Route tickets in help desk

In help desk, incoming tickets are left unassigned by default. Learn how to manually assign tickets, or if you're assigned a Service Hub seat, set up automatic routing rules so that tickets are automatically routed to specific users and teams in your account.

You can also create skills for your account's users and then route help desk tickets to users based on their skills. Learn more about skill-based routing.

Manually assign tickets

You can triage unassigned tickets or manually reassign a ticket to another user or team.

1. In your HubSpot account, click More, then navigate to Service > Help Desk. If More doesn't appear in your account, navigate to Service > Help Desk directly.
2. In the left sidebar menu, select the Unassigned view, then click an unassigned conversation to open it.
3. In the upper right, click the Ticket owner dropdown menu and select a user or team. Or, if you enter your response in the reply editor, and click Send, the ticket will be automatically assigned to you.
4. If you want to reassign a ticket to another user, team, or the customer agent, open a ticket and click the Owner dropdown menu in the top right and select a user, team or a customer agent.

Automatically assign tickets

Before you get started

To automatically route tickets to a specific user, they must meet the following conditions:

• The user must have an assigned Service seat. If the user doesn’t have access to a Service seat, you cannot include them in your routing rules.
• Users must have access to tickets to access them in help desk. Learn how to enable access to tickets for your users.
• If you select specific teams in your routing rules, incoming conversations can only be automatically routed to main team members. If an account is opted into the Support Multiple Main Teams for Full Functionality beta, incoming conversations can be routed to all team members.

Understanding automatic ticket assignment 

• Tickets are automatically assigned to available users who have the fewest open tickets of the same ticket type. 
• User availability can be determined by working hours, out of office hours, or can be set manually.
• Ticket types are categorized as follows:
  • Calling: tickets created from active calls. 
  • Messaging: tickets created from a live chat channel, including any custom channels. 
  • Email/Other: tickets created manually or via email, forms, workflows, or API.
• When calculating a user's currently assigned tickets, only open help desk tickets assigned within the last 30 days are counted. 

Set up automatic ticket assignment for team email channels

1. In your HubSpot account, click the settings icon in the top navigation bar.
2. In the left sidebar menu, navigate to Inbox & Help Desk > Channels.
3. In the Team channels section, click Team email.
4. Click the team email channel you want to edit. 
5. Navigate to the Routing tab.
6. Click the Assign tickets dropdown menu and select a routing option:
   • Customer agent: assign an AI powered customer agent to respond to support questions. If the customer agent can't answer, the ticket will be reassigned based on your handoff settings. Learn how to set up and customize the customer agent's handoff process. 
   • Specific users and teams: assign incoming tickets to the users or teams selected. Select the users or teams from the Specific users and teams dropdown menu.
   • Team only: assign incoming tickets to teams without assigning a ticket owner. Tickets will be routed to the selected team and will appear in team-based views, including My Team's Unassigned and My Team's Open. Only teams with at least one user who has a Service Seat can be selected for team routing. 
   • Use assignment workflow: assign incoming tickets using a workflow. Click the Workflow dropdown menu and select a ticket-based workflow with an assignment action. 
   • Contact owner: assign incoming tickets to a contact owner. The contact must have an owner assigned to their record and be tracked with a cookie. 
     • If the contact owner is unavailable, at capacity, or ineligible to receive tickets, the ticket will be routed according to the configured fallback rule. To configure a fallback rule, click the If there is no contact owner, assign to* dropdown menu and select an option:
       •  Specific users and teams: assign incoming tickets to the selected users or teams using your preferred distribution method.
       • No owner: leave incoming tickets unassigned when the contact owner cannot receive them. 
     • No owner: the conversation will be sent to the Unassigned view in the help desk for your team members to triage.
   • To choose how you want to distribute tickets, click the Distribution dropdown menu and select an option:
     • Load Balanced: distribute tickets to users with the fewest open tickets assigned. 
     • Round Robin: distribute to users in rotating, sequential order. 
     • Random: distribute tickets to users randomly. 
   • By default, incoming conversations will only be assigned to agents that are available. If no agents are available, the ticket will be unassigned. You can clear the Assign to available users only checkbox to turn off this setting.
   • In the bottom left, click Save. 

Set up automatic ticket assignment for form channels

1. In your HubSpot account, click the settings icon in the top navigation bar.
2. In the left sidebar menu, navigate to Inbox & Help Desk > Channels.
3. In the Web and apps channels section, click Form.
4. Click the form channel you want to edit.
5. Click the Routing tab. 
6. Click Edit routing. 
7. In the right panel, click the Assign tickets dropdown menu and select a routing option:
   • Customer agent: assign an AI powered customer agent to respond to support questions. If the customer agent can't answer, the ticket will be reassigned based on your handoff settings. Learn how to set up and customize the customer agent's handoff process.
   • Specific users and teams: assign incoming tickets from form submissions to the users or teams selected. Select the users or teams from the Specific users and teams dropdown menu.
   • Team only: assign incoming tickets to teams without assigning a ticket owner. Tickets will be routed to the selected team and will appear in team-based views, including My teams unassigned and My team's open. Only teams with at least one user who has a Service Hub seat can be selected for team routing. 
   • Use assignment workflow: assign incoming tickets using a workflow. Click the Workflow dropdown menu and select a ticket-based workflow with an assignment action

• • Contact owner: assign incoming tickets from form submissions to a contact's owner. The contact must have an owner assigned to their record and be tracked with a cookie.
    • If the owner is unavailable, at capacity, or otherwise ineligible to receive incoming tickets, the configured fallback rule will apply.
    • To configure fallback routing, click the If there is no contact owner, assign to* dropdown menu and select a routing option. 
  • No owner: incoming tickets will not be assigned to any team members.

6. To choose how you want to distribute tickets, click the Distribution dropdown menu and select an option:
   • Load Balanced: distribute tickets to users with the fewest open tickets assigned. 
   • Round Robin: distribute to users in rotating, sequential order. 
   • Random: distribute tickets to users randomly. 
7. By default, incoming tickets will only be assigned to agents that are available. If no agents are available, the ticket will be unassigned. You can clear the Assign to available users only checkbox to turn off assignment based on agent availability.
8. In the bottom left, click Save.

Set up automatic ticket assignment for chatflow channels

Chatflow assignment is managed with your chatflow's settings. To set up automatic ticket assignment for your chatflow, navigate to the chatflow's Chat tab.

Set up automatic ticket assignment for WhatsApp channels

1. In your HubSpot account, click the settings icon in the top navigation bar.
2. In the left sidebar menu, navigate to Inbox & Help Desk > Channels.
3. In the Team channels section, click WhatsApp.
4. Click the WhatsApp channel you want to edit. 
5. On the Routing tab, click Edit routing. 
6. In the right panel, click the Assign tickets dropdown and choose:
   • Customer agent: assign an AI powered customer agent to respond to support questions. If the customer agent can't answer, the ticket will be reassigned based on your handoff settings. Learn how to set up and customize the customer agent's handoff process. 
   • No one: incoming tickets will not be assigned to any team members.
   • Specific users and teams: assign incoming tickets to the users or teams selected. Select the users or teams from the Specific users and teams dropdown menu.
   • Team only: assign incoming tickets to teams without assigning a ticket owner. Tickets will be routed to the selected team and will appear in team-based views, including My teams unassigned and My team's open. Only teams with at least one user who has a Service Hub seat can be selected for team routing. 
   • Use assignment workflow: assign incoming tickets using a workflow. Click the Workflow dropdown menu and select a ticket-based workflow with an assignment action

5. • Contact owner: assign incoming tickets to a contact's owner. The contact must have an owner assigned to their record and be tracked with a cookie. 
     
     • If the owner is unavailable, at capacity, or otherwise ineligible to receive incoming tickets, the configured fallback rule will apply. To configure fallback routing, Click the If there is no contact owner, assign to* dropdown menu and select a routing option.

5. To choose how you want to distribute tickets, click the Distribution dropdown menu and select an option:
   • Load Balanced: distribute tickets to users with the fewest open tickets assigned. 
   • Round Robin: distribute to users in rotating, sequential order. 
   • Random: distribute tickets to users randomly. 
6. By default, incoming tickets will only be assigned to agents that are available. If no agents are available, the ticket will be unassigned. You can clear the Assign to available users only checkbox to turn off assignment based on agent availability.
7. In the bottom left, click Save.

Set up automatic ticket assignment for calling channels

1. In your HubSpot account, click the settings icon in the top navigation bar.
2. In the left sidebar menu, navigate to Inbox & Help Desk > Channels.
3. In the Team channels section, click Calling.
4. Click the calling channel you want to edit.
5. Click the Routing tab. 
6. Click Edit routing. 
7. In the right panel, click the Ticket & call assignment dropdown menu and select Specific users and teams. Click the Add a user or team dropdown menu, and select click the checkboxes next to each user or team you want to route calls to during working hours. Learn how to set up working hours.
8. Next, use the dropdown menu to select an audio message for calls which are unanswered and are sent to voicemail.
9. Click Save.

View ticket assignment details

View why a ticket was routed to a specific user or team. Assignment details include factors such as routing rules, agent availability, ticket capacity limits, and skill-based routing.

To view ticket assignment details: 

1. In your HubSpot account, click More, then navigate to Service > Help Desk. If More doesn't appear in your account, navigate to Service > Help Desk directly.
2. Click a ticket to view the corresponding conversation. 
3. In the right sidebar, click Ticket activity to expand the section. Then, locate the ticket assignment activity and click Assignment details. 
4. In the Details section, click Routing Rule, User Availability, Capacity Check or Assignment to expand the section. 

Manage notifications for help desk tickets

You can receive notifications for unassigned tickets or tickets assigned to you. Notification preferences are managed in your personal settings. Super Admins in Enterprise accounts can set default notification preferences for other users. However, if a user sets their own preferences, those will override the default settings.

Learn more about managing ticket notifications.