Tickets reach your tray three ways: someone direct-assigns them to you, the system dispatches/escalates them automatically (or via a dispatcher), or you pull them from a ticket queue. This lesson covers all three so you understand where your work comes from and how to grab more when you have capacity.

Direct Assign

Problem: A specific ticket needs a specific tech. Maybe they have the right skill, the prior history with this customer, or the in-flight context from yesterday's call. Letting dispatch route it generically would waste time — the ticket needs to land on a particular person, deliberately.

Horizon's answer: Direct Assign. You pick the team and the user. The system writes the assignment back to the helpdesk and the ticket becomes that user's responsibility.

Direct assign a ticket

1. Open the ticket in your helpdesk.

2. In the Rocketship ticket widget, click Direct Assign.

3. Fill in the form:

   Field	What to do
   Team	Pick the team the ticket should go to.
   User	Pick the specific person on that team.
   Additional fields	Your account may have extra fields configured (notes, reason codes, etc.) — fill them in.

4. Click Direct Assign.

The ticket is reassigned in your helpdesk. The receiving agent's tray updates, dispatch stops considering the ticket, and the assignment is recorded on the ticket history.

Direct Assign vs. Dispatch & Escalation

When to use Direct Assign

• The ticket is a follow-up on work someone already started — keep it with them.
• The customer specifically asked for a particular tech.
• You have account knowledge ("Alice handles all of Acme's network stuff") that the system doesn't know about.
• A senior tech needs to take over a ticket that's been stuck — you're handing it deliberately rather than letting escalation route it.

When NOT to use Direct Assign

• You're picking a name out of habit because you don't trust dispatch. If dispatch is making bad calls, that's worth flagging — but bypassing it for every ticket means dispatch never gets better.
• You're trying to dump a ticket on someone because you don't want it. Use the queue or dispatch for that.

Reassigning a ticket someone else owns

Direct Assign works regardless of current assignment. If a ticket is already assigned to someone and you direct-assign it to a different person, that just updates the assignment. Use this when you need to hand off mid-stream — but consider giving the original owner a heads-up.

Common errors

• "Team ID not found" / "User ID not found" — the team or user has been deleted or your form data is stale. Refresh the page and try again.
• "Failed to queue helpdesk write" — the assignment couldn't be pushed to the helpdesk. Usually a transient connection issue; retry. If it persists, open a support ticket.

Tip: When you direct-assign mid-stream — meaning the ticket already has work or todos against it — drop a quick internal note on the ticket explaining why you're handing it over. The receiving agent shouldn't have to read your mind. "Reassigning to Bob — he was on the original onsite and the customer asked for him by name" takes ten seconds and saves both of you a status meeting.

Dispatch & Escalation

Problem: You don't always know who should work a ticket — and if it's stuck, you need to push it somewhere else without picking the next person yourself. Doing all of this manually creates bottlenecks at the dispatcher and slows everything down.

Horizon's answer: Dispatch and escalation are the same underlying mechanism — the system picks the next assignee using your account's routing rules. The only difference is the starting state of the ticket.

• Dispatch = escalating a ticket that has no current owner. Unassigned work gets matched to an agent.
• Escalation = escalating a ticket that already has an owner. The current owner gets replaced based on the direction you pick.

In both cases the routing logic is identical. And in both cases it can fire two ways:

• Automatically — your admin can configure rules that escalate tickets based on status (e.g. "if a ticket sits in 'New' for 30 minutes, dispatch it," "if a ticket sits in 'Waiting on Tech' for an hour, escalate UP"). You don't do anything; the system fires the escalation when its trigger hits.
• Manually — you click Escalate on the ticket and pick a direction. Use this when the automatic rules wouldn't catch what you're seeing, or when you need to act before the timer fires.

How the routing actually picks someone

When dispatch or escalation needs to find an assignee, Horizon walks through your account's assignment plugins (configured by your admin). Common methods:

• Round-robin — fair rotation across the eligible team
• Least-tickets — whoever has the lightest queue right now
• Next available (calendar-based) — whoever has the next open slot
• Next ticket queue — pull-based; tickets wait in a queue until an agent claims one

You don't choose the method per ticket — your admin sets it. What matters for you: agents marked Out are skipped, and agents whose business hours don't currently apply are skipped.

What you see when you receive a dispatched or escalated ticket

A new ticket lands in your tray. Depending on your account, you may also get an incoming todo to accept or decline (covered in the earlier lesson on Understanding Todos). The ticket history shows whether it was assigned automatically (dispatch / auto-escalation rule) or manually (someone clicked Escalate or Direct Assign).

Escalate a ticket

When a ticket needs to move and you want the system to pick the right person rather than naming one yourself:

1. Open the ticket in your helpdesk.

2. In the Rocketship ticket widget, click Escalate.

3. Pick an Assignment Direction:

   Direction	What it means
   UP — Escalate to higher tier	Push to a more senior team or tier. Use when the ticket is beyond your skill, scope, or authority.
   SIDEWAYS — Same tier, different resource	Hand off to a peer at the same level. Use when you have to drop the ticket but it doesn't need a senior.
   DOWN — De-escalate to lower tier	Push to a less senior team or tier. Use when the ticket turned out to be simpler than its initial routing suggested.

4. Fill in any additional fields your account requires (reason, notes, etc.).

5. Submit.

The ticket re-routes through dispatch using the direction you picked. The system finds the right team/tier and assigns to whoever fits your account's rules at that level.

Direction matters more than people think

• Picking UP when you mean SIDEWAYS wastes a senior tech's time on something a peer could handle.
• Picking SIDEWAYS when you mean UP keeps the ticket stuck because no peer can solve it either.
• DOWN exists for a reason: if a complex-looking ticket turns out to be a password reset, push it back down so a tier-1 can knock it out.

Escalation vs. Direct Assign — pick the right tool

• You know the exact person → Direct Assign.
• You know the level but not the person → Escalate (UP / SIDEWAYS / DOWN).

What "stuck enough to escalate" looks like

• The work needs a skill or access you don't have.
• The customer is escalating their tone and needs senior attention.
• You've spent significantly more than the expected effort and aren't closing in.
• A deadline is at risk and you can't meet it.

If you're escalating because you're bored or busy, that's not escalation — that's dumping. Use the queue or your Out toggle instead.

Common errors

• "No assignment level configured for direction" — your account doesn't have a tier set up for UP (or DOWN, etc.). Ask your admin.
• "No eligible assignees found" — everyone at the target tier is currently Out, off-hours, or otherwise ineligible. Try a different direction or wait.

Tip: Always include a short note when you escalate. Direction tells the system where to send it; the note tells the receiving agent why it's coming. "Escalating UP — needs domain admin access I don't have" saves the receiving agent from re-discovering everything you already learned.

Ticket Queues

Problem: A ticket has already been triaged — priority set, type set, routing determined — and it's ready to be worked. But it doesn't warrant interrupting an agent who's mid-task. You need a holding pen: a place triaged tickets can sit between "ready to work" and "actually being worked," so an agent can pick one up when they have capacity instead of being interrupted.

Horizon's answer: Ticket queues. Once a ticket has been triaged (by Horizon's automated triage or by a person), it can be placed in a queue instead of being pushed at a specific agent. The ticket waits there until someone with capacity claims it.

Push (dispatch) vs. pull (queues)

• Dispatch is push: the system picks an agent and assigns the ticket to them. Right for tickets that need immediate attention.
• Queues are pull: triaged tickets wait in a holding pen, agents claim one when they're free. Right when waiting a bit is cheaper than breaking someone's focus.

Your account uses one or the other (or both, for different ticket types) depending on how your admin has set up assignment rules. Common queue uses: high-volume alert and notice tickets (RMM noise, backup notifications, certificate-renewal reminders, disk-space warnings) and any ticket category where the cost of waiting is lower than the cost of an interruption.

Open My Queues

1. From the Horizon dashboard, click My Queues in the top navigation.

The page shows:

• A total count at the top: "7 tickets waiting to be claimed".
• A card for each queue you have access to, with the queue name, an optional description, the pending count, and a Claim Next button.

If you don't have access to any queues, you'll see "No queues available". That's normal if your account uses dispatch-style routing instead of queues.

Claim a ticket

1. Find the queue you want to pull from.
2. Click Claim Next.

You get a notification confirming the ticket was claimed (ticket number and title). The ticket is now assigned to you and appears in your tray. The queue's count decreases by one.

Tickets are claimed in first-in-first-out order — you don't pick a specific ticket, you take whichever has been waiting longest.

Watch for queues from the dashboard too

The Ticket Queue widget on the main dashboard (Task View) shows the same queue list with claim buttons. You don't have to navigate to My Queues to claim — you can do it inline while you're working through the rest of your day.

When you should claim from a queue

• You finished your current todo and have capacity.
• The queue has tickets waiting and your skill set matches.
• You're between scheduled work and could fit a quick one in.

When NOT to claim

• You're already at your limit and would just sit on the new ticket. Leave it for someone with capacity.
• You're about to mark yourself Out for lunch / a meeting. Don't claim and then go offline.
• A ticket in the queue clearly needs a specific person — flag it to a dispatcher or have them direct-assign instead of claiming and immediately reassigning.

What happens if a ticket gets handled outside the queue

If someone closes the ticket directly in the helpdesk, or assigns it manually before anyone claims it, the queue removes it automatically. You won't claim a ticket that's already been resolved.

Common errors

• "Queue is empty" — race condition; another agent grabbed the last ticket between when the page loaded and when you clicked. Refresh.
• "Unable to claim ticket" — usually an integration issue with the helpdesk. Try again; if it persists, open a support ticket.

Tip: Make claiming part of your between-task rhythm. After completing a todo, glance at the queue. If something's waiting and you have capacity, grab one. Agents who wait for dispatch to push them work end up idle while queue tickets pile up; agents who pull from queues stay productive.