Tickets

In short

Create: in the conversation, click Ticket, at the top next to Resolve.
Follow up: open Tickets in the sidebar to see and filter tickets.
Reply: write from the ticket. The customer gets it on the usual channel.
Finish: use Reply and solve. A few days later, AstraChat closes the ticket on its own.

What a ticket is

A conversation is the chat with a customer. A ticket is a problem you need to solve for them: a repair, a refund, an order that didn’t arrive. It has its own number, a person responsible and a status, so nothing is forgotten when the conversation goes quiet.

Conversation or ticket?

	Conversation	Ticket
What it is	The messages with a customer on one channel	One problem to solve, with a start and an end
Number	conversation #123	T-1042 (its own numbering)
How it ends	You resolve it when the chat is over	It is solved when the problem is fixed, then closes by itself
Who sees it	The customer sees every reply	The customer sees only the replies you send; notes stay internal

What stays the same for your customer

Customers keep writing on the same channel as always (WhatsApp, Instagram, Facebook, email). They never see a “ticket” screen.
When you reply from a ticket, the message goes out in the customer’s conversation, as a normal reply.
One ticket can bring together several conversations, for example when the customer writes again a week later.

When to create a ticket: when the problem can’t be solved in the same chat. A question you answer right away doesn’t need one; a repair that takes three days does.

Turn on Tickets

Tickets are part of the Business plan. Nothing changes for your team until an administrator turns them on.

Steps (administrators)

Go to Settings → Tickets.
You’ll see the card “Tickets are already included in your plan.” Click Turn on tickets.
AstraChat creates four ticket types for you: Question, Incident, Request and Complaint (in Spanish accounts: Pregunta, Incidente, Solicitud, Reclamo).
Review the Types, Categories and Fields tabs (see the next section), then tell your team.

What your team sees afterwards

A Tickets group in the sidebar, right under Conversations.
A Ticket button at the top of every conversation, next to Resolve, and a Tickets panel at the top of the right column.
A Tickets tab on each contact’s page.

Turning them off keeps everything. In Settings → Tickets, switch off Turn on tickets and confirm Turn off. Your team stops seeing Tickets, but every ticket, type, category and field is kept and comes back when you turn them on again.

Not on the Business plan? The page says “Your plan doesn’t include tickets.” See Plans and billing to change plans.

Set up types, categories and fields

Settings → Tickets has four tabs. Only administrators can change them; agents use what you set up here.

General

Numbering: shows the number the next ticket will get. Tickets have their own numbering (T-1, T-2…), separate from conversation numbers.
Auto-close: Days without a reply (4 by default, from 1 to 60). A solved ticket closes by itself if the customer doesn’t reply within that time. If they reply sooner, it reopens.
Notify the customer when a ticket is created and Notify the customer when it’s solved: AstraChat writes to the customer in the ticket’s conversation, with the text you choose. Change it with Edit text; {{ticket.number}} inserts the ticket number and {{ticket.subject}} its subject. Both start off.
Click Save after changing anything.

Types

The type says what kind of problem it is. Each type has a name, an icon, a color and a Default priority that new tickets of that type get.

Click Add type to create one, and drag the rows to change the order.
In Type fields choose which custom fields are Shown for that type and which are Required to solve. A ticket can’t be marked Solved while a required field is empty.
Archive a type you no longer use. It can’t be picked for new tickets, but older tickets keep it. Types are never deleted.

Fields

Fields are extra information you want on every ticket, such as an order number or a delivery date. Click Add field and choose its kind:

Kind	Use it for
Text	Order number, serial number, address
Number	Amount, quantity
Date	Purchase date, promised delivery date
List	A fixed set of options (add at least one in Options)
Checkbox	Yes or no, such as “Under warranty”

The Key and the kind can’t be changed after you create the field. A new field appears on tickets only once you add it to a type in Type fields.

The notice can’t always go out. On Instagram, Facebook and the official WhatsApp API you can only write to the customer for 24 hours after their last message. Outside that window the notice isn’t sent, and the ticket’s history says so: “AstraChat didn’t send the ticket… notice”. A ticket created by hand with no conversation doesn’t get one either. In those cases, tell the customer yourself.

Statuses and priorities

The status tells the whole team where each problem stands. Change it in the ticket’s Properties.

Statuses

Status	What it means	What happens next
New	Just created, nobody is working on it yet	It becomes Open by itself when someone is assigned or the first reply is sent
Open	Someone on your team is working on it	You move it on when you need something or it’s fixed
Waiting on customer	You asked the customer something and are waiting	It goes back to Open by itself when the customer replies
On hold	Waiting on someone else: a supplier, a technician, a shipment	It stays On hold even if the customer writes; reopen it when you can continue
Solved	The problem is fixed	It reopens if the customer replies; otherwise it closes after the auto-close days
Closed	Finished for good	It can no longer be changed, replied to or reopened

Priorities

Low, Normal, High and Urgent. New tickets get the type’s default priority (Normal if the type doesn’t set one), and you can change it at any time.

Solved is not Closed. Use Solved when you think the problem is fixed. The customer still has a few days to say “it still doesn’t work”, and the ticket reopens by itself. After that it closes.

Create a ticket

Most tickets start from a conversation. You can also create one from a contact’s page.

From a conversation

Open the conversation with the customer.
Click Ticket, at the top right, next to Resolve. You can also press ⌘ Cmd + K (Ctrl + K on Windows) and choose Create ticket from this conversation.
AstraChat fills the Subject and Description with the customer’s latest messages. If the customer hasn’t written yet, it uses your last message. Check them so anyone can understand the problem.
Choose the type, the category and the priority if you need to.
Click Create ticket. You’ll see “Ticket T-… created and linked to conversation #…”.

If the conversation already has an open ticket, the button shows its number (for example T-1042) and opens it. To create another one, use Create ticket in the Tickets panel.

What the new ticket has

You are the person assigned to it. Change it in Properties if someone else should handle it.
It is linked to the conversation, and its history starts with the customer’s message.
Replies from the ticket go out in that conversation, on the same channel.

From a contact’s page

Open the contact, go to the Tickets tab and click Create ticket. Use this for problems that don’t come from a chat, such as a phone call. To reply to the customer from that ticket, link a conversation to it (see below).

Link a conversation to a ticket

When the customer writes again about a problem that already has a ticket, link the new conversation instead of creating a second ticket.

Open the new conversation, then the right column, with the person icon on the right edge of the screen.
In the Tickets panel, the first one in the column, click Link to an existing ticket.
Pick the ticket from “This customer’s open tickets”, or type to search all open tickets.
From now on, the customer’s messages in that conversation appear in the ticket’s history.

What the panel shows

The customer’s open tickets. The one linked to this conversation is marked “linked to this conversation”.
Recently solved: the customer’s last solved or closed tickets.
If the customer has none, it says “This customer has no open tickets.”

Find your tickets

The Tickets group in the sidebar has ready-made views. Each one shows how many tickets it has.

View	Shows
My tickets	Tickets assigned to you that aren’t solved yet. Start your day here.
Unassigned	Tickets with nobody responsible. Someone should take them.
Open	New and Open tickets
Waiting on customer	Tickets waiting for the customer’s answer
On hold	Tickets waiting on someone outside the team
Solved	Solved tickets that haven’t closed yet

Search and filters

Search by number (T-1042 or just 1042), subject or customer name or email. Accents and capitals don’t matter: “jose” finds “José”.
Filter by Status, Priority, Type, Category, Agent (Me for yours), Team, Labels or Created date. Clear filters removes them all.
Move through the list with J and K, and press Enter to open a ticket. The list updates by itself.
Closed tickets have no view of their own: filter by Status → Closed, or look in the contact’s Tickets tab.

Work on a ticket

Open a ticket to see everything about the problem in one place.

What you see

History (center): the description, the customer’s messages from every linked conversation, your replies, internal notes and every change (“changed the status to Solved”, “assigned the ticket to Ana”…).
Properties (right): status, priority, type, category, assigned agent, team and labels. Changes save as soon as you make them.
The type’s fields. Fields marked with * must be filled in before you can solve the ticket.
The customer’s card, their other open tickets and the linked conversations.

Reply to the customer or write a note

Tab	Who sees it	Use it for
Reply to customer	The customer, in their conversation	Asking for information, giving updates, confirming the fix
Internal note	Only your team	What you tried, what you’re waiting for. Type `@` to notify a teammate

Under the reply box you’ll see where it goes, for example “Sent on WhatsApp · conversation #123”. Click Send, or Reply and solve to send the reply and mark the ticket Solved in one step. ⌘ Cmd + Enter sends, and / opens your canned responses.

Reply from the ticket, not from the conversation. A reply written in the normal conversation box reaches the customer, but it isn’t recorded in the ticket and doesn’t move its status. Replies from the ticket do both.

If the composer says “Link a conversation you can open to reply from the ticket”, the ticket has no conversation to reply through (for example, one created from a contact’s page). Link one, or use internal notes only.

What AstraChat does by itself

When the customer writes

If the ticket was Waiting on customer or Solved, it goes back to Open.
On hold and Closed tickets don’t change.
If the person assigned isn’t connected, they get an email.

Auto-close

Once an hour, AstraChat closes the tickets that have been Solved for longer than the days set in Settings → Tickets → General (4 by default). The history shows “AstraChat” as the one who closed it.

Emails to your team

When	Who gets it	Subject
A ticket is assigned to someone	The assigned agent	“You were assigned ticket T-1042: …”
Someone mentions you with @ in a note	The agent mentioned	“Ana mentioned you on ticket T-1042”
The customer replies	The assigned agent, only if not connected	“María replied on ticket T-1042”

Each email has a View ticket button. Nobody is emailed about their own actions.

Who can do what

Action	Agents	Administrators
See, create and search tickets	Yes	Yes
Change status, priority, type, assigned agent, labels and fields	Yes	Yes
Reply, write notes and link conversations	Yes, in conversations they have access to	Yes
Turn Tickets on or off	No	Yes
Edit types, categories, fields and auto-close	No	Yes

An example from start to finish

A customer writes on WhatsApp: “The blender I bought last week doesn’t turn on.”

Ana opens the conversation and clicks Ticket. She sets the subject “Blender won’t turn on”, the type Incident and the category “Warranty”. Ticket T-1042 is created and assigned to her.
From the ticket, she replies: “Could you send us a photo of the receipt?” and sets the status to Waiting on customer.
The customer sends the photo. The ticket goes back to Open by itself.
Ana sends the blender to the technician, sets the ticket On hold and writes an internal note: “Sent to the workshop, ready Friday.”
On Friday she moves it back to Open and replies “Your blender is ready to pick up” with Reply and solve.
The customer doesn’t write again, so four days later AstraChat closes the ticket.

Questions and limits

Can I attach files to a reply from a ticket?

Not yet. Send files from the conversation itself. Files the customer sends appear in the ticket’s history as “Attachment”; open the conversation to see them.

Can I reopen a closed ticket?

No. If the customer writes again about a closed ticket, create a new ticket from the conversation.

Can I delete a ticket?

There’s no delete button. Solve it with a note explaining why.

Why didn’t my reply reach the customer on Instagram or Facebook?

On Instagram, Facebook and the official WhatsApp API you can only write freely for 24 hours after the customer’s last message. This applies to replies from tickets too. WhatsApp numbers connected by QR code don’t have this limit.

Does a ticket have due dates (SLA)?

Not yet. Use the priority and the views to decide what to handle first.