A department is the queue a ticket lands in and the mailbox its replies come back to. Get the mailbox right and the help desk runs by itself.
- Add the department
Settings › Support Departments. Name it the way customers think ("Billing", "Technical"), with a description shown under the name.
- Give it a real mailbox
The address it sends from and collects replies into, which nothing else reads: polling deletes what it imports.
- Order and staff it
The first department is the default and gets the misfiled tickets. Assign the administrators who work it.
- Choose its options
Clients only, Hidden, No auto-responder, Pipe replies only, Feedback request, Prevent client closure.
- Test it end to end
Open a ticket as a customer, reply as staff, then reply from the customer's email program and check the reply lands on the ticket.
- Clients only
- Only signed-in customers may open tickets here. Good for billing.
- Hidden
- Not offered to customers: for internal or escalation queues.
- Pipe replies only
- Accepts replies to existing tickets but opens no new ones from unknown senders. Keeps a public address from becoming a spam funnel.
- Feedback request
- Asks for a rating when the ticket closes.
Full guide
The complete reference is Set up support departments in the WBAMS documentation.