Ticket types, custom fields & tags
Before routing rules and SLA policies mean anything, a ticket needs somewhere to put the information specific to your support process — a warranty claim needs a serial number, a B2B helpdesk needs an account tier. Three tools shape that.
Ticket types
Section titled “Ticket types”Admin Panel → Ticket Types. A type is a name, a sort position, and (for exactly one type) a “default” flag — the type a ticket gets when nothing else picks one. Routing rules and SLA policies can both key off type, so “Bug” and “Billing Question” behaving completely differently downstream is a couple of clicks, not a code change.
Custom fields
Section titled “Custom fields”Admin Panel → Custom Fields. A field belongs to one of three entities — tickets, customers, or organizations — and is one of seven types: text, multi-line text, number, date, checkbox, dropdown, or multiselect (the last two need at least one option defined before they’ll save). A dropdown/multiselect field on tickets works the same way ticket type does for routing and SLA purposes — it’s just data until a rule references it.
Tags are a free-form label vocabulary, created on the fly: an agent typing an unknown tag name into a ticket creates it, case-insensitively, so “Bug” and “bug” can’t silently become two different tags. There’s no separate “tag admin” screen to pre-populate — the vocabulary grows from actual usage, and existing tags are simply suggested as an agent types. Tags are also what macros can add or remove as part of applying one.