Tickets

A ticket is a single customer request or issue, tracked from first contact to resolution. The service desk is built around it: every question, complaint or job becomes a ticket that is prioritised, categorised, assigned, and worked through a conversation thread until it is closed.

Anatomy of the screen

A ticket has tabs for the request itself, its processing, any delivery, the Conversation, History and Data. It carries a code and date, a title and summary, keywords, the requestor (a customer or a staff member), and the routing fields: priority, category, the team handling it and the individual assignee.

How it behaves

Lifecycle and routing

A ticket runs Draft, Active, optionally On-Hold, then Complete, with Cancel available. It is routed by a priority (a flat list) and a category (a hierarchical tree, so it classifies by area and sub-area), and assigned to a team, an individual, or both. Categories and priorities are configured in the service desk settings.

The conversation thread

The heart of a ticket is its conversation: a thread of posts from the customer and your staff, with attachments, tracking the last post and whether it is unread. This is what keeps the whole back-and-forth of an issue in one place, rather than scattered across inboxes, so anyone picking up the ticket sees the full history.

Worked example

A customer reports a faulty unit. A ticket is raised with the requestor as that customer, categorised under Hardware then Faulty, set to High priority, and assigned to the support team. The exchange that follows lives in the conversation thread, and once the replacement ships the ticket is completed.

Edge cases and good practice

• Requestor can be a customer or staff; internal tickets work the same way.
• Team versus assignee. Route to a team for triage, an individual for ownership, or both.
• Keep the conversation in the ticket, so history is never lost to email.

Related

• How to: Work a ticket
• Reference: Service Desk settings
• Reference: Service Customer (the portal)