Before reading this article, we recommend reading the deep dive on:

Understanding how tickets look like in practice, will help you decide on the right configurations for your team.

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To be able to create tickets from the Help Desk, you need to first create the ticket types you want to use. A ticket type defines the data fields to be captured in the ticket and its category.

Ticket types can be set up from Settings > Help Desk > Tickets.

Only teammates with Can manage workspace data permission can set up ticket types.

Create new ticket type

Step 1 - Click on Create ticket type in the top right corner

Step 2 - Select the ticket category: Customer, Back-office, or Tracker ticket

Customer tickets - When your team needs more time to work on issues, use Customer tickets to capture, track and automatically share progress with the customer.
Back-office tickets - When a Support rep needs to collaborate with back-office teams to resolve an issue, create a linked Back-office ticket from a conversation for seamless collaboration.
Tracker tickets - Streamline problems impacting many customers, such as bugs, service interruptions, and feature requests.

Learn more about the three high-level tickets use cases.

Step 3 - Specify the ticket type icon, name, and description

Give your ticket type a meaningful name. Note: this name will be visible to customers if you share the ticket with them. Visibility to customer is unique for each ticket category:

Customer ticket- always shared with the customer.
Back-office ticket - internal only by default, but can be optionally shared with customers.
Tracker ticket - internal only and never shared with customers.

The ticket type description is never shared with the customer and is primarily to help your team know when to use this ticket type.

Step 4 - Review customer sharing settings

Customer sharing settings are different across the three categories: Customer, Back-office, and Tracker tickets.

Category	Customer visibility	Communication
Customer tickets	Always shared with customers. Customers can see the ticket details in the Messenger as explained later in this article. Customers are notified in the Messenger and via email when the ticket state changes.	Allows your team and customers to reply directly within the ticket. Allows your team to send internal notes that are not visible to customer.
Back-office tickets	Internal only by default. Customers don’t see anything about the ticket. Can be optionally shared with customer. Customer visiblity is same as Customer tickets.	Allows your team to send internal notes that are not visible to customer. Any customer replies happen in a linked conversation or Customer ticket.
Tracker tickets	Internal only, and never shared with customers.	Allows your team to send internal notes that are not visible to customer. Any customer replies happen in linked conversations or Customer tickets.

Step 5 - Creating ticket attributes

Default attributes

All ticket types come with two default attributes: title and description.

The title and description fields are clearly surfaced while viewing a ticket via the Help Desk. You can also search by ticket title and description.

By default, the title and description are not visible to customers and are optional for teammates. You can modify their visibility setting if needed by clicking on the edit icon.

Custom attributes

In addition to the default title and description, you can create custom ticket attributes.

Start by clicking on + Create attribute in the top right corner.

Then, select the attribute format: text, list, number, decimal, boolean, date/time, or file upload.

💡 When using the Text format, enable the “Multiline” option to give your team and customers more space for details. We recommend enabling it for anything with more than 30 characters.

When using "Decimal Number" attribute type, the format accepted is using a period (.), for example: 10.5. Commas and other symbols are not currently supported.

Give the attribute a meaningful name and description. If you set the attribute as visible to customers, they will be able to see its name in Messenger and via email.

The attribute description however is internal only and is meant to help your team better understand the attribute.

Review the customer settings. Depending on the ticket type category where you’re creating the attribute, the customer related settings surface different options.

Category	Customer settings
Customer tickets	Customer tickets are always shared with customer, however you control which attributes are visible. Disable the first checkbox if the attribute is for internal use only. Enable the second checkbox if you want the attribute to be required for customers while submitting a new ticket.
Back-office tickets	When ticket type settings = can’t be shared with customer (this is the default) Attributes are never visible to the customers as the ticket type can’t be shared with customers. When ticket type settings = can be shared with customer Disable the first checkbox if the attribute is for internal use only. Enable the second checkbox if you want the attribute to be required for customers while submitting a new ticket.
Tracker tickets	Attributes are never visible to the customers as Tracker tickets are always internal only.

Review the teammate settings. By default, attributes are visible to teammates when they’re creating a new ticket from the Help Desk and when looking at an existing ticket. You can hide an attribute from the creation form, and make it only visible when looking at an already created ticket by disabling the first checkbox.

You can also make an attribute required for teammates when creating a new ticket, by enabling the second checkbox.

Limitations:

Ticket type names and attributes don’t get translated / localized in the Messenger even if you support multiple languages.
You can’t modify the ticket attribute format once it is created. You can create a new attribute with the desired format and archive the old one.
File upload attributes support all common file formats.
Ticket data attribute names can be no longer than 191 characters.
Ticket type and data attribute descriptions can be no longer than 255 characters.
Each ticket type can have a maximum of 50 attributes.

Edit existing ticket type

Go to Settings > Help Desk > Tickets. Then click on the edit icon next to the ticket type name.

To modify the ticket type category, icon, name, description, or customer sharing settings, click on the edit icon in the top right corner.

You can also duplicate a ticket type by clicking on the duplicate icon next to the edit icon.

Finally, to modify any of the attributes within the ticket type, click on the relevant edit icon. You can update all attribute settings with the exception of the attribute format.

Archive a ticket type

You can archive (and restore) a ticket type you've created. Go to Settings > Help Desk > Tickets and select the ticket type.

Then click the edit icon in the top right corner and select Archive.

To restore a ticket type, go to Settings > Help Desk > Tickets and select Archived from the dropdown at the top. Then find the ticket type and click the restore icon.