Admin Lesson 1: Welcome to the Admin Seat

Admin Lesson 1: Welcome to the Admin Seat

Horizon doesn't run itself. Triage rules, todo policies, assignment plugins, watchlists, forms — these are decisions someone has to make. That someone is you. This lesson sets the frame: what an admin actually does, how the three panels split up the work, and where to go when something doesn't behave the way you expected.

What an admin actually does

Problem: A helpdesk gives you a list of tickets. It doesn't tell you which ones matter, who should work them, when, in what order, or what should happen automatically when one closes. Every team handles that differently, and most teams handle it inconsistently.

Horizon's answer: Horizon sits next to your helpdesk and adds the layer your helpdesk is missing — triage, scheduling, assignment, escalation, automation. None of it works out of the box. It works because someone configures it. That someone is the admin.

Concretely, an admin in Horizon:

  • Connects Horizon to the helpdesk (ConnectWise, Autotask, Zoho, HaloPSA).
  • Creates teams and adds users to them.
  • Defines business hours so the system knows when people are working.
  • Configures triage so incoming tickets get classified and routed without human babysitting.
  • Sets up todos — both scheduled (calendar-style) and floating (priority-ordered) — so agents know what to work on next.
  • Configures assignment policies so tickets land on the right person without a dispatcher hand-placing every one.
  • Configures booking links so customers can self-schedule.
  • Configures watchlists so deadline pressure surfaces automatically.
  • Configures custom forms so repeatable actions get captured the same way every time.
  • Tunes the panels so agents and dispatchers see what they need and nothing else.

You're not working tickets. You're building the system the people working tickets use.

The three-panel model

Horizon has three Filament panels. Each is built for a different role.

PanelRouteWho uses itWhat it's for
Agent/agentindividual agentsa personal calendar, todo list, and ticket tray for working assigned tickets
Dispatch/dispatchdispatchers and team leadsa board view of unassigned and at-risk tickets across the team, plus tools to assign, escalate, and triage
Admin/adminyouconfiguration of everything above

A single user can have access to more than one panel. A dispatcher who also takes tickets sees both Agent and Dispatch. You, as admin, will likely see all three.

One thing to know up front: the admin panel cannot be set as a user's default panel. Default panel applies to Agent and Dispatch only. Admins always start in Agent or Dispatch and switch to Admin when they need to configure something. This is intentional — admin work is rare compared to operational work, and the system biases toward the operational view.

Accessing the admin panel

Sign in to Horizon, then switch panels using the panel switcher in the top-right of the navigation. Pick Admin.

The first thing you'll see is the Dashboard, which surfaces:

  • Onboarding setup tasks still outstanding
  • Recent workflow runs and any errors
  • Triage activity over the last 24 hours
  • Team workload at a glance

Use the dashboard as a daily health check. If something's red, click into it before it becomes someone else's problem.

Getting Help

Problem: You're in the admin seat trying to configure something and it isn't behaving the way you expect. You don't know if it's a feature working as designed, a setting you missed, or an actual bug.

Horizon's answer: Two channels. Search the Knowledge Base for self-serve answers, or open a support ticket if it's something we need to look at directly.

Search the Knowledge Base

  1. Open https://help.giantrocketship.com/portal/en/home in a new tab.
  2. Use the search bar at the top of the page.
  3. Browse by category — onboarding, agent workflows, dispatch, admin, integrations, and troubleshooting.

If you find the answer, you're done. If not, open a support ticket.

Open a support ticket

  1. Go to https://giantrocketship.com/support-request
  2. Fill in the ticket form. Include:
    • Your account name (so we know which tenant you're on)
    • The admin page you were on (e.g. "Triage Policies", "Assignment > Policies", "Helpdesk Configuration") and the specific resource you were editing
    • A screenshot of what you're seeing
    • What you expected vs. what actually happened
    • What you tried before opening the ticket
  3. Submit. You'll get a confirmation email with the ticket number.

Where the response shows up: Replies come to the email address you used to open the ticket. You can also check ticket status by creating an account in the help system.

Tip: Admin tickets often blur the line between "the feature doesn't work" and "I configured it wrong." Be specific about what you set vs. what happened — "I created a triage policy with rule X, sent a test ticket matching X, and the rule didn't fire — log shows step skipped with no reason" gets a faster, more useful response than "triage isn't working."

The admin's mental stance

Admins who get the most out of Horizon think of themselves as building a system, not running one. The job isn't to manually assign tickets, manually triage, manually remind people about deadlines. The job is to set up triage so it classifies for you, set up assignment so tickets route themselves, set up watchlists so deadlines surface themselves, set up forms so repeat actions stay consistent.

Anything you find yourself doing more than twice in a row by hand is probably a config you haven't set up yet. That's the muscle to build.

Tip: Resist the urge to configure everything at once. Horizon is wide. Onboarding works best in this order: triage first, then scheduled todos, then booking links, then auto-assign for alerts using round-robin, then auto-assign for helpdesk tickets using round-robin, then move to next-available assignment with floating todos for work duration. Time estimate policies come last, once the rest is stable. The lessons follow this order.

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