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, navigate to Service > Help Desk.
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 the ticket to you.
4. If you want to reassign a ticket to another user or team, open a ticket and click the Owner dropdown menu in the top right and select a user or team.

Automatically assign tickets

If you’re assigned a Service Hub seat, you can set routing rules for tickets created through channels connected to help desk. 

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 settings icon in the top navigation bar.
2. In the left sidebar menu, navigate to Inbox & Help Desk, then click Help Desk.
3. Under the Ticket sources and routing section, select Channels.
4. Hover over the team email and click Edit.
   
5. Navigate to the Automation tab.
6. If you want to set up skill-based routing, follow the steps in this article.
7. Click the Assign incoming tickets to dropdown menu and select a routing option:
   
   • Customer agent: assign an AI powered customer agent to respond to support questions. Learn more about the customer agent. 
     • Click the If the AI can’t answer, assign to dropdown menu to select the users or teams that'll receive the conversations the customer agent can’t answer:
       • No one: the conversation will be sent to the Unassigned view in the help desk for your team members to triage.
       • Specific users and teams: select the users and teams the incoming conversations should be routed to.
   • 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 (BETA): 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. 
   • 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 owner is offline, the submission will be emailed to the visitor's owner.
   • No one: the conversation will be sent to the Unassigned view in the help desk for your team members to triage.
8. To choose how you want to distribute tickets, click the Distribution dropdown menu and select an option:
   • Balanced: distribute tickets to users with the fewest open tickets assigned. 
   • Random: distribute tickets to users randomly. 
9. 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.

Set up automatic ticket assignment for form channels

1. In your HubSpot account, click the settings settings icon in the top navigation bar.
2. In the left sidebar menu, navigate to Inbox & Help Desk > Help Desk.
3. Under the Ticket sources and routing section, select Channels.
4. Hover over the form channel and click Edit.
5. Click the Assign incoming tickets to dropdown menu and select a routing option:
   • 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 (BETA): 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. 

1. • 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 offline, the submission will be emailed to the visitor's owner.
   • No one: incoming tickets will not be assigned to any team members.

1. 6. To choose how you want to distribute tickets, click the Distribution dropdown menu and select an option:
   • Balanced: distribute tickets to users with the fewest open tickets assigned. 
   • Random: distribute tickets to users randomly. 
2. 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.
3. In the bottom left, click Save.

Set up automatic ticket assignment for chatflow channels

To set up automatic ticket assignment for your chatflow, navigate to the chatflow's Build tab.

1. In your HubSpot account, navigate to Service > Chatflows.
2. Hover over the chatflow and click Edit.
3. On the Chat tab, click to toggle the Assignment switch on. Use the dropdown menus to select which users or teams to assign the conversations to.
4. In the bottom left, click Save.

Set up automatic ticket assignment for WhatsApp channels

1. In your HubSpot account, click the settings settings icon in the top navigation bar.
2. In the left sidebar menu, go to Inbox & Help Desk, then select Help Desk.
3. Under Ticket sources and routing, select Channels.
4. Hover over the WhatsApp channel and click Edit.
5. Click the Assign incoming tickets to dropdown and choose:
   • Customer agent: incoming tickets will be routed to the customer agent .
   • 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 (BETA): 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. 

1. • 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 offline, the submission will be emailed to the visitor's owner.
2. In the bottom left, click Save.

Set up automatic ticket assignment for calling channels

1. In your HubSpot account, click the settings settings icon in the top navigation bar.
2. In the left sidebar, go to Inbox & Help Desk, then select Help Desk.
3. Under Ticket sources and routing, select Channels.
4. Hover over the calling channel and click Edit.
5. Under Channel operating hours, click + Add hours.
6. Under Routing during operating hours, click the Specific users and teams dropdown menu, and 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.
7. Next, use the dropdown menu to select an audio message for calls which are unanswered and are sent to voicemail.

8. Under Routing after hours, click Setup Voicemail to enter a message.
9. Click Save.

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.