Support desk: cases, queues and service levels

What customers ask, by e-mail or by phone, is kept as cases: each one with the customer and the person there, who works it, what was said, and how fast it must be answered. The design is ADR-0092; the API is support.

In the app: Service > Cases and Service > Support queues, and Cases on a customer's card.

Queues

A queue is where cases land. An administrator sets one up per team or topic (for example SUPPORT and BILLING) on Support queues. Each field of the form says what goes in it. The code is made from the name (Customer support: CUSTOMER-SUPPORT) unless you type your own, and never changes. A new queue starts with the standard service levels in office hours, Monday to Friday 08:00 to 17:00; Fast, Standard, Relaxed and No targets fill all eight boxes at once, and you adjust any of them. With a contact e-mail on the company, the form offers an inbox address of its domain. Suggest with AI proposes a name, service levels and working hours for your company, each with its reason; check them, then save.

(First reply / resolution, in working hours.)

Cases

A case has its number (CASE-000001, per company), subject, status, priority, channel (e-mail, phone, web, other), the customer and a contact of it, or the requester's name and address when they are not a contact yet, and the person who works it. When a customer is linked, the case also carries customer_context (open and overdue invoices, active subscriptions and open opportunities), and the customer's card includes open_support_cases, breached_support_cases, active_subscriptions and open_opportunities.

Opening a case by hand (New case), each field says what goes in it, and the priority says what urgent, high, normal and low mean. Once the description is written, Suggest with AI proposes a short subject, the priority and the queue, each with its reason; nothing is saved until you open the case.

New case opens one by hand (a call, a chat): what the customer asked becomes its first message. Triage changes the queue, priority, person, customer or contact; a new queue or priority sets the due times anew from the opening.

Service levels

Each case shows two chips: First reply and Resolution. While the clock runs they say how much working time is left (amber in the last hour); once due they turn red with how far overdue (breached); a met level is green, a paused one (waiting, closed) grey. The first reply is met by the first reply sent or recorded. The list sorts the next one due first, and Breached only filters the late ones. Public holidays of the company's country (from the data-vNext calendars) are skipped alongside weekends.

Replies and notes

On the case, Reply to customer writes to the requester, the contact or the customer's addresses:

• Send e-mail sends it from the queue's inbox address, with the case number in the subject, so the customer's answer comes back to the case.
• Record as answered elsewhere keeps a reply given by phone or from another mailbox.
• Save draft keeps it for later or for a colleague.

You choose what the case is afterwards (by default: waiting on the customer). An internal note is for colleagues and never sent. A test copy never sends e-mail: record the reply instead.

Mail into a queue

A message to a queue's inbox:

1. continues the case it answers (its In-Reply-To or References, or [CASE-000001] in the subject), and reopens it when it was waiting or closed within 30 days;
2. otherwise opens a case in that queue, with the customer and contact found by the sender's exact e-mail address (when exactly one matches);
3. is kept once, also when it arrives twice (by its Message-ID);
4. an automatic message (out of office, bounce) is kept on its case but never opens or reopens one.

Mail reaches the desk in one of two ways:

• A linked Gmail mailbox. When a person who receives the inbox's mail (a Google group or a delegated inbox) links their Google account on Gmail and Google Calendar, each sync hands the inbox's mail to the desk, full text included (CRM). It is offered once the operator has set the link up.
• Any mail service, through POST /v1/support/inbound with an API key (draft): a forwarding rule or an integration posts each message to it.

AI assistants

Over MCP an assistant lists cases and queues, opens a case, triages it (queue, priority, person, customer, contact), adds internal notes and drafts replies. It never sends a reply and never changes a case's status: there is no tool for it, and the approval policy (send_support_reply, close_support_case, rule agents_no_support_or_crm_controls) refuses an agent's key (403 support_send_agent, support_status_agent). Each tool returns the case's link, where a person reads the draft, changes it if need be and sends it.

Who does what

Every act is in the audit trail. Erasing a contact also empties the requester's name and address on the cases that name them.