staff devices, permission groups, and dispatch tuning
Assign a tech's own devices for desktop toasts, build a custom permission group in Staff Roles, and tune how Elise estimates and previews dispatch.
What you will have
- Open a staff member's Devices card and see what it does.
- See your platform plan card the way an Owner sees it, and the way a Help Desk Tech does not.
- Open Staff Roles and see the built-in permission groups.
- Set a tier on one section of a permission group.
- See Tag Estimates: the fix-time defaults and modes Elise's dispatcher reads.
- Grade one of Elise's recorded dispatch proposals on the Preview board.
- See where the old Team > Dispatch > Board address goes today.
- See the Plan & billing card once an instance has actually checked in, and know where a card number really goes.
Why it works this way
The Devices card lives on a staff member's own row, inside Team > Staff, because the devices are the tech's own, not a second page (owner ask 2026-09-07). Northwind Managed Services Staff has no approved device of its own yet, so this walk shows the real empty state rather than a device that is not there.
The Plan & billing card sits on the same Staff page as the roster because the platform bills by seat, and Staff is where seats are added and removed. It is gated on its own permission (admin.team.billing), separate from the page around it, so a Service Manager who can manage Staff never sees the MSP's own card or credit card.
This trial has not checked in with the platform provider yet, so the card reads "No billing details yet." The band, seat count, saved card, and invoice history only appear once an instance has a real platform plan; on Northwind Managed Services Staff, only what the card is and who can see it can be shown honestly today.
A permission group's own tier on a nav section caps every child section under it. Team is set to View on Help Desk Tech, and every page under Team, including Staff Roles itself, inherits that ceiling; that is why Staff Roles never appears in a Help Desk Tech's own sidebar.
Tag Estimates and Preview live under Team > Dispatch because they tune the same dispatcher that Team > Pods hands tickets to. Tag Estimates sets how long a ticket with a given tag is expected to take; Preview shows what Elise would have booked before you let her book it for real.
Team > Dispatch has no board of its own any more; opening it lands you on Tag Estimates, and the old Board address is a bare redirect stub kept only so an old bookmark still lands somewhere useful, on the day timeline that actually moved to Service Desk > Schedule.
Once an instance has checked in with the platform provider at least once, the same Plan & billing card that read "No billing details yet" in step 4 shows a real seat count and lets you open the Add card form; the two later steps below capture that state honestly, on an instance further along than the one step 4 used.
Steps
Open Team > Staff, click the row menu next to a staff member, and find Devices.
Every staff row carries this same kebab menu. Devices sits between Promote to Super Admin and Block user.
Open Team > Staff, click the row menu next to a staff member, and find Devices. See the Devices card: assigned devices, and a search box to add one.
jordan.reyes has no assigned devices yet, and Northwind Managed Services Staff has no approved device of its own to offer either, so the search box says "No approved devices match." Once a device is here, the tech can turn on desktop toasts per event from their own notification preferences; nothing is sent until they do.
See the Devices card: assigned devices, and a search box to add one. Know what a device on this list can and cannot do.
The search only offers a device that is approved, live, on this staff member's own organization, our agent is installed on, and not already claimed by another staff member. A device superseded by a reinstall is hidden in favor of its replacement. Removing a device just takes it off this list; the machine itself, and any client it belongs to, is untouched.
Scroll down to the Plan & billing card under the staff list.
Northwind Managed Services has not checked in with the platform provider yet, so the card reads "No billing details yet." Once an instance does, this same card shows the plan, the seat band, a saved card, and outstanding invoices.
Scroll down to the Plan & billing card under the staff list. Sign in as a Help Desk Tech and open the same Staff page: the card is gone.
jordan.reyes holds the Help Desk Tech permission group, which does not carry the admin.team.billing permission the card needs. The page ends after the staff table; there is no Plan & billing card below it at all, and no Add Staff button either.
Sign in as a Help Desk Tech and open the same Staff page: the card is gone. Open Team > Staff Roles to see the built-in permission groups.
Full Admin, Service Manager, Senior Tech, Help Desk Tech, Account Manager, Billing Admin, and Viewer ship with every instance. The number beside each one is how many staff currently hold it; Add Group starts a custom one.
Open Team > Staff Roles to see the built-in permission groups. Click a group to edit it, and set a tier on one section.
View means read-only, Edit means create, edit, and reply, and Admin means full control. Help Desk Tech carries View on Dashboard and Edit on Service Desk; picking a different tier here and clicking Save changes what every Help Desk Tech can do the moment it saves.
Click a group to edit it, and set a tier on one section. As that same Help Desk Tech, Staff Roles never appears in the Team menu.
Only Owner, Full Admin, and Service Manager hold admin access to Team. Everyone else, including Help Desk Tech, gets Staff and Pods but not Staff Roles, and typing the address directly is refused the same way.
As that same Help Desk Tech, Staff Roles never appears in the Team menu. Open Team > Dispatch > Tag Estimates.
Every ticket-applicable tag on the tenant is listed here with its own fix-time estimate strategy. Elise reads this table when she needs to guess how long a ticket carrying a tag will take.
Open Team > Dispatch > Tag Estimates. Change a tag's Mode from Auto to Manual, and see it stick.
Auto uses the rolling 30-day average once there is enough data, and falls back to the Seed/Override minutes when data is thin. Manual pins the estimate to Seed/Override no matter what the data says. Rolling always uses the data and never falls back; below the confidence bar it skips the tag entirely. This mode was set back to Auto right after, confirmed by a reload each way.
Change a tag's Mode from Auto to Manual, and see it stick. Know that the averages are tenant-wide, not per client.
Tag Estimates aggregates across every client in the tenant, so a universal tag like Printer Support reflects every ticket that carries it, not one client's own slice. The effective number this page shows is the same number the dispatcher actually uses.
Import a set of estimates at once with Import CSV.
The file needs two columns, tag and minutes; a header row is fine and gets skipped automatically. Each row creates the tag or matches an existing one, so "Printer Issues" and "printers" land on the same row instead of splitting in two.
Import a set of estimates at once with Import CSV. Know what the confidence label means once a tag has real data.
High needs 20 or more resolved tickets carrying that tag in the last 30 days, Medium needs 5 to 19, and Low is anything under 5. The dispatcher only trusts the rolling average at Medium confidence or better; below that it falls back to the manual default (Auto) or skips the tag (Rolling). Every tag on Northwind Managed Services Staff still reads "not tuned yet," so no confidence label has appeared here.
Open Team > Dispatch > Preview.
This tenant's pods run in Preview mode: Elise records what tech and calendar slot she would have booked without writing to anyone's calendar yet. Four recorded proposals are waiting to be graded, all pointing at jordan.reyes.
Open Team > Dispatch > Preview. Grade one proposal Agree, and see the buttons become a badge.
Grading is feedback only; it never touches the ticket or the calendar, since Preview never commits either. A row whose outcome is scheduled also carries an Approve & execute button, which turns that one preview into a real calendar booking on the spot; this walk leaves it unclicked so nothing was actually booked.
Grade one proposal Agree, and see the buttons become a badge. Try the old Team > Dispatch > Board address directly.
There is no menu item for it any more, and Team > Dispatch itself opens straight to Tag Estimates. Typing the old /admin/team/dispatch/board address in still works, though: it forwards to Service Desk > Schedule, the day timeline of every pod and each tech in it, with the tickets scheduled on their calendars for the day.
Try the old Team > Dispatch > Board address directly. See the Plan & billing card once an instance has actually checked in.
Plan and Next invoice both still read "-" here because no plan has been priced yet, but Billable seats now reads a real count with an as-of stamp, Recent payments has its own table (empty, reading "No payments yet"), and Invoices & billing history sits at the bottom with a line explaining it: the full invoice and payment history lives in the ezCyber customer portal, not in this one. The link behind it mints a pass that works once and dies in ten minutes, which is why it opens in a new tab instead of this page, and why clicking an old link again does nothing; a fresh click makes a fresh pass.
See the Plan & billing card once an instance has actually checked in. Click Add card and read the note at the bottom of the form.
The card number, expiration date, and security code go into a form served by the payment processor itself, not this portal; the note under Save card says so directly: "Card details go straight to the payment processor. This portal never sees or stores them." Only a brand and the last four digits ever come back here afterward, for display. Once a card is already on file, this same menu item reads "Replace card" instead of "Add card"; saving a new one there switches to it right away, and the old card stops being charged with no extra step. This dialog was closed with Cancel; no card was entered or saved.
Click Add card and read the note at the bottom of the form.
If it did not work
- If the search box on the Devices card says no approved devices match, the machine you want is either not approved yet, not carrying our agent, or already assigned to someone else; check the client or fleet page it lives on first.
- If the Plan & billing card is missing entirely, you are signed in with a permission group that does not carry admin.team.billing view; ask an Owner, Full Admin, or Service Manager to check it, or to add it to your group in Staff Roles.
- If Staff Roles is missing from your own Team menu, your permission group only has View or lower on Team; only Owner, Full Admin, and Service Manager start with admin access there.
- If a Tag Estimates row still reads "not tuned yet" after weeks of tickets, check that tickets are actually being resolved with that tag attached; an unresolved ticket never counts toward the 30-day window.
Questions this page answers
What does the Devices card on a staff member do?
It records which computers belong to that person, so the portal knows where to put a desktop toast for them. A tech can have one device or five. Adding a device does not start sending anything: it only makes the Desktop toast column appear on that person's own notification preferences, where they choose which events are worth interrupting them for.
What does the "Suggested" tag on a device mean?
Our agent reports which user is logged in on each computer. When that login resolves to exactly one active person in the same client, and that person is the one whose record you are looking at, we float the device to the top of the list and tag it. It is a shortcut for finding the machine in a long fleet list, nothing more: the assignment only happens when you click Add. A device that starts reporting a different login user never reassigns itself.
Why can I not add a particular device?
Three reasons cover almost every case. The device has to be approved, because an unapproved device is telemetry-only and takes no commands. It has to be live, so a machine superseded by a reinstall is hidden and its replacement is offered instead. And it can only belong to one person: a device already on another staff member's list is not offered, so remove it there first. The list also shows only what the agent is on, so a phone or a computer without our agent will never appear.
What happens when I remove a device from a tech?
Toasts stop going to that machine immediately. Nothing else changes: the device keeps its enrollment, its history and its monitoring, and the person keeps every other way they hear about things. If they have no devices left, the Desktop toast column simply disappears from their notification preferences and their existing choices are remembered for the next device.
What is the "Plan & billing" card?
It is your OWN account with your platform provider - the plan you are on, what your next invoice looks like, and the card it will be charged to. It is not your client billing; that lives under Billing, where you invoice your own clients. This card is here because the platform bills per billable seat, and the Team page's staff list is where seats are added and removed.
Why can some of my staff not see the billing card?
It is gated on its own permission, "Team billing", separate from the Team page itself and separate from the Billing section. Owner and Full Admin hold it by default; every other built-in group does not, including Billing Admin - reconciling your clients' invoices all day is a different job from holding the company credit card. Grant it deliberately in Team > Staff Roles if someone needs it.
What is the Staff Roles page for?
This page is where you create, edit, and assign the permission groups your staff can join. It controls what each admin user can see and do across the portal.
How do Admin Permission Groups work?
Admin Permission Groups (built-in ones include Full Admin, Service Manager, Senior Tech, Help Desk Tech, Account Manager, Billing Admin, and Viewer, plus any custom groups) control what admin users can see and do. Each group sets a permission tier for every section of the nav tree. Assign a group to an admin user to grant them that access. Create custom groups in Team > Staff Roles to tailor access beyond the built-in presets.
How do I create a custom permission group?
Go to Team → Staff Roles and start a new group. For each nav section, set the access tier: None, View, Edit, or Admin. A parent section's tier caps every child section under it. Save the group. Then assign staff to it from their user record, or from the Group column on the Staff list.
Why can't I find Staff Roles in my nav?
Staff Roles needs admin access to the Team area. The Owner, Full Admin, and Service Manager groups have it. Senior Tech, Help Desk Tech, Account Manager, Billing Admin, and Viewer get view access, so the row is hidden. Typing the web address does not help. The page is refused the same way.
What is Tag Estimates?
One row for each tag that can go on a ticket. Each row holds four numbers. "Seed / Override" is the time you set. "Tuned" is the time we learned from your own closed tickets. "Actuals (30d)" is the live 30 day median, shown so you can compare. "Effective" is the time dispatch uses right now. When a ticket needs a time, dispatch reads the tags on it and takes the largest "Effective" value.
Auto vs Manual vs Rolling - what should I pick?
Pick "Auto" for almost every tag. "Auto" uses "Tuned" once there are enough closed tickets. If there are not, it uses your "Seed / Override". If that is blank, it uses the category default. "Manual" pins the tag to your "Seed / Override". Leave that blank and "Manual" acts just like "Auto". "Rolling" uses "Tuned" and nothing else. Below the confidence bar it drops the tag, and "Effective" reads "not used".
Are the rolling averages per-client or tenant-wide?
Tenant-wide. The Tag Estimates page aggregates across every client in your tenant database so a universal tag like "printer" reflects all your tickets, not one client's slice. When the dispatcher resolves an estimate for an actual ticket, it reads that same tenant-wide tuned value, so the effective number you see here is the number dispatch uses.
How does CSV import work?
Two columns: tag,minutes. The first row can be a header (skipped automatically). Each row creates the tag inside the Topic category (the seeded open category for ticket topics) or matches an existing tag via canonical-form lookup - so "Printer Issues" and "printers" don't become separate rows. Existing tags with the same defaultMinutes are skipped; everything else is created or updated.
What do the confidence labels mean?
High = 20 or more tickets in the 30-day window. Medium = 5-19. Low = under 5. The dispatcher only uses the rolling average when confidence is at least Medium; below that it falls back to your manual default (in Auto mode) or skips the tag entirely (in Rolling mode). Low-confidence tags are useful to spot - they're the ones where Elise still needs your judgement.
What is the Preview board?
When Dispatch Mode is set to "Preview", Elise records what she WOULD dispatch, which tech and which calendar slot, without automatically writing to anyone's calendar. You review each recorded decision and grade it Agree or Disagree. When a pick found a usable slot, an "Approve & execute" button lets you promote that one preview into a real calendar booking on the spot. It's the trust-building on-ramp: run preview for a week, confirm Elise's picks match what you'd do, then flip a pod to live dispatch with confidence.
What do Agree / Disagree do?
They're your feedback on Elise's recorded pick - whether the tech + slot she chose is what you'd have done. Grading doesn't change the ticket (preview never touches calendars); it builds the track record you use to decide when to go live. Disagreements are the signal to check your tier fill targets, overflow margin, or tag estimates.
What does the Dispatch board show?
There is no board here. Team > Dispatch holds two pages only, Tag Estimates and Preview, and opening it takes you straight to Tag Estimates. The day-at-a-glance timeline of every pod, each tech in it, and the tickets scheduled on their calendars moved to Service Desk > Schedule. The old /admin/team/dispatch/board address still works; it just forwards you there.
Where is my card stored? Does this portal see the number?
No. When you add or replace a card, the form you type into is served directly by the payment processor, and the number goes straight to them. This portal never receives, sees or stores it - the only thing that comes back is the brand and the last four digits, for display. Use "Replace card" to switch to a different card; the new one takes over automatically and the old one stops being used.
Why does "Invoices & billing history" open somewhere else?
Because your platform invoices are your provider's records, not this instance's. This portal holds a small display copy - your recent charges and anything still outstanding - but the full history, with the invoices themselves, lives on your provider's portal. The link mints a single-use, ten-minute pass for that page, which is why it opens in a new tab and why a stale link stops working. Click it again to get a fresh one.
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