Categories and departments

Sort incoming tickets by topic, and send each one to the right people.

A category is what the customer picks when they open a ticket.

How to reach this page

The admin sidebar does not list ticket categories, and the admin search does not find them. Type /admin/support/categories into your browser to open the page.

The categories you start with

Every panel ships with five categories:

Name	Slug	Description
General	general	General inquiries and questions
Technical	technical	Technical support and issues
Billing	billing	Billing and payment questions
Sales	sales	Sales and pre-purchase questions
Abuse	abuse	Report abuse or violations

Edit these, or add your own.

Create a category

1. Open the categories page.
2. Click Create Category.
3. Enter a Name. The Slug fills in as you type.
4. If the name needs more detail, write a Description.
5. Pick a Color, or type a hex value.
6. Enter an Icon Name. The icon is optional.
7. Set a Display Order. A lower number comes first.
8. Click Create.

A new category is always created active.

Category fields

Field	Description
Name	Required. What the customer sees in the category list.
Slug	Required. Lowercase letters, digits, and hyphens. Read Departments before you change it.
Description	Free text for your own reference.
Color	Required. The color of the badge on the ticket. The default is indigo.
Icon Name	The name of an icon from the Lucide set, such as help-circle, wrench, or credit-card. Leave it empty for no icon.
Display Order	The position in the list. The default is 0.
Active (visible to users)	Only on an existing category. Untick to take it off the new-ticket form.

TIP

A category has no other settings. It cannot assign a ticket to a staff member, it cannot set a default priority, and it cannot carry its own SLA target.

Edit and retire a category

Click the pencil icon on a card to edit it.

To take a category off the new-ticket form, edit it and untick Active (visible to users). The card then shows an Inactive badge. The tickets already in that category keep it and stay where they are.

Delete a category

Click the bin icon on the card. The panel asks:

Delete Category Are you sure you want to delete this category? This action cannot be undone. You cannot delete categories that have existing tickets.

Click Delete.

WARNING

The panel refuses to delete a category that holds any ticket, open or closed. A red message reads Cannot delete category with existing tickets.

To retire a category with history, untick Active instead.

Departments

The panel also stamps each ticket with a department. There are five, and you cannot change the list:

General, Technical, Billing, Sales, and Abuse.

You do not pick a department. The panel works it out from the slug of the category the customer picked. If the slug matches one of the five words above, the ticket takes that department. If the slug matches nothing, the ticket becomes General.

TIP

Give a new category the slug technical or billing to route it into that department. Any other slug lands the ticket in General.

The department drives two things:

• The Department filter on Admin > Support > Tickets.
• The Billing Support page in the billing portal, which shows the billing and sales tickets of the customer only.

Next steps

• Tickets - work on a ticket
• SLA and Automation - deadlines and auto-close