Help desk

The Help desk button at the top right (the headset, next to the ⚙) opens your tickets; the book icon next to it opens the knowledge base. A red number on the button counts what waits for you: new replies from requesters on your tickets, tickets nobody is assigned to, and approval requests addressed to you (point at it for the breakdown). On narrower screens the button shows the headset only. Technicians work on tickets in Steward IT Census; your users submit and follow their requests in the user portal, signing in with their normal Windows (Active Directory) account.

Who can do what:

Who	Can
Administrators	everything, including deleting tickets and the help desk settings
Roles with Help desk technician (Configuration › Logins & roles)	see all tickets, create them, reply, write internal notes, assign, change status, priority and category, link assets and articles
Other logins (Viewer, roles without the permission)	only the knowledge base; tickets are hidden
End users in the portal	their own requests only

Technician seats#

Working tickets needs a technician seat: creating tickets, replying, writing notes, changing status, priority or category, linking, merging, recording time, requesting approval, and being assigned. Reading tickets doesn't. One seat is free; more cost $100 each, added to your license. End users in the portal never need one.

While a seat is free, the first technician to work a ticket (or to be assigned one) takes it automatically, so a one-person help desk has nothing to set up.
Administrators can give, take back and move seats with the Technician seat tick on Configuration › Logins & roles, which also shows how many are in use. Administrators don't use a seat unless they work tickets.
Only technicians with a seat are offered for assignment, including a category's default technician. A technician without one sees a notice and the tickets read-only: no reply box, no changes, no new tickets.
If a license key is removed, the seats given first keep working.

Tickets#

The left panel lists the views with their counts:

My open tickets: assigned to you and not resolved yet.
Unassigned: nobody has taken them.
New replies: the user answered since the last technician reply (also marked with a dot in every list).
All open, Waiting for user, Resolved, Closed, All tickets.
Open by category: open tickets per category.

The search box finds tickets by number (1042 or #1042), subject, requester, email address and the text of every note. Lists show the most urgent tickets first.

Statuses#

Status	Meaning
Open	new or reopened, nobody is working on it yet
In progress	a technician is on it
Waiting for user	you asked the user something; their reply sets it back to Open
Resolved	fixed, waiting for the user to confirm. A reply from the user reopens it; otherwise it closes by itself after 7 days (configurable)
Closed	done. The user can't reply any more; they open a new request instead

You can add your own statuses (such as Waiting for vendor) and ticket types, rename the priorities and add more: see Types, statuses and priorities.

Working on a ticket#

The ticket page shows the conversation, newest at the bottom:

Reply to …: the user sees it in the portal and gets it by email.
🔒 Internal note: only technicians see it (yellow). Use it for findings, passwords to look up, hand-over notes.
Then set …: change the status in the same step, for example Send reply and set Resolved.
Attach files (up to 10 per message, 25 MB each). Pictures show as thumbnails; other files download.
📚 Insert article puts a link to a knowledge base article into your reply and links the article to the ticket. Articles shown in the portal open there for the user; for other articles you get a warning, because the user can't open them.

The panel on the right changes status, priority, category and assigned to (with Assign to me). Every change is recorded in the conversation as a small gray line; only status changes are shown to the user. It also shows when the ticket was opened, first answered, resolved and closed, the requester (linked to their user page) and the linked assets and articles (＋ Link / ✕).

Administrators can delete a ticket with all its notes and files.

The right column also holds the ticket's approval, its time spent, the requester's rating and Merge into another ticket… (merging).

New tickets#

New ticket (also on an asset's Tickets tab and on a user's page) creates a ticket on behalf of someone who called or stopped by:

Requester: start typing and pick a user from Active Directory, or type any name and an email address for someone outside AD (they get emails but can't use the portal).
Subject, category, priority, status, who it is assigned to (empty = the category's technician), description and attachments.

Tickets on assets and users#

An asset's Tickets tab lists the tickets it is linked to, with New ticket for that asset. Tickets from the portal are linked to the computer the user picked.
A user's page lists their tickets.
Reports in the Help desk category: Open tickets, Open tickets by category, Open tickets by technician and Assets with the most tickets (last 90 days), also usable as dashboard widgets. Time and satisfaction reports are described under Time spent and Satisfaction survey.

User portal#

The portal is a simple page for your users at https://<your server>:8443/portal/. They can:

open a new request: a short summary, category, the computer it is about (the computers they log on to or are assigned to), a description and screenshots. While they type the summary, matching help articles are suggested.
follow their requests and the replies, answer, and add files;
confirm a resolved request (Yes, close it) or reopen it (No, it still doesn't work), or close a request themselves when the problem went away;
read the help articles you share with them.

They never see internal notes, technician-only events, other users' requests, articles that aren't shared, or anything else in Steward IT Census. A portal sign-in is not a Census login.

Signing in#

Users sign in with their Active Directory user name (jdoe, CORP\jdoe or jdoe@corp.example) and password. Census checks the password with the domain controller of the AD domain the account was synced from (an LDAP bind as the user) and stores nothing. Requirements:

The domain is set up under Scanning › Active Directory & Entra ID and has synced, so the account is known to Census. Accounts disabled in AD can't sign in, and their portal sessions end at the next sync.
The domain uses StartTLS or LDAPS. Domains set to plain LDAP are refused, because the password would cross the network unencrypted.
Microsoft Entra ID accounts can use Sign in with Microsoft instead, if you turn it on (see below).
If the same user name exists in several synced domains, users sign in with DOMAIN\name or their full name@domain (UPN).

After 10 wrong passwords from one address, sign-in pauses for a few minutes. Sessions last 8 hours.

For organizations using Microsoft 365 / Entra ID accounts, the portal can show a Sign in with Microsoft button next to (or, without Active Directory, instead of) the password form. It's off by default; Active Directory passwords keep working either way.

Connect the Entra ID tenant under Scanning › Active Directory & Entra ID and let it sync users.
In the Entra admin center, open the tenant's app registration (the one the sync uses) › Authentication › Add a platform › Web, and add the redirect URI shown in the help desk settings: https://<your server>/portal/oauth/callback. The server address must be the one in General settings, reachable by your users' browsers.
Configuration › Help desk › Sign in with Microsoft: choose the tenant and save.

Users then sign in with their Microsoft account (including multi-factor authentication and conditional access, which Microsoft handles). Census uses the standard OpenID Connect authorization code flow with PKCE, and receives only the account's ID and name; it never sees the password. The account must be one Census has synced: cloud accounts are found by their Entra object ID; in hybrid environments, where the Entra sync leaves on-premises users to the Active Directory sync, the account is matched to the Active Directory user with the same user principal name, so the user sees the same tickets with either sign-in.

Tick Show in the help desk portal on a knowledge base article to share it. Shared articles are marked 🌐; the portal lists them under Help articles, suggests them while users write a request, and shows the ones linked to a request on that request.

Email to ticket#

Census can read a help desk mailbox (Configuration › Help desk › Email to ticket):

New emails become tickets. The sender is the requester (matched to their Active Directory / Entra ID account by email address, so they can also follow the ticket in the portal), the subject becomes the ticket subject, and attachments and pasted screenshots are attached. The requester gets the usual "we received your request" email.
Replies are added to their ticket. Ticket emails have [#1001] in the subject and their replies go to the help desk mailbox; when the requester replies, the new text (without the quoted earlier emails) is added to the ticket like a reply in the portal, and a ticket that was waiting for them or resolved opens again. A reply from someone else (a colleague in CC, a technician) is added as an internal note, so only technicians see it. A reply to a closed ticket opens a new ticket that refers to it.
Ignored: out-of-office replies, bounces and mailing-list mail, emails from the help desk's own address, and copies of emails already handled. Ticket emails are marked as automatic, so other systems' auto-replies don't answer them. One sender can open at most 20 tickets an hour by email.

Options:

Setting
Mailbox	IMAP (any mail server; TLS or STARTTLS, user name and password, folder) or Microsoft 365 (through Microsoft Graph with your Entra ID tenant's app registration, which needs the Mail.ReadWrite application permission; limit it to the help desk mailbox with an Exchange Online application access policy) or Gmail / Google Workspace (through the Gmail API with a Google Workspace service account credential: in the Google Admin console's domain-wide delegation, add its client ID with the scope `https://www.googleapis.com/auth/gmail.modify` and enable the Gmail API in its Cloud project; no password or app password; Label = the Gmail label to read, default INBOX; the mailbox must be a user, not a group).
Mailbox address	The help desk address; ticket emails use it as their reply address.
Only take replies	New emails don't open tickets; only replies to ticket emails are added (useful if users should open tickets in the portal).
Known senders only	New tickets only from people Census knows (synced Active Directory / Entra ID users and technicians) and from the domains you list.
Check every	How often the mailbox is read (default 2 minutes).

Census marks the emails it handled as read and leaves everything else in the mailbox. Check now reads it at once and shows the result; Last emails lists what happened to the recent ones.

Service levels#

Each ticket gets two deadlines when it's opened: the first reply and the resolution, from the targets for its priority (Configuration › Help desk › Service levels; defaults: urgent 1 h / 8 h, high 4 h / 24 h, normal 8 h / 72 h, low 24 h / 168 h). Working time describes your shop: working hours, working days and holidays (one per line: 12-25 Christmas repeats every year, 2026-11-26 Thanksgiving is one day; the name is optional; server time). Tick Count deadlines in working time only to stop the clock outside working hours, on non-working days and on holidays; otherwise deadlines run around the clock.

A priority change recalculates the deadlines. A technician can also set the resolution date by hand (Change due date on the ticket); then priority changes leave it alone, and Use the service level target gives it back.
While a ticket is waiting for the user, its clock is paused: when it leaves that status, the deadlines move on by the time it spent waiting.
The Due column in the ticket lists shows the next deadline; overdue tickets are listed under Overdue in the left panel. Reports: Overdue tickets and Service level results (last 30 days) (per priority: tickets resolved, first reply on time, resolved on time).
Untick Use service level targets to turn deadlines off for new tickets.

Service level emails (Service levels › Emails, needs email): the assigned technician gets a warning shortly before a deadline (60 minutes by default; 0 = no warning), and when a deadline is missed, an OVERDUE email goes to the technician and to the addresses you list (for example a team lead). For unassigned tickets, the technician of the ticket's category (or the default technician) gets them. Each email goes out once per deadline; when a deadline changes (priority change, date set by hand), the new one is announced again. Tickets waiting for the user don't get emails, nor does a first-reply deadline once a technician has replied. When they're sent is your choice: tick whether they may go out on holidays (off by default), on non-working days such as weekends (on) and outside working hours (on). Emails that may not go out yet wait and are sent at the start of the next working time. Deadlines missed more than a number of working days before Census noticed them (2 by default; 0 = always email), for example when email was just set up or the server was off, are not mailed. Links in these emails use the server address from General settings.

Canned responses#

Ready-made replies for common answers: Help desk › Canned responses (any technician can add, edit and delete them). On a ticket, 💬 Canned response inserts one into the reply, filling in {requester}, {first_name}, {number}, {subject} and {technician}. Responses tied to the ticket's category are listed first.

Custom ticket fields#

Configuration › Help desk › Custom ticket fields adds your own details to tickets: text, number, date or a list of choices (e.g. Location, Phone, Cost center). Technicians fill them in under Details on the ticket page and on the new-ticket form; every change is recorded on the ticket. Tick Ask in the portal to ask users for a field when they open a request (and show them the value), and Required there to make it mandatory in the portal. Removing a field keeps the values already entered on tickets.

Types, statuses and priorities#

Help desk › Settings › Types, statuses & language (administrators):

Ticket types: what kind of ticket it is. Out of the box Incident, Service request and Question. Technicians set the type on the ticket and the new-ticket form, and can filter the ticket list by it. The portal asks users for it when there are two or more types. Remove all to not use types.
Custom statuses: named variants of the five statuses above, for example Waiting for vendor or Waiting for parts (working like In progress), or Parked (working like Waiting for user). A custom status behaves exactly like the status it is based on: only Waiting for user pauses the service level clock, and only Resolved and Closed end the work. Users see the custom name in the portal. A reply from the user, closing or reopening returns a ticket to a plain status.
Priorities: the four built-in priorities (Low, Normal, High, Urgent) can be renamed and reordered but not removed; you can add your own, such as Critical above Urgent. The order (lowest first) decides how ticket lists are sorted. Give new priorities service level targets under Service levels. A removed priority stays on tickets that have it until they are changed.
Language: see Help desk language.

Ticket templates#

Help desk › Settings › Ticket templates holds prefilled tickets for requests that come up again and again: new employee, password reset, a software request. A template has a subject, a text (often a short form to fill in), type, category, priority, technician and custom field values.

Technicians choose a template at the top of New ticket; they can still change everything before saving.
Templates marked In the portal are offered to users as Common requests when they open a new request. Only the subject, text, category and type are used there; the technician and custom field values stay internal.

Dispatching rules#

Help desk › Settings › Dispatching rules decide what happens to new tickets before they are saved, whatever their source (portal, email, a technician or the API, or an import). Rules run from top to bottom (use ▲▼ to order them). When all the conditions a rule has match, its actions apply:

Conditions	Actions
Source (portal, email, technician / API, import); none ticked = any	Set the category, type or priority
Subject or text contains (comma-separated alternatives)	Assign to a technician
Requester name, account or email contains; requester email domain	Set a status (only for tickets that start as Open)
Requester is in an Active Directory group (as synced, nested groups included)	Email more addresses about the new ticket
Category, type, priority, or a custom field's value	Add an internal note

A later rule can change what an earlier one set; tick Stop on a rule to end the list for tickets it applies to. Tickets still without a technician afterwards go to their category's technician. Each ticket's history shows which rules applied (technicians only), and the rule list shows how often each rule applied. Try the rules shows which rules a sample ticket would match without saving anything.

Importing tickets#

Help desk › Settings › Import tickets (administrators) brings tickets over from another help desk or a spreadsheet: a CSV file, one ticket per row, with a header row. Columns are recognized by name: Subject (required), Description, Requester (an email address or account name, matched with Active Directory), Requester name, Category, Type, Priority, Status, Assigned to (a Census login name or its email), Created (2024-03-31 or 2024-03-31 14:05) and your custom ticket fields.

Census checks the file first and shows what each row will become; nothing is changed until you click Import. Each row becomes a new ticket with the next number, the description as its first message and the original creation date. Dispatching rules run with the source Import (they don't change the status of imported tickets), and no emails are sent.

Merging tickets#

When the same problem comes in twice (a user emails and calls, or several people report the same outage), merge the duplicate into the ticket you keep: on the duplicate, click Merge into another ticket… and enter the number of the ticket to keep.

Its replies, notes, files, linked assets and articles and its time entries move to the ticket you keep. Moved messages are marked from #… and stay in date order in the conversation.
The duplicate is closed and shows Merged into #… with a link, for technicians and in the portal. It can't be changed any more.
The ticket you keep keeps its requester. If the duplicate came from someone else, an internal note names them: they don't get the replies of the other ticket, so tell them yourself if needed.
Email replies to the duplicate (by its number in the subject or as a reply to its emails) are added to the ticket you keep.
You can't merge into a closed or already merged ticket. Logins limited to some assets can only merge tickets they can see.

Time spent#

Record the time you spend on a ticket, for your own overview or to bill it:

With a reply or note: fill in Time spent under the text box (minutes like 45, hours and minutes like 1:30, or 1.5h) and tick Billable if it is.
In the Time spent panel on the right: time, day, an optional note and Billable. The panel lists every entry and the ticket's total.
You can change (✎) and delete (✕) your own entries; administrators can change everyone's.

Reports in the Help desk category: Time spent per technician per month (with the billable part), Time spent per ticket, Time spent per category and Billable time per requester (per month, with the requester's department from the directory).

Approvals#

Some tickets need a yes from someone before work goes on, for example a purchase or access to a shared folder. Click Request approval in the ticket's Approval panel and choose who decides:

the requester's manager, when Active Directory or Entra ID names one with an email address;
Census logins with the help desk permission;
other people by email address, as long as the address belongs to a user in your directory.

Add a message (what needs approval, the cost…) and send. The ticket shows Waiting for approval. Approvers get an email with a link to a page where they approve or reject, with an optional comment; they don't need to sign in, and the link works once and for 14 days. Census logins can also answer on the ticket page, and technicians can record an answer they got another way (for example by phone) on the approver's behalf.

The first answer decides: the other approvers' links stop working. The decision and comment are recorded on the ticket and emailed to the assigned technician. When approved, an open ticket moves to In progress; when rejected, the ticket shows Rejected and you decide how to go on. Cancel request withdraws a pending request (its links stop working). Requesters don't see approvals in the portal.

Satisfaction survey#

Turn on Configuration › Help desk › Satisfaction survey to ask requesters how you did. The email telling them their request is resolved then asks How did we do? with Good, Okay and Bad links.

The link opens a page with their choice selected, where they can add a comment and send it. It works without signing in, in the help desk language.
Each ticket gets one rating. Requesters can change it for 14 days; the link works for 30 days.
The rating and comment show on the ticket page and in its conversation (for technicians only). A Bad rating is emailed to the assigned technician.
Reports: Requester satisfaction per technician (Good / Okay / Bad and the share of good ratings per month) and Requester ratings and comments.

Requesters only get the survey when they have an email address and requester emails are on.

Help desk language#

The user portal and the emails to requesters can be in English, German, French, Spanish, Dutch, Italian or Portuguese (Help desk › Settings › Types, statuses & language). Technician emails and service level emails stay in English; the technicians' console follows each login's language (see General settings).

Texts you typed yourself (portal title and welcome text, categories, types, custom statuses, templates, knowledge base articles) are shown as you wrote them. The built-in English portal title and welcome text follow the language. A few error messages from the server stay in English.

Settings#

Configuration › Help desk (administrators):

User portal: turn it on, choose which AD domains may sign in, and set the portal's title and welcome text. The portal address uses the server address from General settings; set it to a name your users can reach.
Portal branding: your logo (PNG, JPEG or WebP, up to 256 KB) and your header and accent colors, used on the portal's sign-in page, header and browser tab. A light header color automatically gets dark text. Use the Census logo and Go back to the Census colors undo it. The company name next to the portal title comes from General settings.
Categories: add, rename or remove categories, and choose the technician new tickets in each category go to. Other new tickets go to covers tickets without a category or whose category has nobody.
Email notifications (needs email to be set up):
- requesters get an email when their ticket is received, for every public reply, and when it is resolved;
- technicians get an email when a ticket is assigned to them (by someone else) and when the user replies;
- the also tell these addresses list gets every new portal ticket, for example a shared help desk mailbox.
Technicians need an email address on their login: Configuration › Logins & roles › Email. Without email to ticket, replies to these emails are not read and users answer in the portal; with it, they can simply reply.
Satisfaction survey: ask requesters to rate resolved tickets (details).
Closing: resolved tickets close automatically after this many days (0 = never). To delete closed tickets after a while (with their notes and attachments), use Closed help desk tickets under Cleanup and retention.

Backups#

Tickets are in the database and their attachments in the tickets folder of the data directory; both are included in every backup.