Inbox and tickets

Every conversation in opendesk is a ticket. Email, live chat, the API and the help center portal all create tickets in the same inbox, so your team works one queue. The inbox updates live: when a teammate replies, changes a status or assigns a ticket, everyone sees it without refreshing.

1. Folders: Unassigned, Mine, All open, Pending, Solved and Spam, each with a live count.
2. Views: saved filters your team shares, like Urgent or Billing queue. See Saved replies and views.
3. Ticket list: the tickets in the folder or view, with search, filter and sort at the top.
4. Ticket actions: Solve, Snooze, and the ⋯ menu to assign to yourself, merge, copy a link, mark as spam or delete.
5. Timeline: the customer’s messages, your replies, internal notes and every change, in order.
6. Reply box: write to the customer, or switch to Note to write only for your team.
7. Details: status, priority, severity, assignee, team, brand, the address replies go out from, and labels.

Answer a ticket

1. Open a folder, then a ticket

   Pick a folder or a view in the sidebar, then click a ticket in the list. Use the arrows at the top of the ticket, or j and k, to move to the next one.

   

2. Write a reply or a note

   Reply writes to the customer. On email tickets it is sent from the ticket’s mailbox with its signature, so the customer sees your support address. Note writes an internal note that customers never see, over email or in the chat widget. Type / to insert a saved reply.

   

3. Send, and set the status in one go

   Click Send, or press mod enter. The arrow next to it sends and sets the status in the same step: Send and mark pending, Send and mark on hold, or Send and mark solved (mod shift enter). Each reply then shows its delivery status: pending, sent, failed or bounced.

4. Check who else is on the ticket

   On an open ticket you see who else is viewing or replying, and on chat tickets the customer’s typing. If a teammate is already replying, the bar above the reply box says so, and Leave a note instead switches you to a note.

   

Good to know

• mod is ⌘ on macOS and Ctrl elsewhere. Press ? anywhere for every shortcut, or see Keyboard shortcuts.
• Attachments upload once and are linked to the message when it is sent.
• A new reply from the customer reopens a solved ticket.

Set status, priority and assignment

Everything about a ticket is in the details panel on the right. Click a value to change it; the change shows up for the whole team at once and is recorded in the timeline.

1. Status, priority (low, normal, high or urgent) and an optional severity, from Sev 1 (critical) to Sev 4 (low impact), shown as a compact chip such as S2.
2. Assignee and team. Assign a person, a team, or both. Assigning someone notifies them (see Notifications).
3. Labels, to group and find tickets. See Labels and custom fields.

Status	Meaning
open	Waiting on your team.
pending	Waiting on the customer.
on_hold	Waiting on something else, such as another team or a third party.
solved	Resolved. A new reply from the customer reopens the conversation.
closed	Finished and kept for the record.

A workspace can also assign new tickets automatically, by round robin or by load, in Settings, under Assignment, and automations can assign by rule. See Triage and assignment.

Snooze, merge, spam and delete

Snooze hides a ticket until a time you pick: in an hour, in four hours, tomorrow, next week, or a date and time of your own. A snoozed ticket is on hold until then.

The ⋯ menu holds the rest: Merge into another ticket, Copy link, Mark as spam and Delete ticket.

Work on many tickets at once

Hover a ticket and tick its box (or press x), then tick any others. The bar at the bottom of the list changes them all in one step: assignee, team, status, priority, severity, labels, spam, or delete.

Find tickets

The filter button at the top of the list narrows it by priority, severity, channel, label, team, brand, address or custom field. Save a filter you use often as a view, and it appears in the sidebar with its own count.

Press mod k, or click Search at the top, to search everything at once: tickets, contacts, articles and settings.

What a ticket holds

• a number (#1042), unique and increasing within the workspace
• a subject and a channel: email, chat, api or portal
• a status, a priority and an optional severity
• an optional assignee, team, mailbox and labels
• the contact who wrote in, and their company when known
• an SLA with first response and resolution due times, when a policy applies (see SLA policies)
• a CSAT score once the customer rates the conversation (see CSAT)

Replies, notes and activity

A ticket’s timeline holds its messages and its activity:

• Replies go to the customer. Each one shows its delivery status: pending, sent, failed or bounced.
• Notes are internal. Customers never see them, over email or in the chat widget.
• Activity records status, priority, severity, assignment, team, label, SLA, merge and CSAT changes, with who made them.

Contacts and companies

Every customer is a contact, matched by email address, or by your own user id when the chat widget is verified. Contacts can belong to a company, carry notes and custom fields, and be blocked. A contact’s page lists all of their tickets. Open Contacts in the sidebar to browse them.

Related

• Connect a mailbox
• Keyboard shortcuts
• Tickets API