Support
Setting up the desk
States, what you promise, opening hours, and the shared address — and what changing each of them does to tickets that already exist.
One settings screen rather than four, because this is one decision made in parts: what a ticket can be, what was promised about it, what you say without being asked, and where it arrives from. Splitting them across screens leaves nothing to say which order to do them in.
States
The names are yours. What the product reasons about is the category each one is filed under, and that choice is what drives the clock — so the settings screen spells out what each category does rather than leaving it to be inferred.
| Category | What it means | The clock |
|---|---|---|
| Open | With us | Runs |
| Waiting | With the customer | Pauses |
| Resolved | Answered, still reopenable | Stops |
| Closed | Finished | Stops |
- Exactly one state is where new tickets start, and it must be an Open one — otherwise the clock never starts on a ticket nobody has answered.
- At least one state must resolve or close, or a ticket can never leave the queue. The same guard a deal pipeline applies to needing a won and a lost stage.
- A state holding tickets cannot be deleted, and the refusal names how many. Recategorising one is allowed, but it silently restates every figure computed from tickets in it, so it is recorded.
What you promise
An SLA policy carries a first-response target, a resolution target, and the hours it counts in. It can be scoped to a customer, a priority, a channel, or any combination — and the customer beats the priority, because a policy this client bought is a stronger claim than a general rule about their urgency.
A policy scoped somewhere else is never a fallback
A policy for Helix does not half-apply to Meridian. If nothing matches, the ticket is measured against nothing at all, and the queue says so — which is the honest answer, and the one that gets the missing policy written. This is the same most-specific-wins rule jurisdictions and leave policies use.
The policy is resolved when the ticket is raised and kept with it. Editing a policy next month changes what is promised on tickets raised after the edit, and nothing about one already answered. The clock stays derived; only the promise it is measured against is fixed.
A policy tickets were measured against is deactivated, never deleted
The link is how somebody answers what was actually promised on a ticket six months ago. Switching a policy off stops it applying to anything new and leaves that answer intact.
Opening hours
A policy either runs round the clock — right for a hosting incident line — or against a working pattern and a set of holiday calendars. Those are the same models your people's hours and your public holidays already use, so the desk is right for the same reason those are, and there is no second calendar to maintain.
Calendars compose rather than compete: federal plus state plus company, unioned and deduplicated. That is the same rule leave applies, and it is what a standalone help desk cannot do — its business calendar is a list somebody typed once and will not update.
The shared address
Point the desk at a connected mailbox and email to it becomes tickets. The mailbox is connected by somebody who has access to it, from their own settings — this product never connects a mailbox on a colleague's behalf — and designating it as the support address is a separate act.
A send-only connection is refused outright
SMTP and personal Google connections can send and cannot read. A support address on one would report itself configured and receive nothing, which is the worst way to find out — so they are not offered rather than accepted and left to fail quietly.
An auto-reply is optional and has no default. One nobody wrote is one nobody has read, and it goes to every customer. It is never counted as a first response either — see the clock.
Canned replies
Saved paragraphs your agents insert into a reply. They are always shared, with no private option: one exists so that two agents answering the same question say the same thing, and a private one is a note to self — which the reply box already is.
They can name the requester, their company, the ticket and the agent. An unknown field is refused when you save, not when it sends: a reply naming a field nothing supplies would otherwise save cleanly and go out with the placeholder in it for every customer, forever.
The help centre
Connected on the same screen, and covered on its own page — see the help centre. The rule worth repeating here: everything in the folder syncs, and nothing is public until you publish it.
Who can change any of this
Owners and administrators. A manager can work the queue and cannot rewrite what the organisation promises — see Roles and access.