Use this article to manage back-office tickets from the Inbox — including how to identify them, update their state, add notes, and control whether state changes affect linked customer conversations. Back-office tickets are used by specialist teams to work on issues internally, separate from the customer-facing conversation. Enabling or disabling the workspace-level toggle requires admin access.

How to identify a back-office ticket in the Inbox

To make it easier for your team to differentiate between Customer tickets, Back-office tickets, Tracker tickets, and conversations, you’ll see visual differentiations in the Inbox.

Back-office tickets are internal tickets used by specialist or back-office teams to work on issues raised from a customer conversation. They differ from Customer tickets (shared directly with the customer) and Tracker tickets (used to link multiple conversations to a single underlying issue).

For Back-office tickets you see:

Back-office ticket icon
Ticket ID and title
Last note, or update

Inbox list view showing how Back-office tickets are visually distinguished from conversations — with the Back-office ticket icon, ticket ID, title, and last note or update displayed

Default attributes on a back-office ticket

Title
- Click to edit value
Ticket ID
User
Company
Sharing behavior
Ticket description
- Click to edit value. You can use different format options: sorted lists, unsorted lists, bold, italic, code block, quote, and hyperlinks.

Back-office ticket showing default attributes including Title, Ticket ID, User, Company, Sharing behavior, and Ticket description

Custom attributes on a back-office ticket

Each Back-office ticket has a ticket type that determines which custom attributes are captured. When viewing a Back-office ticket, custom attributes for that ticket type are displayed in the center panel.

The center panel of a Back-office ticket showing custom attributes configured for that ticket type, such as priority or category

How to change the state of a back-office ticket

As your team progresses the ticket, they can change its state to:

In progress
Waiting on customer
Resolved

To change the ticket state, click the ticket state button (for example, In progress) in the top right corner of the ticket, then select the new state from the dropdown. The ticket state updates immediately, and an event is automatically posted in any linked customer conversations and Customer tickets to keep front-line teammates informed.

Back-office ticket with the state dropdown open in the top right, showing the three available states: In progress, Waiting on customer, and Resolved

The ticket state updates immediately. An event is also posted in any linked customer conversations and Customer tickets, so front-line teammates are kept informed of the change.

A customer conversation showing the automatic state-change event posted when a linked Back-office ticket changed state — visible to front-line teammates without them needing to check the ticket

Prevent state changes from reopening linked conversations

By default, changing a back-office ticket's state will reopen or unsnooze any linked customer conversations. You can disable this using a workspace toggle, giving front-line teammates full control over when conversations resurface.

How to enable 'Prevent state changes from reopening linked conversations'

Go to Settings > Helpdesk > Tickets > Ticket states.
Toggle on Prevent state changes from reopening linked conversations. The toggle turns blue to confirm it's active. From this point forward, Back-office ticket state changes will no longer reopen or unsnooze linked customer conversations.

Note: This setting is off by default.

What happens when 'Prevent state changes from reopening linked conversations' is enabled

A back-office agent moving a ticket to "In Progress" or "Resolved" will not reopen or unsnooze the linked customer conversation
Front-line teammates remain in control of when customer conversations resurface
Notes, assignments, and notifications on the back-office ticket continue to work normally

Important: This setting only applies to future state changes. Conversations that were already unsnoozed before you enabled the setting will stay in their current state.

Limitations

The following limitations apply to the 'Prevent state changes from reopening linked conversations' setting:

Workspace-level only — the "Prevent state changes from reopening linked conversations" setting applies to all back-office tickets in the workspace. It can't be configured per team or ticket type.
Tracker tickets are not affected — they already have a separate per-action modal for propagating state changes.
Not retroactive — conversations already unsnoozed before the setting was enabled stay in their current state.

How to add notes to a back-office ticket

Back-office tickets support internal notes only. All notes posted to a Back-office ticket won’t be shared with the customer.

When posting a note to a Back-office ticket, there are 2 options:

1. Add note: Adds the note to the Back-office ticket being worked on.

Back-office ticket composer with the Add note button highlighted — this adds a note only to the Back-office ticket, not to the linked customer conversation

2. Cross-post note: Adds the note to the back-office ticket and simultaneously posts it as a note in any linked Customer tickets or conversations, so front-line teammates can see the update without switching views. This is especially useful when there's a status change that all front-line teammates need to know about.

Back-office ticket composer with Cross-post note selected — this posts the note simultaneously to the Back-office ticket and to any linked Customer tickets or conversations

Use the keyboard shortcut ⌘ / Ctrl Shift Enter to cross-post a note.

How to preview the linked customer conversation

When working in a back-office ticket, your team can preview the customer conversation or Customer ticket it was created from, without leaving the back-office ticket view.

Open the ticket details sidebar on the right, go to the Links section, then click Open to preview the linked customer conversation.