Tickets: hand the work behind a chat to your team

How a ticket works

1. Someone creates the ticket from a chat. They pick the messages it is about, give it a title and choose a team, a teammate or both. See Create a ticket from a chat.
2. The team works on it with internal comments, mentions teammates with @ and sets the status as the work moves on. Only your team sees the comments.
3. When there is an answer, someone picks Reply to customer in the ticket. The reply goes to the customer in the chat the ticket came from, on the same channel. See Reply to the customer from a ticket.

Use a ticket when a chat needs work that cannot be done in the chat right away, for example a refund that billing has to make or a bug your tech team has to look at. The customer is never told that a ticket exists. In the chat, your team sees a card with the ticket's number, title, status, team and teammate, and the card changes along with the ticket. A chat can have several tickets.

Tickets and your plan

Tickets come with the Enterprise plan, and they also work during the free 7 day trial, which runs on Enterprise. An administrator, or a member whose custom role has Manage tickets and categories, can switch them off under Settings > Tickets. While tickets are on, conversations have a Category field, and the inbox panel has the ticket folders. More in Ticket settings and categories.

Where you find tickets

• Tickets in the inbox panel lists every ticket you can see. Created by me lists the tickets you created. Both sit below the conversation folders, together with Trackers (see Trackers: one problem, many customers).
• While Tickets or Created by me has no ticket yet, the page shows When a chat needs more work with the 3 steps of a ticket and a short example. Members who may create tickets also get a Create ticket button there.
• The other folders, such as Mine and All, list chats and tickets together. The Type filter above the list shows only Conversations or only Tickets. A ticket's row shows a ticket icon, its title on the first line and the ticket number and customer below.
• In a chat, the Details tab lists the customer's Tickets, the 10 newest with number, title and status. In a ticket, the same section is called Other tickets.
• The command bar (Cmd+K or Ctrl+K) has Tickets to open the folder, and its search finds tickets too.

Members whose role only shows the conversations assigned to them do not get the ticket folders.

What a ticket shows

• The header shows the title and the number, for example Ticket #18. Tickets are numbered in the same series as your conversations. Click the title to rename the ticket: Enter saves, Escape keeps the old title.
• Ticket details at the top says who created the ticket and when. It shows the priority, the category, the team and teammate, and the chat the ticket came from (for example From chat #231). Click the team or teammate to transfer the ticket. Below them is the Summary, which only your team sees. The pencil (Edit summary) changes it.
• Linked conversation shows the messages picked for the ticket and the newest messages of the chat after them (Newer in the chat). It is read only. Open full shows everything. Whoever can open the ticket can read these messages, also without access to the chat itself.
• The reply box starts on Internal comment. Type @ to mention a teammate. In the right panel, the notes tab is called Comments. More in Private notes for your team.
• Reply to customer, next to Internal comment, writes to the customer. While a teammate handles the ticket, a card says so, for example Anna is handling this ticket., and you take it over before you reply.

Status, snooze, transfer and merge

• The status menu in the header has Open, Pending, Snoozed and Resolved, plus the ticket statuses your workspace added (see Your own ticket statuses). Pending means waiting on the customer, as in a chat: when the customer writes in the chat, a pending ticket goes back to Open.
• Resolve opens Resolve ticket, which asks how the customer hears about it: Reply to customer, Hand back to Anna when Anna created the ticket, or Without a reply. It only asks when the ticket's chat can take a reply and at least 2 of these are on offer. Otherwise the ticket is resolved at once, as a tracker always is. See Reply to customer. A resolve takes you back to the list, which shows Ticket #18 resolved with Reopen.
• Snoozed hides the ticket until a time you pick, then it comes back. A message from the customer does not wake a snoozed ticket, except a ticket a new email opened (see Emails as tickets below).
• Transfer in the header opens Transfer ticket. Pick a team, a teammate or both. A teammate gets the ticket right away. With only a team, it waits in that team until someone takes it. A note you add is saved as an internal comment.
• Merge tickets, in the Ticket section of the Details tab, combines another ticket of the same customer into this one. All comments of the other ticket move into this one, sorted by time, and the other ticket is deleted.

When the customer writes again

The customer always writes in their chat, never in the ticket. When they write there, every open or pending ticket made from that chat gets the line The customer wrote in the linked chat. A pending ticket goes back to Open. The ticket also comes back as unread for the teammate who handles it, or for its team when nobody does, or else for the person who created it. In a group chat on Telegram, LINE or WhatsApp, only pending tickets are told.

Emails as tickets

If your team works email as tickets, open Settings > Inboxes, pick the email inbox and switch on Open new emails as tickets in the Tickets card of the General tab. The card shows while tickets are on for your workspace, and changing it needs Manage inboxes.

From then on every email that starts a new thread opens a ticket right away. The ticket gets the team, agent, priority, category and labels that your Conversation Created rules and auto assignment give the email, the SLA policy its conversation runs under, and the email's subject as its title. Its details say Created automatically from an email. The email's conversation is resolved at once, so nothing waits in two places, and the AI bot and AI agents leave these emails to your team. Tickets count toward no agent's capacity, and the queue does not assign them: a ticket that finds nobody waits unassigned.

Answer with Reply to customer in the ticket: the reply goes out in the email thread. When the customer replies, the message lands in the ticket and opens it again if it was pending, snoozed or resolved, and the ticket's assignee hears of it (else its team, else everyone who can open it). A new email that is not a reply opens a new ticket. Only one with the same subject still goes to the ticket while that ticket is open. If the inbox sends surveys, the survey goes out when the ticket is resolved.

Automatic replies such as out of office notices, mail you send to a customer from your own mail client, and threads from before you switched this on stay conversations. To send the tickets of one inbox to one team, add a rule on Conversation Created with the condition Inbox and the action Assign Team: the ticket takes that team. When you merge two such tickets, a reply on the merged ticket's email thread opens its conversation again.

The walkthrough of tickets and trackers

Every member gets a short walkthrough of tickets and trackers on the conversations page, one time, on every plan and also while tickets are off. It opens when nothing else is open on the page. The person who signed up the workspace gets it after the guided setup. Everyone sees the steps about tickets, replying to the customer from a ticket and trackers. Members who may manage conversations also see the new ways to resolve a chat. Members who may open Settings > Tickets get a step for it, and members who may open Settings > Automation or Reports get one for each, on a plan that includes them. While tickets are off, the last step says where to switch them on, or that an administrator does that. On a plan without tickets, it says that tickets and trackers come with Enterprise.

Use Next and Back or the arrow keys. The walkthrough has no skip button, and it ends with Done on the last step. Deskwoot then stores it on your user, so it does not come back on any device. If you leave the page before Done, it opens again next time. Members who join the workspace later get it too.

Frequently asked questions

Does the customer see the ticket?

No. The customer only gets what you send with Reply to customer, in their own chat. Internal comments, the summary and the card in the chat stay with your team.

Can customers open a ticket themselves?

No. Customers keep writing to you as before, in the chat, by email or on any other channel, and they never see a ticket. Your team creates tickets from chats. An inbox can also file chats as tickets on its own when they are resolved, with File every resolved interaction as a ticket in its General tab. See Resolve a chat with or without a ticket. An email inbox can also open a ticket for every new email, with Open new emails as tickets, see Emails as tickets above.

Which plan do I need for tickets?

Enterprise. The free 7 day trial runs on Enterprise, so you can try tickets there. On other plans, Tickets in Settings is locked and says that it is part of the Enterprise plan.

What happens to our tickets if we leave Enterprise?

They stay. Your team can still open, read, comment on and resolve them. Creating new tickets stops until the workspace is back on Enterprise.

Who can see a ticket?

The same rules as for conversations apply. Administrators see every ticket. Agents see the tickets assigned to them, the ones nobody holds yet, the ones they created and the ones where someone mentioned them. A custom role can change what its members see, see Custom roles and permissions.

Can one chat have more than one ticket?

Yes. Each ticket keeps the messages picked for it, and the chat shows a card for each one.

Do tickets get SLA targets?

A ticket your team creates starts without an SLA policy. Tickets get one through an automation rule with the action Apply SLA Policy, see SLA policies and response targets. A ticket a new email opened takes the SLA policy of its conversation: the conversation's own, else the inbox's, else your Default policy.

Why don't I see the ticket folders?

Tickets come with Enterprise; an admin can switch them off under Settings > Tickets. So either tickets are not on in your workspace, or your role only shows the conversations assigned to you.

Why did the walkthrough open again?

It counts as seen only after Done on its last step. If you left the page or reloaded it before that, it opens again on your next visit to the conversations page.