HelpDash Documentation

Quick Start

Welcome to HelpDash. This guide will walk you through the essential steps to get your helpdesk up and running in under 30 minutes.

Step 1: Create your account

Navigate to helpdash.xyz/pricing and select a plan. Click “Start Free Trial” to create your account. You will be asked to provide your name, work email, company name, and a password. No credit card is required for the 14-day trial.

Step 2: Set up your workspace

After logging in for the first time, the setup wizard will guide you through:

1. Naming your workspace (usually your company name)
2. Uploading a company logo (optional but recommended)
3. Setting your support email address
4. Inviting your first team members

Step 3: Connect your first channel

The setup wizard will prompt you to connect your primary support channel. Most teams start with email. You can connect additional channels (live chat, social media, SMS) later from the Channels settings page.

Step 4: Send a test ticket

Send an email to your support address. Within seconds, it should appear as a new ticket in your HelpDash inbox. Click the ticket to open it, type a reply, and click “Send”. You have just resolved your first ticket.

Setting Up Your Inbox

The HelpDash inbox aggregates tickets from all your connected channels. Here is how to configure it for your team’s workflow.

Connecting an email address

Navigate to Settings › Channels › Email. You have two options:

• Forward from an existing address: We provide a forwarding address (e.g., in+abc123@helpdash.xyz). Set up email forwarding from your support inbox to this address in your email provider settings.
• Connect via OAuth:For Gmail and Outlook, you can connect directly via OAuth without any forwarding configuration. Click “Connect Gmail” or “Connect Outlook” and follow the authorization prompts.

Creating inbox views

Saved views let you and your team create filtered ticket queues based on any combination of criteria. To create a view:

1. In the left sidebar, click the “+ New View” button below your existing views.
2. Name your view (e.g., “Billing Issues” or “Priority Tickets”).
3. Add filter conditions: assignee, tag, status, channel, priority, customer segment, or any custom field.
4. Choose whether to make the view private (only you) or shared with the team.
5. Click “Save View.”

Configuring ticket priorities

HelpDash supports four priority levels: Urgent, High, Normal, and Low. You can set priorities manually or use automation rules to set them automatically based on ticket content, customer tier, or channel. Priority is displayed as a colored indicator in the ticket list and affects SLA calculations.

Creating Automation Rules

Automation rules let you define “if X, then Y” workflows that run automatically on your tickets. They can save your team hours of repetitive work every week.

Creating your first rule

Navigate to Settings › Automation › Rules and click “New Rule.”

Each rule has three components:

• Trigger:When does this rule run? Options include “When a ticket is created,” “When a ticket is updated,” “When a ticket has been open for X hours,” and more.
• Conditions:What criteria must the ticket meet? For example: “Subject contains ‘refund’” or “Customer tier is Enterprise.”
• Actions: What should happen? Options include assign to an agent, add a tag, change priority, send a canned reply, escalate, close, or notify a team member.

Useful rule examples

Managing Team Members

HelpDash supports role-based access control with three built-in roles: Owner, Admin, and Agent.

Roles and permissions

Inviting team members

Navigate to Settings › Team › Members and click “Invite Member.” Enter their email address and select their role. They will receive an invitation email with a link to set up their account. Pending invitations expire after 7 days; you can resend or revoke them from the same page.

Creating teams and groups

For larger organizations, you can create sub-teams (e.g., “Billing Team,” “Technical Support,” “Enterprise Accounts”) and assign agents to them. Teams can then be used as assignment targets in routing rules and automation, making it easy to direct specific ticket types to the right group of agents.

SLA Configuration

Service Level Agreements (SLAs) define response and resolution time targets for your tickets. HelpDash tracks SLA compliance automatically and alerts you before a breach occurs.

To configure SLAs, navigate to Settings › SLA Policies. You can create multiple SLA policies with different targets (e.g., one for Enterprise customers requiring a 1-hour first response, and one for standard customers with a 4-hour target) and apply them based on customer tier, ticket priority, or channel.

SLA timers respect your business hours configuration. Set your operating hours under Settings › Business Hours to ensure SLA timers pause outside your support hours.

Knowledge Base Setup

HelpDash includes a fully integrated help center where you can publish articles for customer self-service and internal agent reference.

Navigate to Knowledge Base › Manageto access the article editor. Create collections to organize articles into logical categories. Each article can be set to “Public” (visible to customers in your help center) or “Internal” (visible only to your team).

Your public knowledge base is accessible at help.yourdomain.com (configurable with a custom domain) or yourworkspace.helpdash.xyz/help.

API and Integrations

HelpDash provides a RESTful API that allows you to create and update tickets, manage contacts, and trigger automation programmatically. API access is available on Professional and Enterprise plans.

Generate an API key from Settings › Integrations › API Keys. All API requests must include your key in the Authorization header.

curl https://api.helpdash.xyz/v1/tickets \
  -H "Authorization: Bearer YOUR_API_KEY" \
  -H "Content-Type: application/json"

Full API documentation, including endpoint references and code examples, is available at api.helpdash.xyz/docs.

Native integrations

HelpDash also offers native integrations with popular tools including Slack, Jira, Salesforce, Zapier, HubSpot, Shopify, and more. Find the full integration library under Settings › Integrations.