Support & Helpdesk Guide
Turn scattered emails and "can you look at this?" requests into tracked tickets — routed to a department queue, owned by a real person, and kept on an SLA clock. This guide covers intake, queues, working tickets, SLAs, and the self-service portals.
The Helpdesk module runs your internal and customer support desk. Every request becomes a ticket with a reference, a status, a priority, a category and an owning department. Because it shares the same identity, roles, departments and records as the rest of AWRA, a ticket can be tied back to the customer, project, or asset it concerns — and the same people, permissions and approvals apply.
How Tickets Come In (Intake)
| Channel | Who uses it | Notes |
|---|---|---|
| Public portal | Customers & the public | Each organization has its own branded portal link. Requesters submit without an account and receive a tracking reference to follow progress and reply. |
| Anyone | Inbound messages become tickets and land in the routed queues. | |
| In-app (My Tickets) | Staff with a login | Employees raise and follow their own tickets from inside AWRA. |
Turn the public intake portal on from Helpdesk → Settings. Share the portal link on your website, email signatures, or a "Contact support" button.
Queues, Categories & Assignment
- Categories classify a ticket (e.g. Billing, Technical, Access) and drive routing. Manage them under Helpdesk settings.
- Department queues collect tickets so the right team sees their work in one place.
- Assignment gives a ticket a single owner. Agents pick up tickets or a lead assigns them; the reassignment queue helps balance load.
- Priority (from low to urgent) sets expectations and, together with the category, feeds the SLA clock.
The SLA Clock
Every ticket runs on an SLA with a first-response target and a resolution target. Timers show what is due and what is at risk, escalate automatically on breach, and give managers a live view of service performance so nothing quietly slips.
Working a Ticket (Agents)
- Open the Tickets queue or the agent Dashboard to see incoming and at-risk work.
- Assign the ticket to yourself (or the right owner) and set the correct category and priority.
- Reply to the requester with a public reply, or leave an internal note for teammates that the requester never sees.
- Attach files, watch the ticket to get updates, and escalate or reassign if it needs another team.
- Move the status through its lifecycle to resolution, then close. The requester can leave a satisfaction rating.
Self-Service (Staff & Requesters)
- Staff raise a ticket from My Tickets → Raise a ticket and follow status, comments, attachments and their resolution rating.
- Public requesters use the tracking reference from their submission to check status and reply — no account needed.
Signed Resolutions
A resolved ticket can carry the requester's signature that the work was actually done, stored with their printed name and the moment they signed. On a desk ticket a resolution timestamp is enough — the requester is on the other end of the thread and will say if the job is not finished. On field work it is not: the engineer leaves, the ticket closes, and later nobody can show the customer ever agreed.
- Set the status to Resolved or Closed with the pad signed and both are recorded in one action — on the mobile app that means closing a job out on the doorstep.
- Or take it afterwards from the ticket's sign-off card, for the customer who signs a minute later.
- Type the printed name of whoever accepted the work. It need not be the person who raised the ticket.
- The mark cannot be taken before the job is finished, and cannot be changed once taken. Reopening the ticket clears it, because reopening is the agreement being withdrawn.
- It is optional. Most tickets are resolved over email with nobody in the room.
This is separate from the satisfaction rating: a rating is the requester's opinion of the service, given afterwards on their own device and revisable; a sign-off is a statement that the work was done, taken once, in person. See Signature Capture for how the pad works and what a captured mark is worth as evidence.
Common Mistakes
- Leaving tickets unassigned — no owner means no SLA accountability.
- Marking everything "urgent", which makes real emergencies invisible.
- Putting sensitive detail in a public reply instead of an internal note.
- Opening a new ticket for an existing issue instead of updating the same thread.
- Resolving without a reply, so the requester never learns what happened.
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Capture the module, record number, branch or warehouse, user, visible message, and what you expected to happen before contacting support.