# Help Desk overview

> The Help Desk is the ticket inbox for conversations that need a human. Learn how tickets, statuses, channels, views, and assignment fit together so your team can resolve what the AI hands off.

A great agent resolves most questions on its own. The **Help Desk** is where the rest go — the conversations that need a person. It's a full ticket inbox built into Bookbag: tickets arrive from escalations, email, and other channels, get routed to the right teammate, and move through clear statuses until they're closed.

The Help Desk has two parts: the **inbox** (tickets, views, filters, the reply composer) and a group of **settings** (assignment, scheduling, email, translation) that govern how the inbox behaves. This page covers the inbox; each setting has its own page.

> **TWO PLACES TO FIND IT:** Enable and tune the Help Desk per agent under the **Help desk** settings group. Then work tickets either inside the agent (Help desk → Inbox) or in the **dedicated Help Desk app** — a full-screen support workspace with its own agent switcher, reachable from **Help desk** in the workspace sidebar.

## The Help Desk app

Beyond the per-agent inbox tab, Bookbag ships a standalone **Help Desk workspace** for agents who live in tickets all day. It's a full-page app with an agent (chatbot) switcher up top, the same system views and saved views, a **New ticket** button, and the ticket timeline — so your support team can work without navigating the agent builder.

> **IT SUPPORTS YOUR CUSTOMERS — NOT US:** The Help Desk is where *your* team supports *your* customers. Customers reach you when the AI hands a chat to a human, through a connected email inbox, or another channel — those become tickets your team resolves here.

## How a ticket is born

Tickets enter the inbox three ways:

- **Escalation** — the agent calls the [Escalate to a human](/docs/skills/escalate-to-human) action, which creates a `live_chat` ticket with an AI-written summary and pauses the AI for that conversation.
- **Takeover** — a teammate clicks **Take over** on a live conversation in the Conversations view. See [Takeover](/docs/help-desk/takeover).
- **Direct channels** — email and the public API can create tickets directly.

## Ticket statuses

Every ticket has a status that tells your team whose turn it is. Statuses fall into two groups — **active** (still open) and **closed**.

| Status | Group | Meaning |
| --- | --- | --- |
| New | Active | Just arrived, not yet picked up. |
| On you | Active | Waiting on an agent to reply. |
| On customer | Active | Agent replied; waiting on the customer. |
| On hold | Active | Paused — waiting on something external. |
| Closed | Closed | Resolved. |
| Cancelled | Closed | Closed without resolution. |

> **STATUS MOVES ON ITS OWN:** Replying to a customer flips a ticket from *On you* / *New* to *On customer*. A new customer message flips it back. You rarely set status by hand.

## The inbox

The inbox is a left rail of views plus a ticket table. Each ticket row shows its status, ID, requester, a details preview, assignee, and the created and updated times. Open a ticket to see its full timeline and reply.

### System views

Bookbag ships a set of built-in views, each with a live count:

| View | Shows |
| --- | --- |
| Inbox | Active tickets assigned to you. |
| Mentions | Tickets where you're @mentioned in a note. |
| All | All active tickets. |
| Unassigned | Active tickets with no assignee. |
| Solved | Closed and cancelled tickets. |
| Conversations | Live chatbot conversations not yet turned into tickets. |

On top of these, your team can build [saved views](/docs/help-desk/saved-views) and apply ad-hoc [filters](/docs/help-desk/filters).

## Live updates

The inbox updates in **real time** — new tickets and new messages appear automatically, with no refresh. A green **Live** badge at the top of the inbox (and on an open ticket) shows it's syncing.

- **Click the badge to pause.** It switches to **Paused** and stops the background polling, so it isn't wasted while you're heads-down.
- **Click again to resume.** It goes back to **Live** and refetches immediately, so you catch up on anything that arrived while paused.
- **Auto-pauses in the background.** Polling also pauses on its own while the browser tab is hidden, and resumes when you return to it.

## The ticket timeline

Opening a ticket shows a single threaded timeline of everything that happened:

- **Replies** — messages exchanged with the customer.
- **Notes** — internal-only comments, highlighted, that the customer never sees. @mention a teammate to pull them in.
- **Events** — system entries like status changes, assignment, takeover, and AI resume.

From the composer you can reply, add a note, change status or assignee, and use [AI compose](/docs/help-desk/translation) to draft or polish a reply. A details panel on the side shows the requester, channel, and any previous tickets from the same person.

### AI Compose (the sparkle)

The **sparkle ✨ button** in the composer toolbar (next to the Reply/Note tabs) is **AI Compose** — a one-click writing assistant. Write a rough draft, click the sparkle, and pick an action; Bookbag rewrites your text and drops the suggestion straight back into the composer for you to review and edit before sending.

> **AVAILABLE ONCE YOU HAVE A DRAFT:** The sparkle button is disabled until there's text in the composer — AI Compose works on what you've written, so type a draft (even a rough one) first, then polish it.

| Option | What it does |
| --- | --- |
| Format text | Cleans up formatting and structure. |
| More friendly | Warms up the tone. |
| More formal | Makes it more professional. |
| Rephrase | Rewords while keeping the meaning. |
| Expand | Adds more helpful detail. |
| Fix grammar & spelling | Corrects grammar and spelling. |
| Translate | Opens a language list (Spanish, French, German, Portuguese, Italian, Dutch, Japanese, Chinese, Korean, Arabic, Hindi, Russian) and translates the draft. |

AI Compose uses your agent's configured model. If no model/provider key is set up, it leaves your draft unchanged — you never lose what you wrote. See [Translation](/docs/help-desk/translation) for the full multilingual workflow.

### Attachments

Click the **paperclip** in the composer to attach files to a reply or a note — images, PDFs, and text files (up to 5 per message, 20MB each). Attachments on a **reply** are delivered to the customer over the ticket's channel; attachments on a **note** stay internal. Sent files appear inline in the timeline (images preview; other files download).

### @mention a teammate

In a **Note**, type `@` to bring up a live dropdown of your teammates and pick one — the name is inserted inline and highlighted. Mention is internal-only (it works in Notes, never in customer-facing replies).

- The mentioned teammate gets an **email** linking them straight to the ticket.
- The ticket shows up in their **Mentions** view, and the Mentions count in the sidebar ticks up.
- Delete the `@name` from the note before sending and that person is no longer mentioned.

> **REPLIES GO BACK OVER THE ORIGINAL CHANNEL:** When you send a **reply**, Bookbag delivers it to the customer the same way they reached you: email and help-center tickets are emailed back (with your team's display name + signature from **Help desk → Email**); WhatsApp/Messenger/Instagram go through that channel; a taken-over live chat appears back in the customer's chat window. **Notes** are internal and never sent.

## Getting notified

When a new ticket is created, Bookbag emails the person who needs to act on it so nothing waits unseen:

- **Assigned tickets** notify the **assignee** — unless they're the one who just created or took over the ticket.
- **Unassigned tickets** notify the workspace **owners and admins**, so someone picks them up.

> **BEST-EFFORT AND NON-BLOCKING:** Notifications are sent in the background — a mail hiccup never blocks ticket creation. Live counts on the inbox views update in real time alongside the emails.

## What's next

- [Ticket assignment](/docs/help-desk/assignment) — Route tickets to the right teammate automatically.
- [Takeover](/docs/help-desk/takeover) — Jump into a live conversation from the bot.
- [Translation](/docs/help-desk/translation) — Auto-translate customer messages into your language.
- [Escalate to a human](/docs/skills/escalate-to-human) — The action that feeds the inbox.