How to set up ticket boards, statuses, priorities, tags and intake AI
Decide how every ticket is routed, timed and triaged: set up boards, statuses, priorities, tags and the Intake AI that works on new tickets, with its score floors and per-status switches, under Settings > Service Desk.
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How to do it
Open Settings > Service Desk > Ticket Boards, open a board, and look at Internal Board and Exclude from AI.
Internal Board means hidden from clients, with no client email notifications. Use it for internal work such as monitoring or maintenance. Exclude from AI means Elise ignores these tickets for search, agendas and triage, which suits a busy monitoring board you never want summarized. Exclude from SLA, just below them, is a separate switch: tickets on that board do not get SLA deadlines. The same editor holds Notify client on reply, Notify client on close and Internal Notifications.
Open Settings > Service Desk > Status Workflow and look at a status row.
Each row shows the status, its Category, badges and an icon. A lock means a system status that ships with the portal and cannot be deleted. A status you add yourself with Add Status shows a trash icon instead. The Category picker offers Open (SLA running), Resolved and Closed, and built-in statuses can carry others, such as Locked. A Pauses SLA badge means the SLA clock is frozen while a ticket sits in that status. An Auto-close badge, such as Auto-close 168h, means the hourly auto-close job closes a ticket left in that status with no update for that many hours.
Open a status and set its switches.
In the status editor, Pauses SLA timer freezes the SLA clock. Under Client visibility are Visible to client portal, Re-activate on client reply and Block public replies. Under Automation are four switches. Block time tracking means timers cannot run on tickets in this status. Skip notifications means entering this status sends no notifications. Skip pod auto-assign means dispatch auto-assignment ignores tickets in this status. Skip AI triage means AI triage does not process tickets in this status. Above the switches, Auto-route to board moves a ticket to that board when it enters the status (the default is - No auto-route -). Below them, Auto-close after sets the hours with no update before it closes (0 or blank means never).
Switch Status flow to Advanced, edit a status, and look at its Can move to chips.
Simple uses the built-in flow, and custom statuses are always reachable. Advanced enforces each status's Can move to list, edited on the status itself. Statuses you leave unselected are blocked in Advanced mode. Reset to default flow replaces every transition rule with the built-in default flow, so custom transitions are lost.
Switch Status flow to Advanced, edit a status, and look at its Can move to chips. Open Settings > Service Desk > Priorities.
Ticket Priorities lists the priority levels tickets can carry. The shipped priorities are Critical, High, Medium and Low, and the page marks the default ones read-only. You can add custom levels with Add Priority, and a star marks the priority that is Default for new tickets. The response and resolution targets for each of the four shipped priorities are on Settings > Service Levels > SLA Display.
Open Settings > Service Desk > Intake AI and look at the master switch and What AI Does on Intake.
The Intake AI master switch decides whether AI works on tickets as they come in. When it is off, no AI runs on any intake path (email, client portal, admin or recurring tickets), so no priority, first note or tagging is applied. Under What AI Does on Intake are five switches: AI Priority, AI First Note, AI Doc Suggestions, AI Procedure Checklists and AI Tagging (AI Tagging starts off). They only take effect while the master switch is on. Turn off one behavior and leave the rest running. AI Procedure Checklists needs AI Doc Suggestions on too. A ticket's board always comes from your Ticket Rules, never from AI.
Read Suggestion score floors on the Intake AI page.
These four read-only rows show how good a match a document has to be before Elise puts it on a ticket: Knowledge base link floor, Procedure link floor, Procedure checklist attach floor and Duplicate runbook floor (drafting). Use them when the suggestion stream gets quieter or noisier. The two link floors are recalibrated every night from what your techs dismiss and keep. Calibration needs at least 10 dismissed and 10 kept suggestions from the last 90 days. Until then a row reads Shipped default, and once it has calibrated it reads Calibrated with the counts behind it. The two text-match floors are fixed in the code and never move on their own, because attaching a checklist puts work on the ticket and a closed ticket that already has a close-enough runbook does not produce a new draft. None of the four can be edited here.
Open Settings > Service Desk > Documentation Categories.
Documentation Categories are the dropdown options for the Category field on every knowledge-base article, procedure and runbook. Categories the portal ships with carry a System Category badge. You can add, rename and reorder categories here, and a document keeps its category when you rename it.
Open Settings > Service Desk > Tag Defaults.
Tags here are company-wide: Add a new company-wide tag and every client sees it at once. A tag row has Archive, Restore and Lock, and no delete button. Archive hides a tag from pickers, and anything that already carries it keeps resolving it, so billing history and audit history stay intact. A locked tag, shown as Protected, matches only its exact name. A tag's description helps Elise decide when to apply it.
Ask Elise about these settings.
Elise can explain a setting. For example, "What is Intake AI set to?" or "Why is Elise attaching procedures to tickets?" returns the controls, their current values and where to change them. She can explain why something happened to a ticket with "Why did this ticket get tagged automatically?", which needs Settings view access and view access to the ticket. She can change one registered setting after you approve it, for example "Turn off AI First Note", which sets AI First Note to false once you tap approve. Boards, statuses, priorities and tags are records, not registered settings, so she does not edit them from chat. She can still act on tickets: "Move ticket 24 to the Escalations board", "Set ticket 24 to High priority" and "Add the Printer tag to ticket 24" each run without an approval step unless your admin has tightened Elise's approvals, and "How many open tickets do we have, by status and by client?" gives a count.
What you will have
- Keep internal work off the client's screen and out of Elise's search with Internal Board and Exclude from AI.
- Shape each status: the clock it pauses, the notifications it skips, whether time can run, whether dispatch and AI triage touch it, and the board it moves to.
- Choose Simple or Advanced status flow and control which status can move to which.
- Know that Critical, High, Medium and Low are the shipped priorities and where their SLA targets are set.
- Turn each Intake AI behavior on or off, and read the Suggestion score floors to see why Elise links fewer or more documents.
- Use Documentation Categories and Tag Defaults, and know that tags are archived, not deleted.
- Ask Elise to explain these settings, change one after your approval, and move or tag tickets.
Why it works this way: How to set up ticket boards, statuses, priorities, tags and intake AI
Pauses SLA is its own switch on each status. It is separate from the status's Category.
Advanced mode's Can move to chips are on each status's own editor on the Status Workflow page.
AI Procedure Checklists uses the same document search as AI Doc Suggestions, so it needs that switch on too.
Tags are archived, never deleted, so tickets, devices and documents that already carry a tag keep resolving it.
Other ways to do this: How to set up ticket boards, statuses, priorities, tags and intake AI
Add a tag for one client only
Open that client, go to its Tags tab, and add a client-specific tag there.
If it did not work: How to set up ticket boards, statuses, priorities, tags and intake AI
- If a custom status will not delete, tickets may still use it. The portal says tickets using it need to be reassigned first.
- If AI Procedure Checklists never attaches a checklist even though it is on, check AI Doc Suggestions. It needs that switch on too.
- If a tag will not go away, that is by design. Use Archive, and Restore to bring it back.
Questions this page answers
What is an internal board?
An internal board (like NOC) is hidden from clients and doesn't send client email notifications. Use it for internal operations like backup monitoring or maintenance work.
What does "Exclude from AI" do?
When a board is marked "Exclude from AI", Elise ignores all tickets on that board when searching, generating meeting agendas, or building context. Use it for NOC/monitoring boards with high-volume automated tickets.
What does "Category" do on a status?
Category buckets statuses into Open, Resolved, Closed, and Locked for reporting and behavior. Open = counted as active work. Resolved = ready for closure review. Closed = terminal. Locked = a held bucket used in rollups. SLA pause is not a category, it is a separate per-status setting (the pausesSLA flag) you turn on for hold statuses like Waiting on Client. Dashboard widgets and Elise scoring rollups read these category buckets.
Why can't I delete some statuses?
Statuses with a lock icon are System statuses seeded with the portal. They carry behavioral flags (pausesSla, visibleToClient) that ticket logic depends on. You can't delete them, but you can add Custom statuses alongside - those get a trash icon and can be removed safely if no tickets reference them.
Simple vs. Advanced mode, what changes?
This lives on Settings → Service Desk → Status Workflow. "Simple" (the default) does not open every move. It follows a built-in flow: for example, a "New" ticket can move to "AI Triage", "In Progress", or "Closed", but not straight to "Resolved". Any custom status you add, and any hold status like "Waiting on Client", can always be reached from any status. "Advanced" replaces the built-in flow: only the transitions you turn on with each status's "Can move to" chips are permitted. In both modes, the server blocks any move that is not allowed.
How do I add or remove a transition?
Transitions live on Settings → Service Desk → Status Workflow, not here. Switch that page to Advanced mode, then on each status use its Can move to chips to pick the statuses it may move to, each chip is one allowed transition. Removing a chip removes that transition. The first time you switch to Advanced, the standard ticket lifecycle is seeded as a starting point.
How do priorities affect tickets?
Every ticket has a priority. The priority picks an SLA policy (Settings → Service Levels → SLA Display). The policy sets the response deadline and can set a resolution deadline. The priority also sets the order in the ticket list and the color dot on each row. A custom priority is added to the pickers that read this list, such as the service desk. The Ticket Rules (email parsing) picker has only the four system priorities.
Why are CRITICAL / HIGH / MEDIUM / LOW locked?
Those four are System priorities seeded on every instance because the SLA policy set (Settings → Service Levels → SLA Display) is keyed off these exact values. You can't rename or delete them, but you can change the display label + dot color, and you can add Custom priorities alongside (which won't map to an SLA target unless you create a policy for them).
What is the Intake AI page for?
This page controls what the AI does the moment a new ticket comes in. It can set priority, write a first note, suggest docs, attach a checklist, and add tags. Board routing always follows fixed Ticket Rules, never AI.
How do I turn off one part of AI intake without turning it all off?
Go to Settings → Service Desk → Intake AI. Leave the Intake AI master switch on. Under "What AI Does on Intake," turn off just the one you want off: AI Priority, AI First Note, or AI Doc Suggestions. You can turn AI Procedure Checklists or AI Tagging on or off on their own too. Then save. Turning off the master switch instead turns off all of them, on every path: email, client portal, admin, and recurring tickets.
Why didn't a procedure checklist attach to a new ticket?
AI Procedure Checklists attaches a checklist only when AI Doc Suggestions is on too. Both use the same document search. With AI Doc Suggestions off, no checklist attaches by itself. A tech can still add one by hand: open the ticket, go to Related Items, and click Link Item to attach the procedure.
What are Documentation Categories?
The dropdown options for the Category field on every knowledge-base article, procedure, and runbook. Add/rename/reorder here; existing items keep their category by id (renaming the label here renames everywhere it's displayed).
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