Tickets

A ticket is one person’s request or problem, tracked from the moment it is raised until it is solved. End users open tickets from the Outpost tray app, and technicians open them in the console. This page explains what a ticket holds and how to work the queue: pick up a ticket, reply, attach files, merge or link related tickets, and solve it.

What a ticket holds

Field	Values
Status	New, Open, Pending, On hold, Solved, or Closed, plus any statuses you add. See Desk settings.
Priority	normal, high, urgent, or critical, from least to most urgent.
Category	What the ticket is about: Incident (something that worked has stopped), Service request (someone needs something), Question, Problem (the cause behind incidents), Change (planned work), or a category you add. A ticket with no category chosen is an Incident.
Subcategory	Optional. Narrows the category, such as Printer under a Hardware category. Only categories that have subcategories offer one.
Queue	Where the ticket lands and who it goes to. See Queues and canned responses.
Assignee	The technician who owns it, or Unassigned.
Requester	The person who asked. They are sent the ticket’s notification emails. See Ticket notification emails. On the MSP plan, the requester card shows their contact tags.
Endpoint	The endpoint the ticket came from, for tickets raised in the tray app.
Parent	Optional. The ticket this one is a child of. See Link parent and child tickets.

There is no low priority. Tickets that had it are normal, saved views and links that filter on low show normal tickets, and a tray app that still sends low files the ticket as normal.

Pending, On hold, Solved, and Closed stop the SLA clock. See Service level agreements.

A ticket from the tray app is filed under the person Outpost has matched to the endpoint’s signed-in account. When that account is not yet tied to a known person, the ticket shows Unverified requester. The ticket can be worked as usual, but Outpost sends the requester no email, including no satisfaction survey. To tie the account to a person, use Users > Merge suggestions. See End users.

Before you begin

• Your plan must include the service desk: Enterprise or MSP. See Plans and limits.

• You need these permissions. See Roles and permissions.

  Permission	Lets you
  ticket:read	Read tickets.
  ticket:write	Create tickets, reply, attach files, change fields, and set or remove a parent ticket.
  ticket:assign	Assign tickets.
  ticket:admin	Merge a ticket into another.
  project:calendar	Schedule an appointment from a ticket (MSP plan).

Work the queue

1. Select Tickets > All tickets. On the MSP plan, open a client, or select Inbox > All tickets to see every client’s tickets together.

2. Choose a view. The list opens on Needs attention: open tickets ordered by whichever SLA runs out first.

   View	Shows
   Needs attention	Open tickets, soonest SLA first.
   Urgent and critical	Tickets with priority urgent or critical.
   Aged over a week	Open tickets raised more than 7 days ago.
   Missed SLA	Tickets that have breached an SLA target.

3. Narrow the list with filters on Status group, Status, Priority, SLA, Category, Queue, Assigned to, Endpoint, Tag, or Raised. Status group matches a stage such as Open or Pending; Status matches your exact statuses, such as “Awaiting parts”. You can save your own views from the toolbar.

4. Select a ticket to open it.

The Next SLA event column shows the next SLA deadline or warning for each ticket.

Create a ticket

Create a ticket in the console to record a request that arrived by phone or in person.

1. Select Tickets > All tickets, then New ticket.
2. In Requester, type the start of the person’s name or email address, then choose them. Search matches the start of a word, so “jor” finds Jordan but “dan” does not. People someone has confirmed are listed first. Accounts Outpost has seen signed in on endpoints but nobody has confirmed are under Seen on endpoints, not confirmed. Leave Requester empty, or select Clear, when there is nobody to email.
3. Enter a Subject and a Description.
4. Choose a Priority.
5. Choose a Category, and a Subcategory if the category offers one. Incident (default) files the ticket as an incident.
6. Choose a Queue. Default queue sends the ticket to your default queue.
7. Select Create ticket.

From then on the requester is sent the ticket’s notification emails, starting with Ticket created when that email is turned on. See Ticket notification emails.

Reply to a requester or add a note

1. Open the ticket. The Conversation tab shows every message.
2. Choose Public reply to write to the requester, or Internal note to write for your team only. An internal note is marked as such, and the requester is never sent it.
3. Write the message. To insert a canned response, type // and choose one.
4. To attach files to the message, select Attach files and choose one or more files of up to 3 MB each.
5. Select Send reply or Add note, or press Ctrl+Enter.

The message is sent first and its files are attached after it. If a file fails, the console names it and says the message was sent, and you can retry that file. An unsent draft is kept in your browser and restored when you come back to the ticket.

Change status, priority, or category

• Status and Priority are at the top of the ticket. Status lists the client’s statuses, including any you added in Desk settings, grouped by status group.
• Category and Subcategory are in the Category panel beside the conversation. Changing the category clears the subcategory, because each subcategory belongs to one category.
• Assign to me makes you the assignee.

To solve a ticket, set its status to Solved. The requester is then sent a satisfaction survey.

Use Previous and Next to move through the list without going back to it.

Merge a ticket into another

Merge a ticket when two tickets are about the same request, so the conversation continues in one place. A merge cannot be undone.

1. Open the ticket that should go away.
2. Select More > Merge into….
3. In Find a ticket, enter words from the subject, a reference, or a requester’s email, and press Enter.
4. Choose the ticket to keep.
5. Optional: enter a Note (optional). It is kept with the merge record.
6. Select Merge.

The console opens the ticket you kept. What the merge does:

Item	After the merge
Messages and their files	Move to the ticket you kept.
Time entries	Move, except entries already on a sent invoice, which stay.
People	The merged ticket’s requester and participants become participants on the ticket you kept. Its requester does not change.
Activity history	Stays on the merged ticket.
SLA	The merged ticket’s SLA timers close. The kept ticket’s timers do not change.
Satisfaction survey	A survey the merged ticket was waiting on is canceled.
The merged ticket’s address	Opens the ticket you kept, so old links and references still lead to the conversation.

Merging needs ticket:admin. A ticket that has child tickets cannot be merged: unlink them first, and the console says Unlink its child tickets before merging it. A ticket cannot be merged into itself or into a ticket that was already merged.

Link parent and child tickets

Make tickets children of one parent when one problem affects several requesters, such as an outage reported by five people. You then work the parent, and each child’s requester hears about it.

1. Open the ticket that should be a child.
2. Select More > Set parent….
3. Find and choose the parent ticket.
4. Select Set parent.

The parent shows a Child tickets panel above its tabs, with each child’s status and Unlink to remove it. On a child, the parent appears in the breadcrumb, and More > Remove from parent unlinks it.

What the parent passes to its children:

• Public replies. A public reply on the parent is copied to each open child, that is each child not solved or closed. Each child’s requester is sent the Public reply email.
• Solving and closing. Setting the parent to a solved or closed status moves each open child to the same status. Each child’s requester gets the emails and satisfaction survey they would get if a technician had changed the child’s status. Reopening the parent does not reopen its children.
• Nothing else. Internal notes, time, priority, and assignee stay on the parent.

The rules for linking:

• Tickets are one level deep. A parent cannot have a parent, and a ticket that has children cannot become a child.
• A parent and its children belong to the same client.
• A merged ticket cannot be a parent or a child.

Files

The Files tab lists every file on the ticket: files attached to replies and notes, with who added them and a link to the message, and files added to the ticket itself, marked Added to the ticket.

• To add a file to the ticket without a message, use Add a file. Each file can be up to 3 MB.
• Files always download. They never open in the browser.
• To delete a file, select Remove and confirm. Anyone who kept a link to it finds it gone.

Schedule an appointment from a ticket

On the MSP plan, More > Schedule books an appointment for the ticket on the dispatch calendar. The booking starts filled in with the ticket’s subject, its client, and its assignee, or you when the ticket is unassigned, for one hour from the next half hour. Change what you need and save it. Scheduling needs project:calendar.

Each technician sees today’s appointments in Projects > My day, earliest first, and selects one to open its ticket. See Time tracking and dispatch.

Log time

Record time worked on the ticket in its Time tab. See Time tracking and dispatch.

Use the endpoint context

When a ticket came from an endpoint, the panel beside the conversation shows that endpoint: its status, who is signed in, its network, serial number, and last seen time, with Remote control to start a remote session. It also shows the requester, Their other tickets, Recent commands, Recent remote sessions, and Documentation for the endpoint. If the endpoint is offline, a session cannot start.

Contact alerts

On the MSP plan, a ticket warns you when someone on it holds a contact tag that alerts, such as VIP. One banner for each person and tag sits under the ticket’s title. It reads the tag’s label and the person’s name, such as VIP: followed by their name, with the tag’s description below. The banner’s edge and icon use the tag’s color.

Outpost checks the requester and every participant on the ticket. Tags that do not alert show on the requester card but never as a banner. To define a tag or give one to a person, see Client contacts, sites, and contact tags.

See history and related work

• The Activity tab lists every change to the ticket. A change made by a workflow or an automation rule carries a chip with its name. The conversation also shows an internal line, such as Workflow “Untouched urgent ticket: escalate after 24 hours” ran., each time one acts. See Workflows.
• An internal note with an AI draft chip is a reply a workflow’s AI step wrote. Select Use as reply to copy it into your reply, edit it, and send it. See AI steps in workflows.
• The Related tab shows Linked tickets, Participants, the Incident the ticket is attached to, and the endpoint’s Documentation and Credentials for this endpoint. To attach the ticket to an incident, select Attach to incident. See Incidents.

Keyboard shortcuts

Press ? in a ticket to show these shortcuts. The ticket list has its own set: there, r opens the selected ticket and the s and p sequences filter the list. Press ? in the list to see it.

Keys	Action
j	Next ticket
k	Previous ticket
a	Assign to me
r	Reply
n	Internal note
s then o, p, h, s, or c	Status: open, pending, on hold, solved, or closed
p then 1, 2, 3, or 4	Priority: normal, high, urgent, or critical
Ctrl+Enter	Send
Esc	Close the overlay or the composer

Tickets from the tray app

End users open tickets from the Support view of the tray app with Open Ticket. Their tickets appear in the console with the endpoint attached, and they see your public replies in the tray app. See Use the Outpost tray app.

• Offline. When the endpoint is offline, the agent saves the ticket on the endpoint and sends it when the endpoint reconnects. The tray app says This PC is offline. A new ticket is saved and sent when it reconnects.
• Who it is filed as. The tray app shows Tickets are filed as with the name Outpost matched to the signed-in account. When Outpost cannot confirm who is signed in, Open Ticket is unavailable.
• Priority. The tray app offers Normal and High.
• Plan. On a plan without the service desk, the tray app refuses the ticket and shows why.

Tickets from email

Mail sent to a support mailbox opens a ticket, and a reply to the ticket’s email joins it. Messages that came by email carry an Email label.

• Show original. Outpost removes quoted history and signatures from each email, so the ticket shows what the person wrote this time. Show original under a message shows the full text as it arrived, and Download the .eml file downloads the message.
• Unverified sender. When Outpost cannot verify who sent the email, the requester card shows Unverified sender, and no email goes out on the ticket, to the sender or to anyone they copied. Check who sent it, for example by calling the person, then select Verify sender. From then on the ticket’s emails are sent as usual. Verifying needs ticket:write. See Sender verification.
• Replies. Your public replies go out through the mailbox the ticket arrived on and thread in the customer’s mail app. See Ticket notification emails.

If something goes wrong

Symptom	Cause	Fix
A requester gets no email about their ticket	The ticket shows Unverified requester or Unverified sender, the requester has no email address, or that email is turned off.	Tie the account to a known person in Users > Merge suggestions, and check Ticket notification emails.
Merge into… is unavailable	You lack ticket:admin, or the ticket has child tickets.	Ask an owner, or unlink the child tickets first.
Set parent… is unavailable	The ticket has child tickets, so it cannot be a child.	Unlink its children, or make the other ticket the child instead.
Open Ticket is unavailable in the tray app	Outpost cannot confirm who is signed in at the endpoint.	Check the endpoint’s signed-in user, or ask the person to contact you another way.
A tray ticket has not arrived	The endpoint is offline.	It is sent when the endpoint reconnects. Check the endpoint’s last seen time.

Next steps

• Desk settings
• Client contacts, sites, and contact tags
• Ticket notification emails
• Queues and canned responses
• Service level agreements
• Satisfaction surveys
• Live chat