Working with Tickets

In the course of working with a ticket, you will no doubt need to make changes to the ticket, whether that is changing the author of the ticket, updating its content, re-assigning it, or splitting it into multiple unique tickets. This article describes some of these common actions, such as:

  • Editing a ticket
  • Changing the status of a ticket
  • Assigning a ticket to another agent
  • Collaborating through internal notes and @mentions
  • Changing the author of a ticket
  • Splitting a ticket
  • Merging two tickets


Note: Some of these things require admin level privileges. There are three main areas in the UI that facilitate ticket editing. Immediately adjacent to the the ticket subject is an ellipsis menu that gives the option to edit the ticket tagging or change the author of the ticket. Immediately underneath the ticket subject, are dropdown menus to alter the ticket status and assignments. Each ticket reply body can also be edited by clicking on its dropdown.


Editing a Ticket

There are two ways to edit a ticket. The subject can be edited by simply clicking on it and typing your changes and pressing enter to save the changes. The ticket number is assigned by the system cannot be edited.

To edit the contents, first find the reply you wish to change, and click on its dropdown menu. Next, choose "Edit" and make your changes, finally making sure to choose "save".


Changing the Status of a Ticket

Helpy keeps track of the lifecycle of tickets automatically, moving a ticket from new to pending to active to pending and so on until it is marked "resolved" by the agent. There are times when you may want to manually change the status of a ticket, something which can be accomplished with the status dropdown.

You can also bulk change tickets by selecting all you would like to change and using the dropdown from listing page. When you select one or more tickets in this view, the bulk editing options will come into view, allowing you to

  1. Change the status of all selected tickets
  2. Move the tickets to a public or private forum
  3. Assign the tickets to an agent or group


Assigning a Ticket

When an agent is "assigned" to a ticket, they will receive notification when the ticket is waiting for a response from them. This helps you stay on top of your open tickets. There will likely be times when another agent may be more able to help the user, and in these cases, you should "transfer" the discussion to them using the transfer dropdown:

You can also bulk assign a group of discussions by selecting them and choosing an agent to assign using the dropdown.


Collaborating through internal notes and @mentions

Internal notes are for collaborating with other team members on a ticket thread. Internal notes are invisible to the customer and do not trigger an email to be sent out to the customer. To create an internal note, simply select the internal radio button.

Internal notes are useful for capturing a thought during a phone, chat or slack conversation, providing additional context around a solution, or communicating with other agents. Actions such as reassigning discussions, or marking a discussion resolved will automatically create an internal note for record keeping.

If you want another member of your team to be aware of a ticket or a reply you are making, you can pull them in with an @mention. Doing this will notify them (in app, browser and optionally by email), and make them a follower of the ticket- meaning they will get a notification whenever a reply is added to the ticket.

Team members can follow or unfollow tickets by adding an internal note with the hashtags #follow or #unfollow


Changing the author of a ticket

On occasion, you will receive a ticket that you want to change the author of. You can do this easily by first clicking on the ellipsis at the top of the ticket view and choosing "change author." Next, type in the email address of the new author. If the user already exists in your Helpy, they will be added directly to the the ticket. If not, you will have the option to create the new user.

Add the users email address and name, and click the save button. This creates the new user, and sets them as the author of the ticket, in one step!


Splitting a ticket

Ticketing works best when each ticket represents one distinct issue. This lets you get the clearest reporting and make sure the best agent for the ticket is assigned and working it. Unfortunately, customers often ask more than one question in a single ticket, something that necessitates "splitting" the ticket into two individual tickets.

To split a ticket in Helpy, first decide where in the thread of messages you would like to create a new ticket. Next, in the options menu for that specific menu, choose "create a new message


Merging tickets

Sometimes a customer will contact you about the same issue more than once, either by accident or intentionally if they are really stressed. Helpy makes it easy to "merge" two or more tickets into one single new ticket.

To merge multiple tickets, you should select them from the "Inbox" view, using the bulk action checkboxes. Next choose "Merge" from the bulk actions to intiate the merge. When you merge tickets, the following actions happen behind the scenes:

  1. A new "merged" ticket is created that includes portions of each ticket thread that is being merged.
  2. The chronologically older ticket is chosen as the "master" and its subject and initial message are retained in the new merged ticket.
  3. Responses from any other tickets are then added as replies to this new ticket.
  4. Finally, the original tickets are removed.

The new ticket will indicate that is was merged in the subject line and in the internal notes.


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