Support Tickets give your visitors and customers a private, tracked way to ask for help, and give your team one place to answer. Every ticket has a category, a priority, a state and a conversation of messages with optional attachments.
Support Tickets → All Tickets. Staff see every customer’s tickets; ordinary users see only their own.
Customer opens a ticket → Team answers (state: Answered) → Customer replies (state: Open) → Either side closes it (state: Closed)
Tickets are for conversations that need an answer and a history — a billing question, a request to move an appointment, a problem with an order. Unlike a message sent through the contact form, a ticket stays linked to the customer’s account, keeps every message in order, and shows its current state.
| State | Meaning | Becomes this when… |
|---|---|---|
| Open | Waiting for the team to answer. | The customer creates the ticket or replies to it. Replying to a closed ticket opens it again. |
| Answered | The team has replied; waiting for the customer. | Someone other than the ticket owner (for example a staff member) posts a message. |
| Closed | The conversation is finished. | The customer, or staff with permission, chooses Close Ticket. |
Every ticket must belong to a category, so create at least one before customers can open tickets. Categories also give tickets their reference: the number is the first letters of the category followed by a running number (for example BIL000001 for Billing and payments).
Support Tickets → Ticket Categories lists the categories customers can choose from.
A category only needs a name.
Keep categories few and clear
Customers pick the category themselves. Names such as Billing and payments, Appointments and bookings, Orders and shipping and General question are easy to choose between.
Signed-in visitors reach their tickets from the Support tab of their My Account area, at /tickets. They only ever see their own tickets.
The customer chooses a category and priority, writes a subject and a message and can attach files.
| Field | What it does |
|---|---|
| Category | Required. One of the categories you created. |
| Priority | Low, Medium or High. A hint for the team; it does not change how quickly TruCMS responds. |
| Subject | A short title, up to 191 characters. Required. |
| Message | The question or description. Required. |
| Files | Up to 5 files per message, each up to 5 MB, as PDF, PNG, JPG or TXT. |
The customer’s ticket page: state and priority, the messages (newest first), a reply form and a Close Ticket button.
Staff with the view all tickets permission see the Support Tickets menu with All Tickets, Open Tickets, Closed Tickets and Ticket Categories. The list can be searched by number, subject or customer.
The admin view of a ticket. Details and participants on the left; the reply form and conversation on the right.
Staff can also open a ticket for themselves from Create Ticket, for example to test the flow or to log an internal request.
No automatic alert for staff
A new ticket appears in Open Tickets, but TruCMS does not email the support team when one arrives. Check the list regularly, or ask the customer to also write to your support address. The ticket owner is told when a ticket is created and whenever somebody else replies.
| When | Who is notified | How |
|---|---|---|
| A ticket is created | The customer who created it | An email “New Ticket Created” and a notification in their account area. |
| A message is posted | Everyone else who has taken part in the ticket | An email “New Activity in Ticket” containing the message, and a notification in their account area. |
Emails use the settings in Settings → Mail. When background processing is enabled (see Queue & Background Jobs), notifications are sent by the queue worker.
| Permission | Allows |
|---|---|
| view all tickets | Open the admin ticket screens and see tickets of all customers. |
| answer tickets | Reply to any ticket (customers can always reply to their own). |
| close tickets | Close any ticket (customers can always close their own). |
| download tickets | Download attachments. |
| manage ticket categories | Create, edit and delete ticket categories. |
The Support group in Roles & Permissions lists these. Give them to support staff, and keep them away from roles that only need to open tickets.
| Symptom | What to do |
|---|---|
| A customer cannot open a ticket | Check that at least one ticket category exists, and that the customer has fewer than 3 open tickets. |
| The attachment is rejected | Only PDF, PNG, JPG and TXT files up to 5 MB are accepted, up to 5 per message. |
| The customer received no email | Check Mail settings and the spam folder. See the FAQ. |
| A staff member cannot see the Support menu | Their role needs the view all tickets permission. |