In this article, you will learn all about working with customer tickets and conversations in the Inbox in Helpy. Each "ticket" item represents a single conversation and can be any of the following:

• A back and forth email exchange with a customer
• A chat with a customer
• An interaction your customer has had with one of your bots
• A message from Helpy itself letting you know something about the system
• An issue or feedback that has been added into your support queue by an API call from one of your other systems
• Some private notes you have captured after a phone call with the customer
• Or many other things- the list is really endless

The ticket management interface is the center of the admin and agent experience in Helpy, and where you will spend most of your time. This article covers the basics including:

• The Inbox: Agent dashboard
• Reading and Replying to tickets
• Adding a new Ticket

The Inbox

The inbox is the main dashboard agents work in to read and respond to tickets. It is made up of several sections. The left column is labeled "Inbox" and shows different queues- All, New, Mine and Pending along with any custom views you have created. Each of these built in queues is described below:

All: Just as it sounds, this represents all active tickets that you have access to. Trashed, closed or spam tickets will not show up here, but all other tickets will, regardless of status or assignment.

New: When new tickets come into the system, they will appear here. Once they have been touched, responded to, assigned to an agent or team, they will no longer appear here.

Mine: These are all active tickets that have been assigned to you, that you should be working.

Pending: Pending tickets are waiting for a response from the support team.

The main panel immediately to the right of this is a listing of open tickets in that category. In addition to the subject of the ticket, you will see any group affiliation, the current status of the ticket, and when it was last updated.

Reading and Replying to Tickets

Most tickets in your dashboard will arrive by themselves, when a customer either emails your support addresses, or adds a ticket from your help center site. To take action on a ticket in your Inbox, simply click on it, or use the keyboard shortcuts "," and "." to select the ticket you would like to open, and press enter.

The ticket will open in a threaded reading view with the initial message at the top. If there are multiple replies back and forth, the thread will be collapsed. You can expand it by clicking "n Collapsed Messages" or pressing "x".

Beneath the threaded conversation is a form you can use to reply to the thread, or add internal notes. Above the thread are controls to assign the ticket to a different agent, change its' status, move it to a public or private forum (if enabled), or assign it to a group.

To reply, simply type your response in the reply editor or add a canned response from the "Select Common Reply" dropdown. When you click "Post Reply", the customer will receive the reply as an email message, and the status of the ticket will change to "open" meaning it is waiting for a response from the customer. You can also close the ticket when sending If you wish by checking the "Mark as resolved" checkbox.

You also have the option to add attachments to your response. These files will be sent to the customer by email, as an attachment. The maximum file size is 25Mb.

Adding a New Ticket

In addition to customer added tickets, you can also create tickets directly through the admin interface. To add a new ticket in Helpy, click the "New Ticket" button (or use the keyboard shortcut "n" from the ticketing UI.). There are three types of tickets you can create from the admin interface:

1. Customer Conversation Tickets

Customer conversation tickets can be used to send a message to a customer immediately and initiate a back and forth dialogue. This is the most common type of ticket you will create from the dashboard, and emails the chosen individual immediately on creation of the ticket. When you create a new ticket for a customer who is not currently in your customer list, they will be added and depending on how your Helpy is configured they will also be sent a welcome email inviting them to access the ticket via the customer help center site.

2. Customer Conversation Notes

Depending on the configuration of your Helpy, you will have the option to create a new customer conversation starting with an internal note.  This allows you to create a conversation without sending a message to the customer immediately.  This is particularly useful for handling support calls- where you may capture some notes about the issue before replying to the customer by email.

2. Internal Tickets

Internal tickets do not send messages to the customer. Instead they are meant for internal tracking of issues, bugs, or other internal tickets. Internal tickets can still be associated with a customer, but they will not be able to see the ticket in the helpcenter, nor will they receive email communications regarding the ticket.

Ticket options and properties are the same for both internal and conversation tickets:

Subject- the subject is required and is a one line summary of what the ticket is about, similar to how you would use the subject of an email.

Name- the name is the name of the recipient of the ticket.

Phone- the phone number of the recipient. This is useful if you do not have the customers email address and will be responding to them with a phone call instead.

Email- this is required and is the email address the ticket will be send to. Us the dropdown icon to add CC and BCC fields to send the message to additional recipients.

Message Body- this is the actual message you will be sending to the recipient identified above.

Attach Files- You can also attach a file to the ticket. This will be emailed to the recipient as a email file attachment.

Channel- The channel is just what it sounds like- the channel used to create the ticket. If you are creating the ticket to respond to an in person request- use that here. If it is a phone call, select phone.

Group/Team- the group to assign this ticket to. This listing of groups may not be present depending on how your admin has configured Helpy.

Priority- The priority level of the ticket.

Current status- By default when new tickets are created, they are given a status of "new". If you wish to alter this you can.

Assigned agent- The agent the ticket should be assigned to. Defaults to the currently logged in agent.

Tag list- Select one or more tags from the dropdown.  Tags can be set up by administrators.

On completion of the form, select either "create ticket" or "create note" to start the new ticket with an email to the customer, or by logging an internal note respectively.