Key Concepts
Core terminology — tickets, contacts, statuses, priorities, SLA, and departments
Before diving into the day-to-day workflow, it helps to understand the building blocks of your helpdesk. This page defines the core concepts you will encounter throughout the application.
Tickets
A ticket represents a single support request or conversation. Every ticket is automatically assigned a unique number using a configurable prefix (for example, TKT-0042). Tickets track the full history of messages between your team and the client, along with metadata like priority, status, assignee, and department.
Contacts
A contact is a person who submits or is associated with a ticket. Contacts store basic information — name, email, phone — and maintain a link to their record in your CRM. When you open a contact, you can see every ticket they have ever raised.
Contacts are synced from your CRM automatically. You can also create contacts manually from within the helpdesk.
Statuses
Every ticket moves through a lifecycle represented by its status:
| Status | Meaning |
|---|---|
| Open | New or re-opened — needs attention from your team. |
| In Progress | An agent is actively working on it. |
| Waiting on Client | Your team has responded and is waiting for the client to reply. |
| Resolved | The issue has been addressed. The client can still re-open it. |
| Closed | Finalised — no further action expected. |
Statuses update automatically in some cases (for example, a client reply moves a "Waiting on Client" ticket back to "Open"), but agents can always set the status manually.
Priorities
Priority indicates how urgently a ticket needs to be handled:
- Low — no immediate time pressure.
- Medium — should be addressed in the normal course of work.
- High — needs prompt attention.
- Urgent — requires immediate action; SLA timers are shortest at this level.
Priority is set when a ticket is created and can be changed at any time.
SLA (Service Level Agreement)
An SLA defines the target response and resolution times for each priority level. For example, you might require a first response within 1 hour for Urgent tickets and within 8 hours for Low tickets.
When a ticket approaches or exceeds its SLA target, the helpdesk highlights it so your team can act before deadlines are missed. SLA rules are configured in Settings > SLA.
Departments
Departments are team groupings used to route tickets to the right people. Common examples include "Billing", "Technical Support", and "Onboarding". Each ticket can be assigned to a department, and agents can be members of one or more departments.
Departments help larger teams stay organised by filtering ticket views and controlling who sees what.
Channels
A channel is an inbound email endpoint that creates tickets automatically. Each department can have its own channel address (for example, support@yourdomain.com). When a client sends an email to that address, a new ticket is created and assigned to the corresponding department.
Internal Notes
An internal note is a message on a ticket that is only visible to your team. Clients never see internal notes. Use them to share context, ask a colleague for input, or document steps taken — without exposing that information to the client.
Internal notes are visually distinguished from client-facing replies in the ticket conversation so there is no risk of confusion.