Support Desk

1Working the queue #

• The queue opens on live work only — Open and In progress tickets. Switch on Include resolved & closed to see the rest, or pick a single status.
• Tickets sort themselves the way the desk needs them: anything awaiting our reply first, then everything else still live, then settled tickets — most recently spoken-on at the top of each band.
• Awaiting our reply means the customer wrote last and nobody has answered. The chip shows how long they have been waiting; past a day it turns red.
• Row colour follows the app-wide status rule: red where a customer is waiting on us, orange where the ticket is closed (no longer live). Resolved rows carry a chip but no tint — the work is done, the customer has not confirmed it yet.
• Click a row to open its conversation on the right. The queue is capped at 500 rows; narrow it with the filters rather than scrolling.

2Step by step #

The staff side of customer support tickets raised in the portal.

1. Open the desk; tickets list by status with the customer and subject.
2. Open a ticket, read the thread, reply — the customer sees it in their portal immediately.
3. Close the ticket when resolved; the thread stays as history.

3Replying, and internal notes #

• Type in the box under the conversation and press F5 (or Send reply ). The message is stamped with your user name — that is the name the customer reads — and the ticket's "last message" moves to us, which takes it off the awaiting-reply list.
• Replying to an Open ticket moves it to In progress automatically: somebody has now picked it up. Use Then set status to if you want to send the reply and resolve or close it in one action.
• Turn on Internal note to write something only your team can read — "driver says he delivered both cartons", a reference number, a decision. The composer turns amber and the button changes to Add internal note so you always know which one you are writing. The customer portal never shows these; it filters them out in the database query, not in the screen.
• An internal note deliberately does not count as answering the customer. The ticket stays on the awaiting-reply list and the waiting clock keeps running, because from the customer's side nothing has happened.
• A reply is limited to characters, the same limit the portal applies to the customer.

4Status and assignment #

• Open — raised, nobody has started. In progress — being worked. Resolved — you believe it is fixed and are waiting for the customer to agree. Closed — finished.
• Closing stamps who closed it and when. Reopen (shown on a resolved or closed ticket) clears that stamp again, so "when was this closed?" never answers with a date from a ticket that is open.
• The customer can close a ticket themselves when they are satisfied, and can reopen one. They cannot mark a ticket In progress or Resolved — those are our words about our own work. A customer replying to a Resolved ticket reopens it automatically.
• Assigned to names the person who owns the ticket. Changing it saves immediately. The queue's Assigned to filter also offers — Unassigned — , which is how you find tickets nobody has picked up.

5Where the pick-lists come from #

• Branch (ERP edition only) lists only the branches you are assigned to, from the Branch master — the same list the company-selection screen uses. It is not a list of every branch in the company.
• Customer lists only customers that actually have a ticket, read from the tickets themselves rather than from the whole Ledger Account master.
• Assigned to lists ledger accounts flagged as employees in the Ledger Account master. A person with no ledger account cannot be assigned a ticket.
• Category lists the categories in use on existing tickets, so a category added on the portal appears here without any change to this screen.

6Why is a pick-list empty? (prerequisites) #

• Branch (ERP edition only) — you have not been granted any branch for this company. An administrator grants branch access in user permissions; the same list drives company selection, so an empty list here means an empty list there too.
• Customer and Category — no customer has raised a ticket yet. Both fill in on their own once the portal is in use; neither is a master you maintain.
• Assigned to — no ledger account is flagged as an employee. Open the Ledger Account master, tick Employee on the people who handle support, and save.
• Every list empty, and the queue reporting an error — the portal tables have not been created in this company database. See Rules & integrity .

7Rules & integrity #

• Tickets are created on the portal, never here . Staff answer, categorise, assign and close; the customer raises. There is deliberately no Add button.
• A ticket number ( SR-00001 ) is generated by the portal from the ticket's own id and never changes. It is what the customer quotes.
• Messages cannot be edited or deleted — a support thread is a record of what was said. An internal note is the place for a correction.
• Deleting a ticket removes its whole conversation with it (database cascade). Nothing on this page deletes; that is intentional.
• Assignment must point at an employee ledger account. Anything else is refused rather than saved, so the name on a ticket always means a person.
• The queue is not restricted by branch. A customer can raise a ticket without one, and hiding a complaint from the desk is worse than showing it widely — use the Branch filter (ERP edition) if you want the narrower view.

8Shortcut keys #

• F2 — Find a ticket by number, customer or subject.
• F3 — Refresh the queue and the counts.
• F4 — Toggle Internal note on the composer.
• F5 — Send the reply (or add the note) you have typed.
• Esc — Clear the composer.
• Ctrl + Enter in the message box starts a new line; Enter moves to the next field.

9If something does not work #