Support tickets

Tidemark Billing includes a help desk. Customers open tickets in the client portal or by email, and your staff answer them in the admin. This article covers turning it on, the staff queue and the support settings. For mail routing and departments, see Departments and email in.

Turn it on#

Support is off by default. An administrator turns it on at Settings → Support with Enable support tickets.

Once it is on, Tickets, Departments and Ticket fields appear under Support in the admin menu, and customers get My tickets and Open a ticket in the client portal. While it is off, every ticket page is hidden, the email commands do nothing, and a mail server that pipes mail in is told to try again later, so the mail waits instead of being lost.

Add at least one department before customers can open tickets. Without one, the portal says support is not available.

Settings#

All of these are on Settings → Support.

Email sending itself comes from your mail settings; see Email.

The ticket queue#

Open Tickets. The tabs are All open, My tickets, Unassigned, Needs reply and Closed, each with a count. You can search by number, subject or requester, and filter by department, status and priority. Tickets waiting for staff are bold, and a ticket waiting more than a day is highlighted.

You see tickets in the departments you belong to and tickets assigned to you. Administrators see everything. Staff who belong to no department only see tickets assigned to them.

Statuses and priorities#

Priority is Low, Normal, High or Urgent. High and urgent tickets are flagged in the list. A customer reply, by portal or email, sets the status to Customer reply and reopens a closed ticket.

Work a ticket#

Open a ticket to read the conversation. The sidebar shows the requester, client and service, and lets you change Status, Priority, Assigned to and Department. These save as soon as you pick a value.

Reply to the customer#

Under Reply to customer, write the reply and optionally attach files. Choose Then set status to Answered, On hold or Closed, then select Send reply. The customer sees the reply in the portal and receives it by email at the ticket's requester address.

Add an internal note#

Switch to the Internal note tab to write something only staff can see. The customer is never emailed about notes, and files attached to a note stay staff-only. Notes are marked Internal note, staff only in the thread.

Assign, move, lock and close#

• Assign to me claims the ticket. The Assigned to list offers administrators and members of the ticket's department.
• Changing Department moves the ticket. If the assignee does not work in the new department, the ticket is unassigned. Staff can move tickets only to departments they work in, and a moved ticket may leave their queue.
• Lock stops the customer replying, by portal or email, and stops them closing it. You can still reply. Unlock reverses it.
• Close ends the ticket. The customer can reopen it by replying, unless it is locked. Reopen puts it back to Open.
• Administrators can Delete ticket from the More menu. This removes the ticket, its messages and its files, and cannot be undone.

The thread also records system lines such as assignment, status changes and department moves. Customers do not see those.

Open a ticket for a customer#

Select New ticket, pick the client, department, optional service, priority, subject and message. The ticket starts as Answered, and the customer receives an email telling them you opened it and what you wrote.

Staff-only fields#

A department can have custom fields marked Staff only. They appear in a Staff-only details card on the ticket that you can fill in and save. Customers never see them. See Departments and email in for how fields are set up.

What customers see#

Customers see their own tickets and their client's tickets, their own messages and your replies. They never see internal notes, system lines or staff-only fields. They get an acknowledgement email when they open a ticket if the department has acknowledgements on. See Using the client portal for their side.

Attachments#

Files from the portal and from email are treated as untrusted:

• They are stored privately, outside the web root, under random names.
• The file type is read from the content, not from the name the sender gives.
• Executables, scripts and web page types such as php, exe, js, html, svg and xml are refused, including when hidden in a name like x.php.jpg.
• Files are served only to people who may see the ticket, as downloads.
• The limits in the settings table above apply.

By email, a refused attachment does not stop the message. The ticket or reply is still created, with a line added to the body saying the file was not accepted.

There is no antivirus scanning. Run one at your mail gateway or mailbox provider, and be careful when opening downloaded files.

Related#

• Departments and email in
• Using the client portal
• Staff and access
• Email