Why did this ticket land here?

Why did this ticket land here?

Where a ticket ends up is decided by a short chain of steps, each set up in its own place in Settings. A ticket in the wrong place is almost always one step doing exactly what it was told. Below is the chain in the order it runs, then a checklist for each common surprise.

The path a new conversation takes

1. It arrives. The channel can set the market at once: an email address, chat widget, SMS number or contact form that belongs to a market. Once departments are on, a department that claims the channel or inbox under Always route here gets the ticket.
2. Repeats are dropped. The same email delivered twice is stored once.
3. Market. Market rules run. No match means the default market. See Markets.
4. Automations. Conversation Created automations, then Message Received ones.
5. Auto Closer. Blacklist rules, then the AI classifier, close noise. See Auto Closer.
6. The AI reads it. It detects the language (a ticket that fell back to the default market moves to the market of that language), adds tags if the ticket has none yet, and picks a department, once.
7. Duplicates. If duplicate detection is on, a new email repeating an open ticket from the same customer in the last 7 days is closed as a duplicate.
8. Someone is served it. Email and social tickets wait to be pulled in flow. Chats and calls are offered live to the least busy available agent. Departments and access rules decide who qualifies, the Flow Queue decides the order.

Customer groups are not a step: they are worked out from the customer's email domain each time the board loads.

Note: a chat gets its tags and department after the AI's first reply, so a chat handed to a person at once is offered from the brand's default department. Phone calls and tickets imported from your previous helpdesk do not run automations.

The pieces

More in Departments, Squads, Capabilities, Tags and Workspaces.

Automations ⚡

An automation acts on a conversation the moment it comes in. Go to Settings → Advanced → Automations and click Create Automation.

• Trigger: Conversation Created runs once, when the conversation is created. Message Received runs on every inbound message, the first included.
• Conditions: fields such as [Sender] Sender Email, [Email] Subject, Market, Source and [Source] Custom Selector. Top-level rules must all match; use Add Group with OR (any condition) for either-or. No conditions means every conversation.
• Actions: Set market (Override also replaces a market a market rule or another automation set), Set tag (adds, never removes) and Close ticket (done, no reply; escalated tickets stay open).
• Priority: lower numbers run first, ties oldest first.

Every matching automation runs. For Set market and Close ticket, the first one that applies wins and later automations skip that action. Set tag adds up across all matches. A skipped action does not count, so the next automation can still set the market.

An automation's Run history tab lists each conversation it matched and what every action did, such as Skipped: existing market kept. Not listed means the conditions did not match.

Example: tag all mail from one sender. Conversation Created, [Sender] Sender Email Equals the address, Set tag. To tag by inbox, see Tag conversations by the e-mail address they were sent to.

Note: there is no tag condition. Automations run before the AI reads the ticket and cannot react to a tag added later.

An agent cannot see a ticket

• Brand. Agents only see brands they are members of. Check the team switcher, or All teams in a workspace.
• Department. With departments on, a department member's board opens on their own department. Pick another in the switcher at the bottom of the sidebar.
• A strict rule on the person (Settings → Users) hides everything outside it from their queues, counts and flow. A rule listing tags hides untagged tickets too. The All list and search still find those tickets.
• Status. Waiting for customer, Snoozed, Blocked, Ignored and AI working are hidden from Open, Unassigned and Assigned. Waiting for customer still shows in My Conversations, and All shows everything.
• The AI is on it. The board shows Human only by default. Switch to All (incl. AI).
• Filters. A filter, saved view or squad drill-down is narrowing the board.

A ticket went to the wrong department

The Department row in the ticket's details pane shows only where the ticket lives. Read the department entry in the ticket's timeline:

• Routed to … by a rule: the department claims that channel or inbox under Always route here, and the entry names it. An inbox rule beats a channel rule. Received at shows the inbox.
• Routed to … by the AI or Kept in … by the AI: it chose from each department's What goes here. Say what belongs and what does not. When two descriptions both fit, the AI is told to answer unsure, and the default stands.
• No department entry: the ticket is in the brand's default department (or the workspace's). The AI was unsure, the right department's What goes here is empty (it is never picked), fewer than two departments have one, a person took the ticket first, or enrichment is off.
• Moved to … by a colleague: rules and the AI never move it again. There is no undo: to move it back, pick the department it came from.

The AI decides once per ticket. Fix one ticket in the Department row: pick the department, add a note for it if you like, and confirm. Open tickets that arrived before a rule existed move when you save the department with Also move open tickets that match on.

Two agents get the same tickets

• Flow claims as it serves. A ticket someone holds is never served to anyone else, so two people in flow do not get the same ticket.
• Opening is not claiming. A ticket opened from the board stays unclaimed until someone claims, is assigned or replies, and a colleague's flow can serve it meanwhile. Colleagues with the ticket open show as name chips by the reply box.
• Released tickets. Auto-unclaim after inactivity and Unclaim when marked as done (Settings → Helpdesk, Automation tab) return tickets to the queue. So does moving a ticket to a squad or department its holder is not in.
• Skips. A skipped ticket is hidden from you for an hour, and goes to the next person.

An excluded tag is still reaching someone

• Put it on the person. A rule on a squad never filters the board, and without departments it does not limit flow either, only live chats and calls. Set the exclusion under Settings → Users, or check the person is in the squad.
• Check the mode. Preference only serves the tag last. Routing keeps it out of flow and offers, but the board shows it and anyone can claim it. Only Strict hides it from the queues and flow, and the All list and search still show it.
• Rules add up. A rule with only an excluded tag matches everything else. Next to a strict "Denmark only" rule of the same mode, it widens the person from Denmark to everything without the tag. Put the exclusion inside the one rule.
• Already theirs. A ticket claimed before the tag arrived stays with its holder, and assigning by hand ignores access rules.

Flow serves tickets from another department or brand

• Start Flow ignores board filters. It serves anything you may be served. A column's play button (Start flow for, after Group by) keeps your filters and that column.
• No department. An agent in no department is served from all of them. Add them as a member under Settings → Advanced → Departments. There is no shift setting: change membership instead.
• Your own tickets stay in your flow wherever they live.
• All teams. On the workspace board flow serves every brand you belong to. Switch to one brand, or Group by Team and use that brand's play button.

Tickets in Investigating or Waiting show up (or do not) in flow

• Investigating stays in your flow. Flow serves unclaimed tickets plus your own, and Investigating is an open status. No setting removes it: Snooze the ticket, or Group by Status and start flow from the column you want.
• Waiting for customer, Snoozed, Blocked, Ignored and AI working are not served. A customer reply sets Needs next response and brings the ticket back.
• Escalated is the exception. A Waiting for customer ticket that was escalated to a person stays in Open and can be served.

Where to see why a ticket was placed in a department

The ticket's timeline. Each placement leaves an entry, for example "Routed to Returns by the AI, from Customer service", "Kept in Customer service by the AI", "Routed to B2B by a rule (b2b@yourcompany.com)" or "Moved to Returns by Anna, from Customer service". A note written with a move sits just above its entry.

The AI's reasoning is not stored or shown, only its choice. It works from What goes here, so that text is the explanation, and editing it changes future placements. For replies, see Why did the AI answer that way?

Untagged tickets and squads

A squad rule listing tags only covers tickets carrying one of them, so untagged tickets fall outside every tag-based squad. Tickets stay untagged when no tag clearly fits, when the fitting tag has Allow AI to use this tag off, or when enrichment is off. They also miss the topic tag when an automation tagged them first: the AI only tags tickets with no tags yet.

Squads have no default. If every ticket needs a home, use departments: what the AI cannot place stays in the brand's default department, so in a workspace each brand's leftovers stay with that brand's team. Group by Tag also has an Untagged column with its own play button.

Good to know

• Customer groups match the exact email domain. Add subdomains separately; a domain belongs to one group. Groups are a filter, not access control: no rule or automation can use them.
• A market changed by hand is not locked. If a market rule matches, it sets the market again when the customer writes back.
• A ticket moved by hand stays put, whatever the rules or the AI say.
• A department with no members is still served to anyone who is in no department. If everyone is in one, its tickets wait until someone joins.
• Removing a routing rule moves nothing back.
• Group by Tag shows a column for every tag on the tickets in view. Tags belong to the team, not to a department, so old routing tags still show up.
• Access rules have no inbox setting. To give one inbox to a squad, tag it by inbox with an automation and use that tag in the squad's rule, or send the inbox to a department under Always route here.