Service Desk

The Service desk is a ready-made add-on for answering customers on time. Every request becomes a ticket with its own number, an owner and a reply-by time. Open tickets are sorted by the time they need an answer, and the ones that have waited too long are listed on their own, so nothing waits until the customer has to chase you.

A ticket is simply a task with a few extra fields. That means everything you already know about tasks works on tickets: owners, statuses, filters, comments and linked contacts and companies.

Use cases

Situation	What the Service desk helps you do
Customers write to support@	Each email conversation becomes one numbered ticket that you can hand to a teammate.
Visitors chat on your website and the chat cannot answer	The question becomes a ticket, and the visitor is told their ticket number.
An urgent problem comes in	Set the priority to High and the reply-by time moves up to four hours after the ticket opened.
You start the day and want to know what to answer first	Open the default list. It is sorted by reply-by time, soonest first.
A manager wants to know who is behind	The Replies late list shows every open ticket that missed its reply-by time.
Customers keep asking the same thing	Write the answer once as a help article. The web agent and the help centre use it.
You want to track how happy customers are	Fill in Satisfaction (1–5) and read the average on the chart.

Before you begin

Adding the Service desk needs the Admin role. Other roles see a note that only admins can add templates.
The Service desk builds on your standard tasks and companies. Adding it does not change or remove what you already have.
Your teammates must be able to see the Service desk group. The group is added for the whole workspace. If you route a shared mailbox into it, the app can add everyone who uses that mailbox to the group for you.
To bring in emails you need a shared mailbox. To bring in website chats you need a web agent. Both are optional.

Add the Service desk

Open Support in the sidebar. On the Overview tab, an admin sees a card called Add the Service desk template until it is added. Select Preview. You can also open Settings, choose Templates, and find Service desk.
Look through what will be added. Your own fields are kept as they are.
Tick Add 3 example records if you want three sample help articles. They are marked [SAMPLE] so you can tell them apart and replace them.
Select Add to workspace.

A group called Service desk appears. It holds the ticket lists, three charts and your help articles.

What a ticket contains

These are the fields the Service desk adds to every task.

Field	What it is
Ticket ID	A number the app gives each new ticket, such as TICK-000042. You do not type it.
Opened	The date and time the ticket was created. It fills in by itself and you can edit it.
Response target (hours)	Worked out from Priority. See below.
Reply due	Opened plus the response target. This is the reply-by time.
First reply	When you first answered the customer. You fill this in yourself.
Reply late	Shows Late or On time. It is worked out for you.
Channel	Email, Phone, Chat, Web form or In person.
Satisfaction (1–5)	How happy the customer was, as a number from 1 to 5.

The usual task fields stay as they are: Priority (High, Normal, Low), Status (Not started, In progress, Completed, On hold, Cancelled), Owner, Description, and links to contacts and companies.

Companies also get a Client stage field: Prospect, In talks, Agreement sent, Getting set up or Supported.

How the reply-by time is worked out

High priority: 4 hours.
Low priority: 72 hours.
Normal, or no priority at all: 24 hours.

The reply-by time is counted from Opened, not from the moment someone looks at the ticket. When you change the priority, the target and Reply due update straight away. Raising a ticket to High shortens the time left, and it is counted from the original Opened time.

How Late and On time are decided

If First reply is empty, the ticket shows Late once the current time is past Reply due, and On time before that.
If First reply is filled in, the ticket shows Late when that time is after Reply due, and On time when it is not.

Because the answer depends on the clock, the app re-checks every ticket about every 15 minutes. A ticket can therefore turn Late a little after its reply-by time, even if nobody touches it.

Important: record your first reply

Replying to a customer does not fill in First reply by itself. This is true for replies from the Inbox, for chat answers and for notes on the ticket. The app only knows a reply was sent. It does not change the ticket.

So whenever you give the first answer:

Open the ticket.
Set First reply to the date and time you answered.

Until you do, the ticket keeps counting against the clock and will show Late once the reply-by time passes. If you answer in time and then fill in First reply, it shows On time. If you fill it in after the reply-by time, it shows Late for good.

Tickets that are Completed or Cancelled leave the Replies late list even if they were late.

Where tickets come from

Ticket numbers and Opened are given to every ticket the same way, wherever it comes from. Other fields depend on the source.

Source	Title	Channel	Priority	Contact
Shared mailbox	The email subject	Left empty	Left empty, so 24 hours	Linked if the sender is a saved contact
Web agent	The visitor’s summary, or their first question	Chat	Left empty, so 24 hours	Found by email, or added as a new contact
Form	Whatever your form fills in	Only if the form sets it	Only if the form sets it	Only if the form asks for it
By hand	You type it	You choose	You choose	You choose

From a shared mailbox

Each email conversation to a shared address such as support@ becomes one ticket. A reply in the same conversation never makes a second ticket. If you finish a ticket and the customer writes again, the ticket opens again with the same owner.

To set it up:

Connect and share the mailbox. See Shared Mailboxes & Team Inbox.
Open Email in the sidebar, then the Inbox tab. Choose your team mailbox.
Select Set up on the banner.
Under Which group should these tasks go in?, pick Service desk.
Leave Add everyone who can use this mailbox to the group ticked so your teammates can see the tickets.
Select Set up. You see “All set. New customer emails now become tasks”.

Things to know:

Only new emails get a ticket. For older emails, select them in the Inbox and choose Create tasks. Or open one and choose Create task. Assigning or finishing an older email also creates its ticket.
The ticket is created when the email arrives in the app. Opened is that moment, not the time the customer sent it.
Channel stays empty on these tickets. Set it to Email yourself if you want to count by channel.
A new customer who is not yet a saved contact is linked to the ticket once you reply.
Mail you send yourself never starts a ticket.

From a web agent

A web agent is the chat bubble on your website. When it cannot answer, the visitor can ask your team. To turn those questions into tickets:

Open Support, then the Web agent tab. Open your agent with Edit.
Go to the If it can’t answer tab.
Switch on Also save each question as a ticket.
Under Saved in, choose Tasks. Under In group, choose Service desk.
Select Save.

The visitor then sees Talk to a person instead, enters their name and email, and selects Send to the team. They see “Thanks, we’ve got it” with their reference, for example TICK-000042. At the same time:

A ticket is created with Channel set to Chat.
The visitor becomes a contact, or is matched to an existing one by email.
The whole chat appears in the Inbox for the people picked under Who answers chats, so your team can answer the visitor right there.

Only admins can set up web agents. See Web Agent for the full set-up.

From a form

A form can create tickets too. Build a form that saves to Tasks in the Service desk group. Let visitors fill in the title and description, and use Fill automatically with a Fixed value to set Channel to Web form and, if you like, a priority. Every submission creates a new ticket. A repeated email address does not merge tickets. See Forms.

By hand

Add a new task in the Service desk group and fill in Channel, for example Phone or In person, Priority, Owner and the contact. Ticket ID and Opened fill in themselves.

Work the tickets

The group has these lists:

List	What it shows
Open by reply due	Every ticket that is not Completed or Cancelled, soonest reply-by time first. Columns: title, Ticket ID, Priority, Status, Owner, Reply due, Reply late, Channel. This is the default.
Replies late	Open tickets marked Late, soonest first, with First reply shown.
Clients by stage	Companies in columns by Client stage.
Help articles	All your articles with category, status, who can read them and whether customers see them.
Articles by category	The same articles in columns by category.

Three charts come with the group: Requests by priority, Replies on time and Average satisfaction.

A daily routine

Open the Service desk group. You land on Open by reply due.
Start at the top. Change Priority if the ticket is more or less urgent than it looks. Reply due updates.
Set the Owner so everyone sees who has it.
Answer the customer. Then set First reply.
When it is solved, set Status to Completed. The ticket leaves the open list.
Once or twice a day, check Replies late.

Handle tickets from the Inbox

If tickets come from a shared mailbox, your team can work them from Email, then Inbox:

Choose a view above the list: Unassigned, Assigned to me or All.
Open a conversation. The ticket number shows in front of the subject.
Under Assigned to, pick a teammate with Pick a teammate. The remove button next to it unassigns.
Select Reply, write your answer, and select Send reply. It goes out from the shared address in the same thread.
Select Mark as done when solved. This sets the ticket to Completed. Reopen sets it back to Not started.
The small link button next to these opens the ticket itself, where you can set First reply and Priority.

To act on several conversations at once, tick them. Then use Assign to…, Mark as done, Reopen or Create tasks.

People who can read the mailbox but cannot edit the group’s tasks see who has a conversation but cannot assign it or mark it done.

Help articles

The Service desk also gives you a Help articles list, so your answers live in one place. Each article has:

Title and Body.
Status: Draft, Published or Archived.
Who can read it: Team only or Customers too.
Category: Getting started, How-to, Troubleshooting, Billing or Policies.
Inside page, to nest an article inside another. An article cannot sit inside itself or one of its own sub-pages.

Shown to customers is worked out for you: it says Yes only when the article is Published and Customers too. Web agents and the help centre use only those articles, so drafts and team-only pages never reach customers. See Customer Portal.

Remove the Service desk

Open Settings, then Templates, find Service desk, and select Remove. The group is hidden for your whole team and all records stay. Adding it again brings everything back.

Limits and defaults

Reply-by time is 4 hours for High, 72 hours for Low and 24 hours for everything else.
Late and On time refresh about every 15 minutes.
First reply is never filled in by the app.
Ticket numbers continue in one never-resetting sequence: TICK-000001, TICK-000002 and so on.
Only admins add or remove the template, set up web agents and create forms.
Passing a chat to the team is limited to 3 per minute for one visitor and 20 per minute for your whole workspace.

Troubleshooting

Every ticket shows 24 hours

Only High (4 hours) and Low (72 hours) change the target. Tickets from the shared mailbox and the web agent start with no priority, so they get 24 hours until you set one.

A ticket I answered still shows Late

The app does not know you answered. Set First reply. If you set it after Reply due, the ticket correctly stays Late.

A ticket I just let slip is not Late yet

The check runs about every 15 minutes. Wait a little and refresh.

Tickets are missing from Open by reply due

Completed and cancelled tickets are not shown there. Also check that you can see the Service desk group. Ask an admin to add you.

Emails do not become tickets

Check that you ran Set up on the Inbox banner and chose Service desk.
Only emails that arrive after the set-up get a ticket. Use Create tasks for older ones.
If you see “You can read these emails, but you’re not in the group that holds their tasks”, ask an admin of the group to add you.

The Inbox shows no assign or done buttons

You can read the mailbox but your role in the group is viewer. Ask a group admin for edit access.

The web agent does not offer to pass on a question

Open the agent and check If it can’t answer. The switch Also save each question as a ticket must be on, with Saved in and In group chosen. If the message “No object here can take questions yet” appears, add the Service desk first.

“No group shows this object yet”

The group you chose has no list of tasks. Pick the Service desk group, or add a task list to the group first.

The web agent cannot find an answer

Make sure the help articles are Published and Customers too, and that the agent’s Answers from includes them.

Visitor sees “Please enter your name and a valid email”

Both fields are required, and the email must be a real address. Ask them to correct it and send again.