The support inbox and ticket board

Support work is a queue with a shape. The inbox is that queue; the board is the same tickets arranged by status so you can see where work is piling up.

The statuses are worth learning properly, because they decide what counts as still open.

Who this is for

Support agents and whoever runs the support team.

Before you start

• Permission to read tickets in your workspace.
• At least one ticket — create one by hand if you are just exploring.

Open, and finished
A ticket is one of eight statuses. New, open, pending, on hold and follow-up all count as open — the work is not done. Solved, closed and failed are terminal. That distinction is what every queue count and SLA measure is built on, so 'pending' meaning still-open is worth internalising early: a pending ticket is waiting on someone, not finished.

Work the queue

1. Start from the inbox
   The inbox is the working queue. It is where you triage what arrived and decide what to pick up.
2. Use the board when you want the shape
   The board arranges the same tickets by status. It is the faster way to see a pile-up in one status rather than reading a list.
3. Set priority deliberately
   Urgent, high, normal and low. If everything is urgent the priority field stops meaning anything, so reserve urgent for what genuinely is.
4. Assign it to a person
   An unassigned ticket is nobody's job. Assigning is the step that turns a queue into work someone is doing.
5. Record the channel it came from
   A ticket carries the channel it arrived on — email, chat, form, phone, API or social. Recording it honestly is what makes channel reporting mean anything later.
6. Close it properly
   Move it to solved or closed when it is actually done. Leaving finished work in an open status inflates every queue number you look at.

The eight ticket statuses

What you get

• One queue everyone works from, rather than several inboxes.
• A board view that shows where work is stuck.
• Queue and SLA numbers that mean something, because statuses are used consistently.
• Channel data you can actually report on.

Frequently asked questions

Which statuses count as open?

New, open, pending, on hold and follow-up. Solved, closed and failed are the terminal ones. Pending in particular still counts as open — it means waiting, not finished.

What is the difference between solved and closed?

Both are terminal. Teams generally use solved for 'we answered it' and closed for 'this is finished and will not be reopened'. Agree on one convention as a team and stick to it.

Can a ticket arrive on any of the six channels?

The channel field records all six. Whether each one has an automatic intake path in your workspace depends on what you have set up — email and chat are the common ones. An agent can also set the channel when logging a ticket from a phone call.

Should every ticket have an assignee?

Yes, once it has been triaged. Unassigned tickets are the ones that get missed, which is what a default assignment rule is for.