The Staff Desk

Staff work tickets in Admin Next, on the Helpdesk page in the sidebar. This page is the tour: the screens, finding tickets, working one, boards, and the keyboard shortcuts.

Opening the desk needs helpdesk-pro.desk (see Projects and permissions). The desk lives at /admin/plugin/helpdesk-pro, following your Admin Next route.

Screens

Everything happens on one page. Each screen has its own address after the # (for example #/tickets?category=open), so a filtered list or a ticket is a link you can bookmark or paste to a colleague, and the browser's Back button steps through what you looked at.

You see only the screens your permissions allow. An address with no screen behind it (a mistyped link, an old bookmark) opens My work with a short note saying so.

Every screen fetches its data when you open it, starts at its top, and Back returns you to where you had scrolled. Clicking the side-menu item of the screen you are on loads it again, and so does coming back to the browser tab after a while (unless you have unsaved changes).

The desk opens on the screen set by desk.default_view (my-work or tickets). The badge next to Helpdesk in the Admin Next sidebar counts the requests waiting in Triage (for people who triage) plus your assigned tickets that need a reply. My work names the same number at the top.

The side menu

The screens sit in five bands: Work (My work, All tickets, Notifications, Triage, Ratings, Reports), Library (Saved replies, People, Organizations), Automation (Rules, SLA, Channels), Setup (Projects, Statuses, Labels, Fields) and Operations (Search, Email, Inbound log, System). A band with no screens you may open is left out.

• Click a band's heading to open or close it. With One section at a time switched on (the default, under the menu), opening a band closes the others.
• The pin beside a heading (it shows when you point at the heading) keeps that band open.
• The band holding the screen you are on is always open when you arrive.
• A closed band shows a count when something inside wants attention: your tickets that need a reply, unread notifications, requests in Triage, failed and held email in the Inbound log, or failing channels. Point at the count to see what it adds up.
• Find a screen, at the top, filters the menu as you type.
• « folds the menu to a narrow column of icons; » opens it again.

Below 900px wide the menu sits above the screen at full width and does not fold. Your browser remembers the folded menu, open bands, pins and the switch (helpdesk-pro.nav.rail and helpdesk-pro.nav.bands in local storage). The Settings button at the top of the page opens the plugin's settings page.

Finding tickets

On All tickets, each row of chips filters one thing: status category, assignee (Me, Unassigned, or a person), priority, project, kind and label. Chips in the same row match any of them; chips in different rows narrow the list. The number on a chip counts every ticket that would match across the whole result, not just the page. A chip with no tickets behind it is hidden, and a row with only one choice is left out.

More filters, under the chips, holds the filters that have no counts: the channel a ticket arrived by, the organization (once the site has organizations), and the custom fields you can filter on. While folded, its heading says what is set inside it ("More filters · Channel: Email · Plan: Pro"). Unread keeps the tickets with activity you have not seen. SLA adds Breached and Due soon chips when SLA is on.

The sort offers recently updated, newest, priority, oldest waiting (the client who has waited longest first) and, with SLA, due soonest.

Searching

The search box on All tickets (/ jumps to it) finds a ticket by its number (1042 or #1042), its subject, its requester's name or email address, and the words of its conversation, internal notes included. The search index's 100 best matches are added to the subject matches, and the chips, sort and pager then work on that set. A ticket found through one of its notes says Matched in an internal note under its subject. Notes of projects you do not work are never searched for you.

The list

Columns that would say the same thing on every row are hidden: a site with one project has no Project column, and a list filtered to your own tickets has no Assignee column. On a narrow screen the least useful columns go first: Project, Labels and custom field columns, then Priority and Updated, then Assignee.

Every row's subject opens the ticket. Assign to me sits on the row; Mark resolved and Delete are in the ⋯ menu. The count of matching tickets is under the title, and the pager appears only when there is more than one page. Tick rows to edit many tickets at once.

Open a ticket yourself

New ticket, on All tickets and My work, is for a request that reached you some other way, such as a phone call or a chat.

1. Pick the Project (one you work).
2. Pick the Requester: search by name or email. A full email address nobody has yet creates the person, with an optional name. Leave it empty to open the ticket as yourself.
3. Write the Subject and First message.
4. Set Kind, Priority and Assignee (empty uses the project's default assignee).
5. Keep Email the requester ticked to send the first message to them as an email from you, with its files as links and a link to the request.
6. Attach files and fill in the project's custom fields if you need to.
7. Create the ticket.

Tickets opened here skip triage. In the conversation the first message reads "Anna on behalf of Maria Lopez", so nobody takes it for the client's own words. Staff can set any custom field here, staff-only ones included, and none is required.

Work a ticket

The header shows the subject (click it to rename the ticket), the number, the project, how it arrived and who asked, with the status, priority and kind beside it. Every change saves at once. The ⋯ menu holds Rename and Merge into another ticket….

The conversation reads top to bottom. Opening a ticket marks it read and marks your notifications about it read, so they are never emailed to you. Replies are plain cards; internal notes have a tinted background and a Note tag; changes appear as small lines between messages. A message that arrived by email says "via email" and has Show original, which opens the email as it arrived. Files are listed under their message, images as thumbnails.

Reply or note

The composer at the bottom has two tabs:

• Reply goes to the client. It is emailed to the requester and shown on their request. The button says Send reply, and the line above the editor names who will receive it.
• Note stays with staff. The composer turns the note colour, the line above the editor says only staff can see it, and the button says Add note.

Each tab keeps its own draft, saved in your browser as you type. Leaving a ticket with an unsent draft asks first; Discard changes deletes the draft and any files uploaded for it. Cmd+Enter (Ctrl+Enter) sends.

Next to the send button, then set status changes the status in the same step. After a reply it starts on the default "waiting on client" status; after a note it keeps the current status.

Beside Attach files, Insert reply picks one of your saved replies, and Insert article searches the knowledge base and puts an article's link into the text. In both, the arrow keys move, Enter picks and Escape closes.

When someone replied while you were writing

If a new public message arrives while you are writing (the client answered, or a colleague replied), sending does not go through. The new messages appear above your draft with two choices: Edit first puts them into the conversation so you can adjust your text, and Send anyway sends it as it is. This works with or without live updates.

Field changes are guarded the same way. If someone changed the ticket since you opened it, your change is not applied, the ticket reloads, and you can check what changed before trying again.

The side panel

• Details: the assignee (with Assign to me), the project, labels (add from the list, remove with ×), and whether only the requester and cc's can read the ticket or everyone in the project.
• People: the requester with links to their other tickets and their person page and, for clients, Send sign-in link; anyone cc'd; and the staff watching. Watch, Stop watching and Mute apply to you; Remove takes someone else off.
• Organization: the ticket's organization, with a link and Change. Hidden on a site with no organizations.
• Fields: the custom fields that apply to the ticket's project. Click a value, or Add, to edit it in place.
• SLA: the policy, both targets with their due times, and whether each was met or breached.
• Rating: the client's answer to "How did we do?", while the ticket has one.
• Triage appears only on a ticket still waiting there, Before writing in only when the request started in the help center, and Similar tickets only when there are some.

Boards

A project whose Show a board for this project setting is on (Setup → Projects) gets a board at #/board/<project-slug>. Boards are not in the side menu: All tickets shows a List | Board switch whenever a board fits. With no project filter, Board opens the only board, or a list to pick from. Only staff see boards. Set desk.board to false to turn every board off.

The board has a column for each status, in category order: New, Open, Waiting on us, Waiting on client and Resolved. A category with several statuses gets a heading over its columns. An empty column folds to a narrow strip with its count and opens while you move a card. Cards are sorted by priority, then by last activity. Each card shows the number and subject, who asked, the assignee's initials, the priority unless it is Normal, a Bug or Feature tag, and the labels. A column shows up to 50 cards and links to the full list when there are more.

The Closed column is hidden until you press Show closed. The choice is part of the address (?closed=1), like the filter chips above the board.

Move cards

Drag a card to another column to change the ticket's status to that column's status. The change saves at once and appears in the ticket's activity. Pressing a card without moving it opens the ticket.

With the keyboard, every card is a tab stop. The arrow keys move between cards and Enter opens the ticket. Space picks a card up; the left and right arrows choose the column, Space or Enter drops it, and Escape puts it back. Each step is read out to screen readers.

If someone else changed the ticket after the board loaded, the move is not applied. The card reloads where it really is now, with a note saying so.

Keyboard shortcuts

Press ? anywhere in the desk for the list. Shortcuts are single keys, never combined with Cmd, Ctrl or Alt, so Admin Next's own keys still work. They never fire while you type, and they wait while a dialog is open.

In Triage, with a request open, a, d and x start Accept, Duplicate of… and Decline. Single-key shortcuts can be turned off for your browser with the switch in the ? sheet; ? keeps working so you can turn them back on.

The dashboard widget

The Admin Next dashboard gets a Helpdesk widget for staff: requests waiting in Triage, unassigned open tickets, your tickets needing a reply, and how long the oldest "waiting on us" ticket has waited. Each number opens the desk at that list. Set admin2.dashboard to false to turn it off.

Tools → Reports in Admin Next includes a Helpdesk report for accounts with helpdesk-pro.reports. See Reports.

Related

• Triage and merging
• Saved replies and views
• Statuses and labels
• Notifications
• Live updates