Creating and Managing Tickets
Tickets are how Service captures a customer request and everything that follows it. Customers are Contacts, so agents can see every previous interaction alongside the current one.
On this page:
- How tickets work
- Ticket statuses
- SLA behaviour
- Support schedules
- The ticket layout
- Creating tickets
- The ticket submission form
- Managing tickets
- Tasks and opportunities
- Email allowlists and blocklists
How tickets work
A submitted ticket starts a conversation between the customer and the agent. Agents can also raise tickets on a customer’s behalf.
New tickets land in the New Tickets queue by default. Queues distribute tickets among agents visibly. Show Sidebar, to the left of the New Ticket button, displays the ticket count per list view, in the same order as the list view dropdown; clicking a queue or view switches the object to it.
Seeing who else is in a ticket
An eye icon on the left of a ticket’s row in the list view shows when someone else is viewing it, and hovering names them. Inside the record, the Ticket tab on the left lists the other viewers.
Two ways to create a new ticket
The dropdown under New Ticket offers New Ticket and New Ticket From Macro. The second prefills the form from a macro, applied immediately on creation.
⚠️ Some macro actions do not apply when creating a ticket from a macro. Delete Tag, Owner and Internal Note are excluded, and the feature works on the new ticket form only.
Save & New resets the form so another ticket can be started from the same macro.
Out of office detection
Insightly identifies auto-reply emails from common headers and handles them three ways:
- An auto reply that creates a new ticket goes to the Spam queue automatically.
- An auto reply to an existing open ticket is flagged as an auto reply in the comment metadata and filtered out of the ticket display.
- An auto reply to a closed ticket does not reopen it.
Ticket statuses
| Status | Meaning |
|---|---|
| New | Not yet opened or assigned. |
| Open | Reviewed and assigned to an agent. |
| Pending | The agent has asked the customer something and is waiting for the answer. |
| On Hold | Waiting on a third party outside the support team. |
| Solved | The agent considers the issue resolved. |
| Closed | Complete. |
⚠️ New is a one-way status. Once a ticket has been given any other status it cannot be set back to New.
⚠️ Closed cannot be set manually and cannot be undone. Closing happens automatically through business rules an administrator configures at System Settings > Automation > Automation, typically a set number of days after Solved. A closed ticket cannot be reopened, though the requester can raise a follow-up request.
ℹ️ Until a ticket is closed, the requester can reopen it, which is what happens when someone replies to the solved notification disagreeing that it is resolved.
⚠️ On Hold is agent-only. Customers see an On Hold ticket as Open. The SLA timer pauses while it is On Hold.
SLA behaviour
An applied SLA policy is recorded in the ticket’s Audit Log, and the Details tab shows how much SLA time remains before the next action is due.
| Status | SLA behaviour |
|---|---|
| New, Open, Pending | Countdown active. Moving to On Hold pauses it immediately. |
| On Hold | Paused. Resumes when the status returns to New, Pending or Open. |
| Solved, Closed | No SLA applied. |
The SLA Time Remaining field recalibrates as the ticket progresses:
| Stage | What the countdown shows |
|---|---|
| Ticket opened | Time remaining to assign an agent. |
| Ticket assigned | Time remaining for first reply. |
| First reply submitted | Time remaining to solve the ticket. |
⚠️ SLA Time Remaining always displays in calendar hours, whatever the policy is configured against.
Setting Operational Hours to business hours when configuring an SLA makes it respect the schedules set at System Settings > User Interface > Schedules, accounting for weekends and time when nobody is working.
Finding SLA breaches in list views
SLA Time Remaining works as a list view filter, and filters accept negative integers.
- Less than 0h0m returns tickets that have breached their SLA.
- Less than -100 is roughly four days, so that returns breaches older than four days.
- Filtering for an empty value returns tickets with no SLA time remaining and tickets showing On Hold.
SLA Current Target is also available as a list view filter and in all ticket reports.
Support schedules
Administrators define business hours, timezones and holidays at System Settings > User Interface > Schedules. Service applies them to tickets using triggers.
⚠️ Automation time triggers ignore schedules. They run on calendar hours, not schedule hours, so an automation that fires “after 4 hours” fires overnight and at weekends regardless of the support schedule.
The ticket layout
Administrators customize the layout at System Settings > Objects and Fields > Ticket > Page Layouts > Ticket Layout, covering the Ticket, Contact and Organization tabs of the record.
The default layout has five areas: basic information and actions; ticket details covering queue, priority, SLA and status; the Ticket, Contact and Organization tabs; public replies and internal notes; and the sidebar.
Public replies and internal notes
Public Reply is communication with the customer. Internal Notes are for agents discussing the ticket among themselves.
A public reply can be converted to an internal note through the three-dot menu on the reply, and that option is never shown to customers.
Composition auto-saves every five seconds.
ℹ️ @ mentioning another agent notifies them and adds them to the ticket’s CC list.
Four tabs sit under the text box, each showing its event count. All Notes equals Public plus Private.
| Tab | Contains |
|---|---|
| All Notes | Everything, public and internal. |
| Public | Replies between agents and contacts. |
| Private | Internal agent communication. |
| Audit Log | Every update by agents and by the system. |
The Audit Log is visible to all Service users, not just administrators. It marks system events with a gear icon and user events with the user’s avatar, and records SLA reminder notifications, SLA violations and SLA escalation emails.
Every addition, edit and deletion of a public reply or internal note is logged, including conversions between the two, recorded as “User X converted a public reply to an internal note via Service App or Web Portal” depending on origin. Events triggered through the API or AppConnect record the responsible user and the execution type, as in “John Smith edited this ticket via API.”
Attachments
⚠️ 20 MB per file on public replies and internal notes.
⚠️ Executable and script file types are blocked: .ade, .adp, .apk, .appx, .appxbundle, .bat, .cab, .chm, .cmd, .com, .cpl, .diagcab, .diagcfg, .diagpack, .dll, .dmg, .ex, .ex_, .exe, .hta, .img, .ins, .iso, .isp, .jar, .jnlp, .js, .jse, .lib, .lnk, .mde, .msc, .msi, .msix, .msixbundle, .msp, .mst, .nsh, .pif, .ps1, .scr, .sct, .shb, .sys, .vb, .vbe, .vbs, .vhd, .vxd, .wsc, .wsf, .wsh, .xll
Blocked extensions also cannot be uploaded when creating or editing a ticket macro, editing an internal note, or bulk applying a macro.
Where a customer emails in an attachment with a blocked extension, the ticket carries the notice: Email Attachments with illegal extensions were discarded from this email message.
The sidebar
| Tool | What it does |
|---|---|
| Insert Macro | Inserts a personal or shared macro response, for common issues. |
| Insert Knowledge Article | Searches knowledge articles and adds a link into the ticket. |
| Ticket History for Contact | Previous tickets for this contact, newest first, with subject, creation date and time, and comment count. |
| Ticket History for Organization | The same for other contacts at the same organization. |
| Attachments in Ticket | Every attachment, newest first, searchable by filename and downloadable. |
| Tasks for this Ticket | Each associated task with name, due date, responsible user, owner, status and progress. |
⚠️ The sidebar does not appear everywhere. It is absent when viewing a ticket from the CRM Related tab on contacts, organizations, opportunities or tasks, and from the Marketing Related tab on prospects.
ℹ️ Multi-file upload during ticket creation and updates is available but has to be activated by Insightly on request. The 20 MB per-file limit still applies.
Creating tickets
By the customer, through the portal
Customers submit through the Public Portal Website, configured by administrators in System Settings. An account is not required, but with one the customer sees their full ticket history.
- Go to the Tickets tab on the portal.
- Click New Ticket.
- Enter an email address and a subject. Account holders have their address prefilled.
- Describe the issue in Details.
- Click Submit.
Account holders can filter their tickets by all, open and pending, or solved and closed, and sort by status, date created, or last activity.
By an agent, on a customer’s behalf
Go to Tickets, click New Ticket, search for and select the contact, enter the details and a description, and click Save. The record opens for your response, which you submit with Submit as Pending or another status from the dropdown.
From a contact record
In the CRM or Service, open the contact, go to the Related tab, and click Add Ticket on the Tickets grid. The new ticket is populated with the contact and primary organization from that record.
ℹ️ The Add Ticket button only appears for users with create permission on tickets.
The ticket submission form
Administrators add, remove and reorder the fields on the customer-facing form. Any ticket custom field can be added, plus the standard Priority field.
⚠️ Three fields cannot be removed and are required for submission: Email Address, Subject, and Details.
Two rules constrain what else can go on the form:
- A field dependent on another field requires both on the form, with the same validation as page layout field dependency. The portal settings page will not save otherwise.
- Validation rules on a field apply on the form too, and a violation produces an error.
⚠️ Dynamic layout rules do not apply to the ticket form. Field dependencies and validation rules do; dynamic layout rules do not.
⚠️ Deleting a custom field removes it from every ticket form it appears on, automatically.
To edit the form: go to System Settings > Portals, select a portal, scroll to New Ticket Form, then move fields between Available Ticket Fields and Ticket Fields on Form with the arrows, reorder with the up and down arrows, and click Save Portal Settings.
Managing tickets
The Actions button on a ticket record offers:
| Action | What it does |
|---|---|
| Edit This Ticket | Edits details and fields. |
| Move Ticket to Spam | Moves it to the Spam queue. Reversed by changing the record owner. |
| Delete Ticket | Deletes after confirmation. |
| Change Record Owner | Reassigns to a different queue or user. |
| Merge Into Another Ticket | Combines duplicate tickets. See below. |
| Add New Task for Ticket | Requires both Service and CRM subscriptions. |
| Add Personal Macro from Ticket | Opens User Settings, Personal Macros, prefilled from this ticket. |
| Add Shared Macro from Ticket | Opens System Settings, Shared Macros, prefilled. Administrators only. |
| Add New Ticket for Contact | Opens Add New Ticket with the same contact prefilled. |
Macros created this way prefill Priority, Owner, Tags and Ticket Type from the ticket, all editable, plus the last comment if the person creating the macro wrote it.
Merging tickets
⚠️ Merges are permanent and cannot be undone.
- Open the ticket that will be merged away and select Merge Into Another Ticket from Actions.
- Enter the ticket number to merge into and click Merge Ticket.
The merging user and the ticket number are recorded in All Notes and Private Notes, with the number hyperlinked to the closed ticket.
What to expect:
- Neither ticket can be Solved or Closed. An unsolved ticket can be merged into a solved one, and doing so does not reopen it.
- Tickets with different requesters can be merged. The requester of the closing ticket becomes a CC on the surviving one, as does anyone already CC’d.
- Only the most recent public note carries over. Every other note stays behind.
- The original ticket is not deleted. It is marked Closed.
Tasks and opportunities
Agents with both CRM and Service can create tasks and opportunities from the ticket through Actions. Either is linked to the contact, organization and ticket on creation.
⚠️ One opportunity per ticket. Once an opportunity is linked, the option disappears from the actions menu.
Email allowlists and blocklists
Administrators control who can reach the portals and who can send tickets to support by adding email domains at System Settings > Feature Settings > Email Blocklists.