Service Desk FAQ
Answers to common setup and operating questions about Service Desk.
For what the app is and how to set it up from scratch, see the
Service Desk Overview.
Setup
Do I need to create support teams before tickets can be routed?
No. Auto-assignment works without teams — you can assign to a named agent or use round-robin across all agents. However, team-based routing gives you rule-driven routing by request type, department, or priority, and it is on by default. If you plan to use it, create at least one support team and add members before tickets start arriving, or incoming tickets will stay unassigned in the queue.
What roles exist in Service Desk and what can each one do?
There are four roles. Admin (business admin, super admin, or anyone granted the Service Desk app-admin role) has full access including Settings, Analytics, all ITSM modules, and bulk operations. Agent (any active member of an active support team) sees the agent dashboard, tickets, Knowledge Base, and all enabled ITSM modules except Grievances settings. Manager (a support-team manager who is not also an agent) sees the tickets assigned to their teams, Analytics, Knowledge Base, Changes, Grievances, and Access Requests. Member (everyone else) can submit tickets, view their own requests, and submit access requests.
Permissions and access
Why can’t an employee see a ticket they were told about?
A ticket is visible only to its requester, the person who filed it on their behalf, the assignee, anyone the ticket was escalated to, explicit followers, and all agents and admins. If the employee is none of these, they cannot see it. Add them as a follower from the ticket detail page, or have an agent or admin share the ticket link with them.
Can I hide the assignee or priority from the person who submitted a ticket?
Yes. In Settings → Features, turn on Hide assignee from requestor or Hide priority from requestor. When enabled, only agents, admins, managers, and the ticket’s assignee can see that field. The requester and any other non-staff viewers will not see it.
Day-to-day
How does auto-assignment decide who gets a ticket?
The default method is round-robin across eligible agents. If team-based routing is enabled (it is by default), routing rules evaluate first — they can match on request type, department, priority, location, or keywords and route the ticket to a specific team or agent. Within a team, assignment respects each agent’s concurrent-ticket cap (default 5 per agent). You can switch the method to a named default agent or a named default team in Settings → Routing.
What happens when a ticket breaches its SLA?
The SLA clock starts at submission and counts toward the per-priority target. The defaults are: Critical 4 hours, High 8 hours, Medium 24 hours, Low 72 hours (all admin-configurable in Settings → Routing). When the clock expires, the ticket is flagged as SLA-breached, and if escalation is enabled (it is by default), the ticket is escalated to either the submitter’s manager or the Service Desk app admins, depending on your escalation-target setting. Escalation loops a manager in — it does not reassign the ticket away from the current agent.
What is the auto-close behaviour for resolved tickets?
When enabled (on by default), a ticket that stays in Resolved status for a configurable number of days is automatically closed. The default is 5 days. A reminder email goes to the requester 2 days before auto-close (also configurable). The requester can reopen the ticket at any time before it auto-closes. The minimum retention floor for any purge is 3 months — tickets younger than that are never deleted regardless of the retention setting.
Who can create a ticket on behalf of another employee?
This is controlled by the On-behalf creation visibility setting (Settings → Features). The default is Agents — meaning agents plus admins can file tickets for others. You can widen it to All (any logged-in user) or restrict it to Admins only.
Can I require manager approval before a ticket is worked?
Yes. In Settings → Features you can designate specific request types that require manager approval. You can also set a budget-approval threshold (default $500) — any ticket with an estimated cost above that amount is automatically routed for approval. Tickets pending approval are in the Pending Approval status, and neither the agent nor the requester can act on them until a manager, admin, or app admin approves or rejects.
How do recurring tickets work?
Agents and admins can create recurring tickets on a daily, weekly, biweekly, monthly, quarterly, or yearly schedule. Each rule specifies a time of day and timezone, and optionally a maximum number of occurrences or an end date. The Skip if open option prevents a new ticket from being generated while a previous one from the same rule is still open. Recurring tickets are generated by a background job and appear in the queue like any other submission.
When something looks wrong
“I resolved a ticket but the requester says they can’t close it”
If Feedback required for closure is turned on in Settings, the requester must submit a satisfaction rating (1–5) before the system allows them to close it. Staff members closing the same ticket are not subject to this gate. Check whether the setting is enabled, and if so, ask the requester to rate their experience first.
“An agent filed a ticket for themselves and now they can’t work it”
The Prevent self-service on own tickets setting blocks staff members (agents, managers, admins) from acting on tickets where they are also the requester. This is a segregation-of-duties control. Ordinary employees are never blocked from acting on their own tickets. If you need a staff member to self-serve, turn the setting off in Settings → Features, or have another agent handle the ticket.
“Tickets are arriving by email but they’re all categorised as General”
Check your email classification mode in Settings → Intake. If it is set to AI, the classifier categorises each inbound email automatically — but AI processing must also be enabled for the classification to run. If AI processing is off, or the classification mode is set to keyword rules and none of your rules match, the ticket defaults to General. You can also set a per-department default category to override the fallback.
“A manager says they can’t see the Problems or CMDB tab”
The Problems and CMDB modules require the Agent role (active member of a support team) or higher. Managers who are not also agents do not have access to those two modules. Either add the manager to a support team as a member, or grant them the Service Desk app-admin role.
“Internal notes are visible to the requester”
They should not be. Internal (staff-only) comments are visible only to admins, app admins, agents, and the ticket’s assignee. If the requester is reporting that they can see a note, check whether the comment was actually marked as internal when it was posted — an unmarked comment is a regular reply visible to everyone. There is no way to retroactively make a public comment internal.
Licensing and limits
Does Service Desk require a licence?
Yes. Service Desk requires a licence and is enabled per business by an admin from the Apps Marketplace. The licence supports subset licensing with a minimum of 5 seats.
Are there limits I should know about?
| Item | Limit |
|---|---|
| Ticket title length | 3–255 characters |
| Ticket description minimum | 10 characters (when required) |
| Comment length | 1–2,000 characters |
| Attachments per ticket | 5 (admin-configurable) |
| Max attachment size (email channel) | 25 MB |
| Satisfaction rating range | 1–5 |
| SLA hours per catalog item | 1–720 (30 days) |
| Concurrent tickets per agent | 5 (admin-configurable) |
| Support team tier levels | 1–5 |
| Support team max capacity | 50 (default) |
| Agent individual capacity | 5 tickets (default) |
| Time-entry maximum | 1,440 minutes (24 hours) per entry |
| KB bulk-import file size | 10 MB |
| Ticket CSV import file size | 10 MB |
| Ticket retention minimum | 3 months (floor enforced even if a lower value is configured) |
| Ticket retention default | 12 months (retention purge is off by default — opt-in only) |
| Auto-close window | 5 days after resolution (default, admin-configurable) |
| Auto-close reminder | 2 days before auto-close (default) |
| Saved-reply body length | 10,000 characters |
| Custom-field types | text, textarea, number, email, URL, select, multiselect, radio, checkbox, date, info block |
| Recurring-ticket frequencies | daily, weekly, biweekly, monthly, quarterly, yearly |
| Access-request target types | Location, Workspace, Site, Support Team, App, Asset Category |
| Access-request roles | Member, Manager, Co-Manager |
Which ITSM modules are on by default?
Change Management, Problem Management, CMDB, and Access Requests are all enabled by default. Grievances is off by default and must be turned on in Settings → Advanced. Each module can be toggled independently.
More help
- Service Desk Overview
- Ask AI — the assistant answers Service Desk questions from these articles.