When a user creates a new ticket they must select what "Category" the ticket is for. Categories are tied to departments. You can manage your Departments and Categories from "Settings | Departments"

Most companies might only have one department in TicketSlate, like for IT. But you can also have other departments in your organization use the help desk as well. Examples include, maintenance requests, billing, HR and so on.

When you have multiple departments, the "New Ticket" screen displays the categories grouped by departments to the end-user. If you choose to only have one department, the "New Ticket" screen only shows a list of categories.

Department Screen

Departments can have a name, ticket number prefix, and settings for auto closing, and reminders.

Ticket Prefix

The ticket prefix is optional and will be prepended to the incremental ticket number when displaying ticket numbers. For example, if you choose to have a ticket prefix of "IT-", ticket numbers will appear as IT-000445 and IT-015943. This is only for visual references and can be helpful to easily pick out ticket types if you have multiple departments.

Reminder Timeout

The reminder timeout, if greater than zero, will cause an email to be sent to the submitter(s) of all tickets with the status "Waiting on Customer", without replies from the end-user, in X amount of days. The email reminds the submitter(s) that the ticket is waiting for their response. This check happens daily at night.

Auto-Close Timeout

The auto-close timeout, if greater than zero, will cause all tickets with the status "Waiting on Customer" ,without replies from the end-user, in X amount of days, to be closed automatically. When this happens, an email will be sent to the submitter(s) and owner(s) notifying them the ticket was automatically closed. This check happens daily at night.