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How the Helpdesk Works

In Daktela, customer requests are tracked as tickets. Every ticket lives in exactly one category β€” the category decides who can work with the ticket, which SLA deadlines apply, which statuses and form fields agents use. Agents find their tickets through views, which are saved filters over all tickets. Most tickets are created automatically from incoming emails; calls, chats and messages from other channels can be merged into tickets too.

When you are ready to build, follow Set Up Your Helpdesk β€” it takes you through all the steps in the right order.

The Journey of a Ticket

The Journey of a Ticket diagram

  1. An incoming email becomes a ticket (or is appended to an existing one if it is a reply). The email queue sets the ticket's category; email routings can refine its parameters. See How Email Works for the channel side.
  2. The category's rights decide which agents can see and work the ticket, and its distribution setting can assign unowned tickets automatically to the agent with the fewest open tickets.
  3. The ticket's deadlines are calculated from the category's SLA and working hours. The first qualifying reply counts as the response; closing the ticket counts as the solution.
  4. Agents work tickets from views, set statuses and use macros for one-click actions.

The Building Blocks

Building block What it does Where to set it up
Categories The home of every ticket: rights and distribution, SLA and working hours, statuses, notifications and the ticket form. Settings β†’ Tickets β†’ Categories
SLA Response and solution deadlines per priority. Settings β†’ Tickets β†’ SLA
Time groups The working hours used for SLA calculation. Settings β†’ Workflows β†’ Time groups
Views Predefined ticket filters agents work from, assigned per user right. Settings β†’ Tickets β†’ Views
Statuses Labels agents set on tickets, per category. Settings β†’ Workflows β†’ Statuses
Macros One-click buttons that combine ticket actions (set status, reopen, send and close…). Settings β†’ Tickets β†’ Macros
Custom Fields & Forms The ticket form agents fill in, defined per category. Category detail, Relations β†’ Form
Email queue Turns incoming emails into tickets and sets their category. Settings β†’ Routings β†’ Queues

How Views, Categories and Rights Work Together

A view is a predefined ticket filter that groups together tickets based on their parameters (either set up in the email queue or email routings, or selected manually in the ticket). Because views work like filters, a single ticket is commonly part of several views at the same time – e.g. one based on its category, one based on its status and one based on the time since the last activity.

A view is accessible to all users that have rights to it. However, to see the tickets contained in the view, they must still have rights to the tickets' categories. This means that different users can see different tickets in the same view.

In the example below, there are 3 users that all have rights to the view "Leads".

  • UK Sales Person only sees tickets in the "UK Leads" category in the view.
  • FR Sales Person only sees tickets in the "FR Leads" category in the view.
  • Sales Manager sees tickets in both categories in the view.

Diagram of three users with rights to the Leads view seeing different tickets based on their category rights

Before You Start

  • Administrator access to the Settings section of Daktela.
  • A working email channel if tickets should be created from emails β€” see Set Up Email.
  • A list of agents who will work the tickets and the user rights they use.
  • Your service levels β€” how fast you promise to respond and resolve, and during which working hours.

Ready? Continue to Set Up Your Helpdesk.