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The Zappocity help desk

Zappocity's own support: customers of every Zappocity product write to it, and staff answer from the admin panel's Help desk. (A team's own helpdesk for its users, in the domain admin panel, is a separate Mailocity feature; see the support desk.)

Queues

Requests are sorted into queues (support, billing and abuse to start with), set under Help desk → Queues (staff with the settings permission; corpsuite support queue ...). Each queue has its own rules:

Ticket prefixes

Each queue has its own ticket prefix (ZC until you set one), 1-8 capital letters and digits starting with a letter: BIL for billing, ABU for abuse. A ticket's tag is its queue's prefix and its number, BIL-1042, in notification subjects ([BIL-1042]), the ticket's own address (billing+bil-1042@zappo.city), the panel and the customer's Support page.

Numbers are one series across every queue, so the number alone finds a ticket. A ticket moved to another queue takes that queue's prefix (BIL-1042 becomes ABU-1042), and replies with its old tag, or with ZC-, still reach it. A tag whose prefix no queue has, such as [JIRA-12] from another system, is not taken for a ticket.

More addresses for a queue

A queue can take mail at more addresses than its own, such as support@zappo.city and support@mailo.city for one support queue. Under Help desk → Queues, type the address under Other addresses on the queue and choose Add. Its domain must be one of the support team's: add domains in Support team mail → Add a mail domain, then publish their DNS records from their page under Tenants. (A domain another team uses, or a shared domain, cannot be added.)

Mail to any of a queue's addresses opens and answers tickets the same way, and notifications for a ticket go out from the address the customer wrote to. Remove an address with its cross; mail to it is then refused, and its tickets are answered from the queue's own address.

Removing a queue

Remove on a queue takes it away. If it has tickets, you choose the queue they move to. Its other addresses stop working; its mailbox and the mail in it stay on the support team, so nothing is lost. The support queue cannot be removed, because requests from webmail land in it; turn it off instead (untick active).

Customers

On the account page (/account), Support lists their requests (opened by them, sent from their confirmed address, or naming it as a contact) and opens new ones: pick what it is about, a subject and the message, and optionally people to copy. They can reply, add or remove contacts and close the request where the queue allows. A reply reopens a resolved request; a closed one takes no more (open a new one). Each request has a number, such as BIL-41 (its queue's prefix and the number), in every subject line.

Staff

Help desk opens on the queues you are an agent of: a table of them with how many tickets are open, waiting on the customer, and of each priority, then each queue's active tickets, the most urgent first (and, within a priority, the longest waiting first), with follow-ups that are due. All tickets lists every ticket you can see with filters.

The search box at the top finds tickets by:

• ticket number or tag: 1042, #1042 or BIL-1042 (with one match, the ticket opens);
• customer number: C-17, that customer's tickets;
• part of a name, an address or a subject.

Customer numbers

Every Zappocity account has a customer number, shown as C-17 on the account page (for customers to quote) and on the customer's page in the panel, with a Tickets button that searches for theirs. Tickets show it next to the requester when they are linked to an account. Customers in the panel finds people by it too.

Who sees a queue

A queue's Agents (under Help desk → Queues) are the staff who see and answer its tickets. With none listed, every staff member with the support permission does. Staff with every permission, the platform API key and the command line always see every queue. To other staff, a queue's tickets are as if they were not there: not listed, not found by search, and not openable by link. Anyone may still move a ticket to a queue they are not an agent of.

A ticket's page shows the conversation (internal notes in yellow), and lets staff:

• reply (the customer and contacts are told the queue's way; the ticket then waits on the customer) or add an internal note that only staff see;
• change status, priority, the assignee and the queue;
• add or remove contacts;
• schedule a follow-up: a reminder at a time, or a reply sent later (as its author, like any reply);
• start from a canned reply, or use a macro that replies and sets the status, priority, queue or assignee in one click (see Canned replies and macros);
• link a help article into a reply (see Help center).

From the command line: corpsuite support tickets, support ticket reply TICKET-ID body=..., support followup add ... and so on. Staff need support to answer and settings to change queues.

Mailboxes and email

Each queue has its own address, such as abuse@zappo.city: a mailbox on the support team, a team on Mailocity. Set it up once under Help desk → Queues → Support team mail with the mail domain (corpsuite support team set domain=zappo.city). That makes the team (or uses an existing one, by its tenant id), adds the domain and gives every queue its mailbox with a token; new queues get one when they are made. Publish the domain's DNS records (MX, SPF, DKIM, DMARC) from its page under Tenants.

Zappocity then works those mailboxes over JMAP, every minute (or Check mail now):

• Mail that answers a ticket (its In-Reply-To or References name one of the ticket's messages, it is written to the ticket's own address such as billing+bil-41@zappo.city, or its subject has the ticket's [BIL-41] tag, with any queue's prefix or ZC) goes on that ticket, when it comes from the requester or a contact. Only the new text is kept, not the quoted earlier message.
• Other mail opens a ticket when the queue takes mail, from anyone or only from people with a confirmed Zappocity account; the sender gets a confirmation.
• Mail from a known account is linked to that person, so the ticket shows on their account's Support page: mail from their confirmed Zappocity email, or from a Mailocity mailbox (or one of its aliases) linked to their Zappocity account. Tickets from a mailbox also note its team, as when they are opened from webmail. A reply from a known account links a ticket opened before they were known.

Mail can claim any sender, so a ticket is linked, and a queue that takes mail only from known people accepts it, only when the mail server proved the sender: the message passed DMARC, or one of Mailocity's own users sent it. Mail that only claims a known address opens an unlinked ticket (on a queue that takes mail from anyone) or is not accepted. Ask customers whose domain has no DMARC record to write from the web form instead, or to publish DMARC.

• Each message is then filed out of the inbox, into Tickets, Not accepted or Ignored (automatic replies, bounces and no-reply senders, so two robots never write to each other).

Notifications and replies go out from the ticket's own address: the queue's address with the ticket's number as a plus tag, such as billing+bil-41@zappo.city (and its Reply-To says the same). A reply then finds its ticket by the address alone, even from a mail client that drops the threading headers or the subject's tag. They are threaded with the earlier mail, so mail clients show one conversation. The queues' mailboxes keep plus-addressed mail in the inbox, whatever their plus setting was. Without a mailbox, they come from Zappocity's own mail.