Freshdesk

Connect your Freshdesk helpdesk and your support team can work tickets without leaving the conversation:

• Ticket alerts post new tickets, status changes, replies, priority changes and new agents into the channels you pick, with Assign to me and Resolve buttons.
• Ticket links pasted in a message show as a card with the subject, status, priority, requester and agent.
• /freshdesk finds a ticket by its number, the requester’s email, or a customer’s or company’s name.
• Create Freshdesk ticket in any message’s menu turns that message into a ticket, and Add to Freshdesk ticket adds it to a ticket as a private note.

Everything Freshdesk posts comes from the Freshdesk app, so nobody’s Freesbe account is borrowed.

Connect Freshdesk

Only owners and admins can connect Freshdesk, in Workspace settings → Integrations → Support. You need a Freshdesk agent’s API key; Freesbe acts as that agent in Freshdesk.

1. In Freshdesk, click your profile picture in the top right, then Profile settings, and copy Your API key.
2. In Freesbe, click Connect Freshdesk under Freshdesk.
3. Type your Freshdesk address, for example northwind.freshdesk.com, paste the API key and click Connect Freshdesk.

Tickets Freesbe creates, notes it adds and changes made with Assign to me and Resolve are made through that agent’s key; the note or ticket says who in Freesbe did it. The key is stored encrypted. To stop Freesbe using it, reset it in Freshdesk or click Disconnect.

Use the key of someone who can see every group whose tickets you want in Freesbe. An admin’s key works best.

Send ticket changes to Freesbe

Freshdesk tells Freesbe about tickets through two automation rules that you add once in Freshdesk. After you connect, Freesbe shows the Webhook URL and the two bodies to paste, each with a copy button, under Send ticket changes to Freesbe. You need to be a Freshdesk admin to add automation rules.

In Freshdesk, open Admin → Workflows → Automations.

Rule 1, on the Ticket creation tab:

1. Click New rule and name it Freesbe: new tickets.
2. Under conditions, pick one every ticket matches, for example Priority is any of Low, Medium, High and Urgent.
3. Under actions, pick Trigger webhook: request type POST, the Webhook URL from Freesbe, encoding JSON, Advanced content, and paste the Body for new tickets.
4. Save and turn the rule on.

Rule 2, on the Ticket updates tab:

1. Click New rule and name it Freesbe: ticket changes.
2. Under When an action performed by pick Anyone, and add these events: Status is changed, Priority is changed, Agent is updated and Reply is sent.
3. Under actions, pick Trigger webhook as above, and paste the Body for ticket changes.
4. Save and turn the rule on.

When the first change arrives, the connection shows Last ticket change with the time.

The rule only tells Freesbe the ticket’s number. Freesbe then reads the ticket from Freshdesk with the API key, and compares it with what it saw last, so it knows what changed and never posts the same change twice. Keep the webhook URL to yourself: it’s how Freshdesk reaches your workspace. Connecting again with a new key keeps the same URL, so the rules keep working.

Ticket alerts

Click Add alert under Freshdesk alerts and pick:

• Post to channel: where the alerts go.
• Tickets from: All groups, or one Freshdesk group. Send each group’s tickets to its own channel, for example Billing to #billing and Shipping to #shipping.
• Alerts to post:
  • New tickets: every new ticket, with what the customer wrote.
  • Status changes: tickets resolved, closed, reopened, pending and waiting.
  • Replies: replies from customers and agents. Private notes aren’t sent.
  • Priority changes: a ticket’s priority goes up or down.
  • Agent changes: a ticket gets a new agent, or loses one.

Each alert’s ⋯ menu has Send a test alert, Edit, Turn off / Turn on and Delete. Send a test alert posts a sample ticket so you can see how alerts look.

Alerts can’t go to direct messages. In a private channel, only people in it see them.

Assign to me and Resolve

Ticket cards have buttons:

• Assign to me makes you the ticket’s agent. Your Freesbe email must belong to an agent in Freshdesk.
• Resolve marks the ticket resolved and adds a private note in Freshdesk saying who resolved it from Freesbe.
• Open in Freshdesk opens the ticket.

The card changes to show who took the ticket or resolved it, so the rest of the channel knows it’s handled. Freesbe doesn’t post a second alert for a change made with these buttons.

Ticket links

Paste a link to a ticket in your helpdesk, like https://northwind.freshdesk.com/a/tickets/1038, and Freesbe adds a card under the message with the ticket’s subject, status, priority, requester and agent. Links to tickets in your customer portal (/support/tickets/…) work too. Up to three tickets are shown per message.

Only links to the connected helpdesk show as cards; other links stay as they are.

Look tickets up with /freshdesk

Type /freshdesk and:

• a ticket number, like /freshdesk 1042, to see that ticket’s card with its buttons;
• an email address, like /freshdesk maria@alfreds.example, to see that requester’s latest tickets;
• a name, like /freshdesk Alfreds, to see the latest tickets of matching customers and companies.

Only you see the answer.

Create a ticket from a message

Hover over any message, open ⋯ → Create Freshdesk ticket, and fill in:

• Subject: starts with the first line of the message.
• Description: the message. Freesbe adds a line saying who created it from Freesbe.
• Requester: you, or the person who wrote the message.
• Priority.

Click Create. The ticket is made in Freshdesk, tagged freesbe, and a reply in the message’s thread says who created it, with a link to the ticket.

Add a message to a ticket

Open ⋯ → Add to Freshdesk ticket on any message. Type the ticket’s number, or paste a link to it (if the message links to a ticket, it’s filled in for you), check the note and click Add note. The message is added to the ticket as a private note, which only agents see, with who added it, the channel and a link back to the message. Freesbe tells you when it’s done.

Disconnect

Open the connection’s ⋯ menu → Disconnect. Alerts stop, ticket links show as plain links, and /freshdesk and the two message actions go away. Delete the two Freesbe rules in Freshdesk’s Automations too; until then, Freesbe ignores what they send.

If the connection shows Connect again, Freshdesk stopped accepting the API key, for example because it was reset or the agent left. Alerts, cards and the Freshdesk actions pause until an admin connects again from the ⋯ menu with a new key.

For developers

Freesbe receives ticket changes at /hooks/support/freshdesk/<token>. See API and webhooks for building your own integrations.