Support Desk (Tickets) — User Guide

Common roles:

• Support Admin
• Full access to configure departments, priorities, statuses, services, and spam controls.
• Support Agent
• Create and reply to tickets, change statuses, assign (if allowed), and manage attachments.
• Read-only / Management
• View ticket queue and reporting for visibility.

Recommended permission model:

• Agents can view + edit tickets.
• Only admins can change system-level configuration (departments, priorities, statuses, spam filters).

### 1) Configure departments
Departments define routing and ownership.

• Create departments for major support areas (e.g., Billing, Technical, Onboarding).
• Assign responsible staff/users to each department.

### 2) Configure ticket priorities
Use priorities to drive urgency:

• Low / Medium / High (and additional levels if your deployment supports it)
• Ensure agents use the same rules for priority selection.

### 3) Configure ticket statuses
Statuses keep the workflow consistent:

• New / Open / In progress / Waiting / Resolved / Closed
• Keep statuses simple at first; add more only if the team truly needs them.

### 4) Configure ticket services (optional)
Services help categorize tickets (product area / service line).
Examples:

• Implementation
• Training
• Accounting support
• Inventory support

### 5) Add predefined replies
Predefined replies reduce response time and keep wording consistent:

• Create a small set first (greetings, common troubleshooting, payment steps, escalation notices).
• Update regularly as new patterns appear.

### 6) Spam & abuse filtering (recommended)
Enable filters and rules to reduce junk:

• Block known spam domains
• Add rate limits if available
• Use CAPTCHA on public forms if you embed external ticket submission

### Workflow 1: Create a ticket (internal or staff-created)

1. Open Support Desk → Tickets
2. Click “New Ticket”
3. Choose:

• Department
• Priority
• Service (optional)

1. Add subject + message
2. Attach any files/screenshots
3. Save

Best practices:

• Use clear subject lines (“Invoice payment failed — customer X”)
• Add reproduction steps for technical issues

### Workflow 2: Reply and progress the ticket

1. Open the ticket
2. Reply with:

• Clear next step
• Requested data (if needed)

1. Move status:

• Open → In progress
• In progress → Waiting (if waiting on customer)
• Waiting → In progress (once customer responds)

1. Keep replies structured (bullets help) and avoid missing context.

### Workflow 3: Assign ownership / escalation

1. Assign the ticket to an agent/owner
2. If escalation required:

• Change priority to High
• Add internal note tagging the right team
• Move to the correct department if needed

### Workflow 4: Close the ticket

1. Confirm resolution
2. Add final response summary (what was done)
3. Set status to Resolved/Closed
4. Optional: link to a Knowledge Base article for future reference

### Workflow 5: Public ticket submission (optional)
If you allow public ticket submission:

• Enable a public ticket form and embed it on your website
• Ensure CAPTCHA is enabled to prevent spam
• Route public tickets to the correct department and priority defaults

Common operational views:

• Tickets by status (Open / In progress / Waiting / Closed)
• Tickets by department
• Tickets by priority
• Ticket aging (how long tickets remain open)
• Volume trends (weekly/monthly)

Recommended cadence:

• Daily: backlog review by status + priority
• Weekly: department performance + recurring issues
• Monthly: top drivers + prevention actions (KB articles, product improvements)

### Tickets menu is missing

• Confirm the staff user has permission to view tickets.
• Confirm the module/features are enabled in your deployment.

### We get too much spam from the public form

• Enable CAPTCHA on the public ticket form.
• Add spam filters for domains/keywords.
• Consider limiting public form to customers only.

### Agents reply but customers say they didn’t receive emails

• Verify email sending configuration.
• Check spam/junk folders on customer side.
• Confirm the ticket has correct customer email/contact.

### Status workflow is inconsistent

• Reduce the number of statuses.
• Train the team on when to use “Waiting” vs “In progress”.
• Add a short internal SOP and pin it in Knowledge Base.