Tickets

What a ticket is

A conversation ends when the chat does. A disputed charge, a missing card or a statement request often takes days and other people to settle. A ticket keeps that issue in view until it is done.

• Each ticket has a number, such as #1042, that your team can quote to the customer.
• A ticket belongs to the customer. Every conversation they have shows their tickets, and each ticket remembers the conversation it was opened from.
• Tickets are managed in the dashboard under Support → Tickets, or under Tickets in UniversalDesk, and listed on each contact's page. In the inbox, a conversation's sidebar shows the customer's tickets.

Opening a ticket

In a conversation, open the sidebar and choose New ticket under Tickets. Give it a title, and optionally a category and a first note. The ticket is opened for the conversation's customer and takes its support team. You own it.

When the customer writes again, on any channel, the sidebar of their new conversation lists the same open tickets, one line each, so whoever answers sees what is already in progress. Choose a ticket to see where it stands and post an update. View all lists the rest, resolved ones included.

You can also open a ticket from the dashboard with New on the Tickets page.

Statuses

Owners, managers and admins name the statuses under Settings → Support → Ticket statuses, in the order your team works through them. In UniversalDesk the owner keeps the statuses. Each status belongs to one of three groups:

• Open: your team is working on it. New tickets start in the first open status.
• Pending: it is waiting on the customer or on someone outside the team.
• Resolved: it is done.

The groups decide which list a ticket appears in, whatever your statuses are called. There is always at least one open and one resolved status, and a status that tickets are using cannot be deleted.

An unresolved ticket with no update for three days shows under Stale, so supervisors can see what has gone quiet.

Notes and updates

Both are for your team only. Neither is ever sent to the customer.

• A note is working detail: who you called, what you found.
• An update says where the ticket stands. The latest one is shown at the top of the ticket, and when you open the ticket from a conversation's sidebar. It can move the ticket to another status in the same step.

Every note, update, status change and assignment is kept in the ticket's activity, with who made it and when.

Linking a ticket tool

When another team works issues in its own tool, link the ticket to it. Owners, managers and admins connect tools under Settings → Support → Ticket sync:

• Jira: your site, an account email with an API token, and the project and issue type new tickets are created as. Each ticket created in Jira carries a label naming it, such as ucb-12-1042, so the project's create screen needs the Labels field.
• Zendesk: your subdomain, an agent's email with an API token, and optionally the group new tickets go to. Tickets are created with a private comment, so nothing is emailed from them.
• Your own system: a webhook address. We send each new ticket and each update there, signed to the Standard Webhooks spec, and your system answers on the address shown on the tool's page. A new ticket can reach your system more than once when a send is retried; its number tells you whether you already have it. If your system fails 100 times in a row, or answers that the address is gone, we stop sending to it. The owner, and managers and admins who chose to get alerts about connections, are emailed, and the stop is recorded in the audit log. The tool's page shows whether we are sending. Changes made while sending is stopped are not sent later. Once your system works again, choose Resume sending on the tool's page, or save a new webhook address, which starts sending to it.

Ticket tools are part of UniversalChatbot; UniversalDesk does not offer them. The Pro plan connects one Jira or Zendesk account, and the Business plan any number. Connecting your own system is part of an Enterprise contract. After a move to a plan that holds fewer, the tools connected first keep working and the others stay set up without sending or receiving until the plan covers them again.

The tool's page shows the webhook address and secret to set up in the tool, so its changes reach the ticket as they happen. Tickets are also checked regularly in case a change is missed.

On a ticket, choose Send to tool to create it there, or Link existing to link a ticket the tool already has, by its reference. Once linked, the tool is where the ticket is worked:

• Its status and assignee come from the tool and show as the tool names them. The assignee does not need an account here.
• Comments made in the tool appear as updates on the ticket.
• Updates your team posts are added to the tool's ticket as comments. Turn off Send our updates to the tool on the tool's page to keep them here only.
• You stay the ticket's owner here, and are told when it moves.

Each tool status lands in one of the three groups. Jira and Zendesk statuses fall into their usual group on their own. Use the tool's Status map to place any status differently, such as Jira's Waiting for customer under Pending.

Unlink stops mirroring the tool. The ticket keeps the status group it was in and comes back to your team. If the tool cannot be reached when a ticket is sent or linked, it is tried again a few times. If it still fails, the ticket says so, and Retry tries again. A retry never creates a second ticket in Jira or Zendesk: it finds and links the one an earlier attempt made.

Categories

Owners, managers and admins can add ticket categories under Settings → Support → Ticket categories, such as Card disputes or Statements. A category can name the team its tickets go to, from the teams that work on Tickets, and the tool they are sent to as soon as they are opened. In UniversalDesk the owner keeps the categories, and a category names only the team.

Alerts

The inbox app's settings have a push and an email switch for each:

• Tickets assigned to me: someone else gave you a ticket, or the tool assigned it to you.
• Ticket updates: an update or a comment from the tool on a ticket you own or are assigned, or whose customer's conversation you hold.
• Customer writes on my tickets: the customer of an unresolved ticket you own writes again, on any conversation, while someone else holds it.

Who can do what

• Agents see the tickets of their teams, tickets with no team, and tickets they own or are assigned. They open and update them, and in UniversalChatbot link them to a ticket tool.
• Owners, managers and admins see every ticket in the workspace, and keep the statuses, categories and tools. In UniversalDesk the owner keeps the statuses and categories.