Support Management connects your Forum with an internal ticket management workspace.

When a member publishes a qualifying Forum post, Gradual can automatically create a Ticket for your support team. The Ticket keeps the original post available for context while giving your team internal tools to assign ownership, set priority, track progress, and manage the request through completion.

Support, Idea, and General Tickets can display their current status on the original Forum post, helping members track the progress of their requests without accessing your team’s internal Ticket information.

Support Staff and Support Admins can access the Support Workspace from Gradual: On the Select Dashboard page, choose the Customer Support dashboard. It will display all the Customer Support Dashboards you have access to, then click on a specific one to enter the workspace.
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The workspace provides the following primary areas:

Support Staff can also set their availability to Online or Away. Staff are automatically shown as Offline after leaving the Support Workspace. Online availability is used when Gradual automatically distributes Tickets to team members.

Tickets are created from Forum posts through Escalation Rules. You do not need to manually create a Ticket for each incoming post.

When a Forum post matches an active rule, Gradual creates a Ticket and uses that rule to determine:

The Ticket initially copies the title and content of the Forum post. Changes made to the original post later do not update the Ticket title or content automatically.

Each Forum post can have only one Ticket. Closing and later reopening a Ticket continues to use the same Ticket rather than creating another one.

Gradual includes three Ticket Types:

All three Ticket Types support statuses that can be displayed on their original Forum posts. Support Admins can choose which Ticket States are visible to members by configuring User-facing States in each Ticket Type’s workflow.

These statuses help members understand the progress of their requests while allowing Support Staff to manage Tickets using more detailed internal States.

Inbox gives each Support Staff member a focused list of the Tickets currently assigned to them.

You can switch between open and closed Tickets and sort Tickets by:

Select a Ticket to open its details and begin working on it.

The Unassigned page contains open Tickets owned by the Support Team that do not currently have an assignee.

You can filter the list by Ticket Type, Forum Board, Priority, or Product & Service Area.

When filtering by Product & Service Area, selecting a main area also includes Tickets associated with its sub-areas.

To take ownership of an unassigned Ticket:

Once assigned, the Ticket is removed from the Unassigned list and appears in the assignee’s My Tickets.

Use All Tickets when you need to find Tickets across the entire Support Workspace, including open, closed, assigned, and unassigned Tickets.

You can search by Ticket title or content and narrow the list using:

The Assignee filter allows you to find Tickets assigned to specific team members or Tickets that have not been assigned.

To filter Tickets by assignee:

Unlike the Unassigned page, which only displays open Tickets, the Unassigned option in the All Tickets Assignee filter includes both open and closed Tickets. You can also combine it with other filters, such as State, Priority, or Ticket Type, to narrow your results.

You can also sort the results by creation time or priority.

When you open a Ticket and return to the list, your filters, sorting, and previous position are preserved.

Selecting a Ticket opens its details alongside your Ticket list.

The Ticket details bring together the original Forum conversation, Ticket information, and member context so your team can handle the request without switching between multiple areas of Gradual.

You can review:

You can update the Product & Service Area directly from the Ticket details. Changes are automatically reflected on the original Forum post, keeping both records consistent.

Updating this field does not trigger Escalation Rules again.

You can also select Open in Forum to open the original post directly.

Replies sent from the Ticket appear publicly as comments on the original Forum post.

To reply:

This allows Support Staff to respond to the member while continuing to work from the Support Workspace.

Each Ticket can have one assignee.

Support Staff can assign an unassigned Ticket to themselves using Assign to me, or assign it to another active member of their Support Team.

If a Ticket is assigned to another Staff member, you can change the assignee. To make other updates to that Ticket, such as changing its State or Priority or replying to the member, assign the Ticket to yourself first.

Changing a Ticket’s assignee does not change its existing Ticket history.

Priorities help your team identify which Tickets require attention first.

Tickets use five priority levels:

A Ticket’s initial priority can be set automatically by its Escalation Rule and updated later while the Ticket is being processed.

Support Admins can customize Ticket workflows for Support, Idea, and General Tickets. Each Ticket Type has its own workflow, allowing your team to manage requests using States that match your support process.

You can also configure User-facing States to control which statuses members see on their original Forum posts.

Navigate to:

Support Workspace > Settings > Ticket Workflow

Tickets move through three overall phases:

Within these phases, you can use States to represent the stages that make sense for your support process.

For example, the default Support workflow includes:

Received → In Review → In Progress → Resolved

The default Idea workflow includes:

Received → In Review → Planned → In Progress → Released / Not Planned
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Each Ticket Type has its own workflow, which Support Admins can configure independently.

Within each workflow, you can add States from the State Library and assign a User-facing State to each internal State. This allows your team to track detailed progress internally while showing members a simpler status on their Forum posts.

For example, your team might use multiple internal States to track different stages of reviewing a request, while displaying a single “In Review” status to the member.

User-facing States determine which Ticket statuses members see on their Forum posts. Support Admins can configure these States separately for Support, Idea, and General Tickets.

To configure User-facing States:

Each internal State can be associated with one User-facing State. Multiple internal States can share the same User-facing State, allowing your team to track detailed progress without displaying every internal step to members.

You can also leave an internal State without a User-facing State. When a Ticket moves to an internal State without an assigned User-facing State, the Forum post continues to display its previous status.

Support Admins can manage States in the State Library, including updating their names and colors.

Changes to a State’s name or color are reflected wherever that State is used, including existing Forum posts. These updates do not send notifications to members.

States currently in use cannot be deleted.

Changing the User-facing State associated with an internal State does not immediately update existing Forum posts. The new configuration takes effect the next time the corresponding Ticket changes State.

Moving a Ticket to a Closed State closes the Ticket.

When reopening a closed Ticket, select an assignee and an Assigned State so that the Ticket can return to active work.

If the Forum post connected to an open Ticket is deleted, the Ticket is moved to Source Deleted. The Ticket remains available for your team’s records, but its Ticket fields can no longer be processed normally.

Support Staff can change a Ticket’s Type when the Ticket is assigned to them.

To change the Ticket Type:

If the Ticket’s current State is available in the new workflow, it will be selected automatically. You can choose a different State before confirming.

After changing the Ticket Type, the existing User-facing State is cleared from the original Forum post. The post will display a new status when the Ticket moves to a State with a configured User-facing State.

Escalation Rules control which Forum posts become Tickets and how those Tickets enter your support workflow.

Navigate to:

Support Workspace > Settings > Escalation Rules

A rule contains two parts:

You can create conditions based on information including:

Product & Service Area is available as a condition even when the field is not enabled for any Forum Post Type. Selecting a main area includes posts associated with that area and its sub-areas.

For each rule, configure three actions:

Rules are evaluated in the order shown. When a post matches a rule, Gradual uses that rule and stops checking the rules below it.

Escalation Rules run when a post is first published. Editing the post or its author information afterward does not run the rules again.

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Gradual includes default rules for Support and Idea posts.

By default, these rules create the corresponding Ticket Type with Medium Priority and assign the Ticket to an available Online Staff member. If no Staff member is available, the Ticket enters the Support Team’s Unassigned queue.

You can enable or disable these default rules. Their conditions and actions cannot be edited.

Support Admins can manage the people who work with Tickets from:

Support Workspace > Settings > Team Accounts

Support Management includes one Support Team. You can add community members to the team and remove existing Staff accounts.

Up to 50 Staff accounts can be authorized for Support Management.

Before removing a Staff member, any open Tickets assigned to that person must be reassigned to another Staff member or returned to the Unassigned queue. Their historical Ticket activity remains available after their Support access is removed.

Views let Support Staff and Admins create reusable boards for specific groups of Tickets.

Instead of working from one long Ticket list, you can create a View for workflows such as:

A View updates automatically as Ticket information changes. Tickets are not copied into the View, and deleting a View does not delete its Tickets.

To create a View:

New Views start with Phase is none of Closed as a preset filter, so the initial board focuses on active work. You can change this filter as needed.

Filters define which Tickets belong in your View.

Available criteria include Ticket Type, Phase, State, Priority, Assignee, Staff availability, Post Type, Board, Post Topic, Product & Service Area, Author, Author Space, Ticket creation time, and closed time.

You can choose whether Tickets must match all configured conditions or any configured condition.

Every View uses one Group By field to organize Tickets into columns.

You can group Tickets by:

For example, grouping by Priority creates separate columns for P0 through P4. Grouping by Assignee gives you columns for individual Staff members and Unassigned Tickets.

You can choose which columns are visible and drag them into your preferred display order.

Ticket cards automatically move between columns when the information used to group them changes. For example, if a View is grouped by Assignee and a Ticket is reassigned, its card moves to the new assignee’s column.

One sorting option applies across every column in a View.

Tickets can be sorted by:

The default is Ticket Created Time — Newest first.

Ticket cards can display the information your team needs while reviewing a View.

The Ticket title is always displayed. You can select up to six additional fields, including Author, Ticket Type, State, Priority, Assignee, Product & Service Area, Board, creation or closed time, and engagement information from the original Forum post.

Support Staff and Admins can create Personal Views for their own workflows.

Support Admins can also publish their Personal Views as Shared Views, making them available to all Support Staff.

Once a View has been shared, Support Admins can manage it centrally. Each Staff member can arrange Views in their own sidebar without changing the navigation order for anyone else.

Each account can create up to 10 Views. Shared Views created by other users do not count toward this limit, and Gradual’s preset Views are also excluded.

Gradual provides two Shared Views when Support Management is enabled:

Team’s Priority Queue organizes active Tickets by Priority, making it easier to identify higher-priority work.

Current Team Work organizes active Tickets by Assignee, including an Unassigned column, so your team can review how Tickets are currently distributed.

The Team Overview gives Support Admins visibility into current and historical Ticket activity.

You can select This Week, Last Week, This Month, Last Month, or a custom date range and review information including:

Current Tickets always represents the Tickets currently assigned to each Staff member. The other activity metrics reflect the selected reporting period.

These counts describe Ticket assignment and activity and should not be interpreted as individual workload or performance measurements, since the amount of work required for each Ticket can vary.

Support Management also keeps members informed without exposing your team’s internal Ticket information.

When creating a Forum post, members can choose an available Post Template to help structure their request. They can also select a Product & Service Area when this field is enabled for the selected Post Type.

When a Forum post creates a Support, Idea, or General Ticket, its User-facing State is displayed on the original post. Members can see this status in the Forum’s list view, feed view, and post details.

When a User-facing State is first assigned or changes, the post author receives a notification under the Following tab in the notification center. The notification includes the post title and updated status, and selecting it opens the original post.

Post authors can also receive these updates through the Forum Updates email. The Ticket state updates on my posts email preference is enabled by default and can be managed in their notification settings.

Email updates are included only when the corresponding notification has not already been read in Gradual.

Members do not see internal Ticket information, such as the Ticket assignee or Support Team.

Customer support request: A member publishes a Support post about a product issue. An Escalation Rule creates a Support Ticket, assigns it to an Online Staff member, and sets its Priority. The Staff member responds from the Ticket and moves it from Received to In Review, In Progress, and finally Resolved. The member can see the updated status on their original post.

Product feedback: A member submits an Idea. Gradual creates an Idea Ticket, and the team tracks it through States such as In Review, Planned, In Progress, and Released. A Shared View grouped by State can give the team a board-style overview of active Ideas.

Priority monitoring: A Support Admin creates a View filtered to active Support Tickets and groups them by Priority. The team can monitor P0 and P1 Tickets alongside lower-priority work without changing the Tickets themselves.