Agents' guide

For people who answer cases. Setting up units, forms, portals, brands and rules is for admins and isn't covered here.

• Search: the search field (⌘K) and the Lookup page.
• The inbox: views and counts, sorting, filters, search, saved views and bulk actions.
• Working on a case: statuses, priority, assignee, labels, units, service levels, held requests, merging, legal hold and the requester's link.
• Replies and notes: writing, signatures, attachments, AI drafts, and what the requester sees.
• Approvals: what waits for your approval, and your own work waiting for someone else's.
• Logging a new case: phone calls, walk-ins and other requests that don't come through a form.
• Canned replies: saved answers you insert in a click.
• Accounts and contacts: the companies and people you support, and who may work on their cases.
• Agreements: DPAs, NDAs and other agreements with accounts, signed in the desk or recorded.
• Reports: what each number means.
• Signing in and your account: passwords, two-factor, passkeys and the emails you get.
• Incidents: outages declared from cases, updates to every requester at once, and the review (with the Incident Management plugin).
• Major incidents: roles, a procedure, escalation, stakeholder updates and required reviews for the biggest incidents (with the Major Incident Management plugin).
• Problems: the causes behind incidents, known errors with workarounds, and problem reviews (with the Problem Management plugin).
• Changes: changes to services, approved by policy or the CAB and carried out in their window (with the Change Management plugin).
• Services: the service catalogue, with owners, support teams, offerings, dependencies and each service's history (with the Service Configuration plugin), and examples of how to set them up.
• Access Management: who can see what and why, the history, access reviews, alerts and the sealed audit log (with the Access Management plugin).
• Status page: a public page on your portal with the incidents you choose to show, and email updates for people who follow it (with the Status Page plugin).
• Software Development: projects with boards of developer tasks, sprints and access by unit, created from cases (with the Software Development plugin).

Finding your way

The sidebar on the left is for daily work, and Settings sit in the menu under your name. A few keys save you clicks.

The sidebar

From top to bottom, the sidebar has:

Part	What is in it
New case	The button to log a case.
The inbox views	All open, Assigned to me, Approvals (with how many wait for you), Unassigned, Due soon, Resolved and closed, and My teams or Held for review when they apply.
Your saved views	The first six, with Show more for the rest.
Workspace	The pages Accounts and contacts and Reports.
Plugins	Each plugin that is on, by its name, like Software Development with its projects or Service Configuration with Services, Suppliers and Reviews. Five items show under each, with Show more for the rest.

Long lists stay short: the sidebar always shows the one you have open, even beyond the first six views or five items. Click a heading (Views, Workspace, Plugins) to fold its section away. A plugin with items under it (Service Configuration, Problem Management, Software Development) has a small arrow on its right that folds its items away; while they are folded, the page you are on still shows. On a phone the sidebar opens from the menu button at the top left.

The narrow rail

The button next to the name at the top (or [ on the keyboard) folds the sidebar to a narrow rail of icons, for more room on the page; press it again to bring the sidebar back. Point at an icon for its name. A red dot marks a view that needs attention, like Due soon.

The browser remembers what you chose in the sidebar (folded sections and plugins, Show more, the narrow rail) in a cookie, desk_nav, so it stays as you left it in that browser.

Pages that are mainly a list of work (the inbox, incidents, major incidents) use the full width of the window, so the columns have room.

Settings and the menu

Settings are in the menu under your name, bottom left. Open it and pick Settings: the sidebar switches to the settings pages, grouped.

Group	Pages
Your account	Profile (your name, and the sign-off name and title used in signatures), Sign-in and security, Notifications, API tokens and AI assistants.
Workspace	Canned replies.

Admins see more groups below. Back to inbox at the top of the sidebar takes you back to where you were. The same menu has Help, the theme (System, Light, Dark) and Sign out.

Keyboard shortcuts

Keyboard shortcuts work outside text fields:

Key	Where	What it does
c	Anywhere in the app	Opens New case.
[	Anywhere in the app	Folds the sidebar to the narrow rail, or brings it back.
/	The inbox	Puts the cursor in Search cases.
j k, Enter, x	The inbox	Move through the cases, open one, select one (more).

[!TIP] In the reply box, ⌘ ↵ (Ctrl ↵ on Windows and Linux) sends the reply or adds the note.