Helpdesk Public Ticket Portal

Capacity Helpdesk is often used to provide support to external customers or users. These users are also known as unauthenticated or anonymous users. To create a better experience for external support, Helpdesk provides an option to expose tickets via a Public Ticket Portal designed for users who are not part of your company or organization to interact with their support ticket. The Helpdesk Public Portal is activated on a per project basis.

How to Activate the Public Ticket Portal

To activate the Public Ticket Portal go to Settings > Projects page, and select the project for which you want to make a Public Portal accessible. From the project settings page, select the “Public Portal” option, then click "Save Changes".

Note the warning modal. Please read the description thoroughly before activating the Public Ticket Portal

To turn off access to the Public Portal, simply select the "No Portal" option and once again save the changes to the project settings.

How to Reach the Public Ticket Portal

When an agent replies to a ticket on a project with the Public Portal active, the response will include a “View ticket details” link to the portal page for that ticket. The link will also include a warning that anyone who has the link will have access to the Public Portal page.

Please note, forwarding or adding other recipients to the email chain will give them access to the link and its respective portal page. Here is an example of an email with the link to "View ticket details" included at the end of the response.

Helpdesk Public Portal Page

Email can be a great tool for support communication, but many times users want more information about the status of their request. The Public Portal makes it easy for users to track the status and details of their ticket from a web interface. The interface is also mobile responsive.

Following the Public Portal link will take the user to a publicly accessible page like the one for the example ticket shown below

From the Public Portal, users can:

  • Close their ticket
  • Check the status and details of their ticket
  • Send a response (if they enter an email associated with the ticket)
  • Attach files to a response

Using the Helpdesk Public Ticket Portal can create a better experience for external customers and users who do not have access to the full Capacity Helpdesk experience.

Important Notes

  • To send a reply users must enter a valid email address. If someone has not been included in the ticket conversation, via an email cc or otherwise, they will not be able to send a reply via the public portal.
  • In order for users to have the ability to close their tickets, make sure your admin has selected a default self-closed ticket status for the project's transition graph. This is configured under settings>helpdesk>transitions. 
  • Users can view that there are attachments on the ticket, but will not be able to view or access those attachments. They must return to their email thread to see the files.
  • Emails are trimmed for user privacy


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