Plain-English Glossary
Hover any highlighted term in the guides for the same plain-English tip. This page collects every definition in one place. Each guide highlights a term only on its first mention.
PSA: Professional Services Automation
The software a service team uses to track its work, its time, and what it bills customers for.
FlowRMM: The Remote Tool Next Door
The sister product that reaches the actual computers: it opens remote sessions and runs approved actions. FlowPSA keeps the business record of that work.
HITL: Human-in-the-Loop
A real person checks and approves an important step before it counts, even when an AI did the work.
Four-eyes: Two-Person Rule
Two different people are needed. The person who asked for something cannot also be the one who approves it.
MCP: Model Context Protocol
A standard plug that lets an AI model use FlowPSA's tools, the same way a person uses buttons in the portal.
MCP agent: An AI Teammate
An AI model connected over MCP. It can be assigned work like a person, but it can never approve changes, post invoices, or skip the resolution gate.
Ticket: Unplanned Work
A record for something that broke or got worse. It has one timeline that everyone writes to, and a clock for how fast it should be fixed.
Task: A Slice of the Work
One piece of a bigger job, sent to the team that should do it. Tasks live under a ticket, work order, or project instead of becoming new tickets.
Work order: Planned Work
A request that was planned instead of broken, like adding a new user or installing a switch.
Change request: A Controlled Change
A planned change to a system. It needs a plan to do it, a plan to check it, and a plan to undo it before anyone can approve it.
Problem record: The Root Cause Record
One record that ties many similar tickets to the single cause behind them, so the cause gets fixed once.
Resolution gate: The Close-Out Checklist
A checklist a ticket must pass before it can be resolved: tasks done, changes finished, knowledge linked, proof from the computer, and a named person.
Waiver: A Recorded Exception
A named person explains in writing why a normal rule does not apply this time. The reason is saved forever.
Smart Dispatch: Fair Next-Ticket Picker
A scoring rule that picks the most urgent ticket for you, so easy tickets do not get picked first while hard ones wait.
WIP cap: Work-in-Progress Limit
The most tickets one person can hold at once, so nobody drowns in half-finished work.
Outage Shield: Storm Detector
Notices when many people at one company report the same outage, so you can fix it once and close all the matching tickets together.
Major incident: The Big One
A ticket flagged as serious and widespread. It jumps the queue and becomes the parent of the matching tickets.
Resolution memory: How We Fixed It Before
Shows past tickets that looked like this one, and the saved instructions that helped, so you do not start from zero.
SOP: Standard Operating Procedure
Written step-by-step instructions for a common job, often specific to one client.
SLA: Service Level Agreement
The promise of how fast you will respond and fix things. FlowPSA runs a clock for it and pauses the clock when you are waiting on the customer.
Timesheet: A Week of Time
All the time one person or agent logged from Monday to Sunday. It gets submitted, then approved, before billing can use it.
Omni-Timer: The Always-There Stopwatch
A stopwatch at the top of the portal that starts when you claim work and saves the time when you stop.
Agreement: The Customer's Deal
What a company pays for: included hours, the hourly rate after that, and how time is rounded.
Draft invoice: A Bill Not Yet Sent
A bill built from approved time. It holds that time so nobody changes it, and a second person must post it.
Client portal: The Customer's Window
A page where your customer's staff can see their company's tickets, reply, and ask for help, using a link that expires.
Entra ID: Microsoft Sign-In
Microsoft's work sign-in system. FlowPSA uses it to know who you are and which role you have.
Idempotent: Safe to Repeat
Sending the same message twice has the same result as sending it once, so a retry never makes a duplicate ticket.
Related guides
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