Ticketing
Ticketing is where a request goes when an AI Employee cannot finish it. Each group in your Workspace can own one ticket queue. Autopilot and your AI Employees raise tickets into a queue when they hit something that needs a person, the people in that group work the ticket inside Ema (status, assignee, priority, comments, sub-tickets), and everyone can see the tickets they raised or were assigned on one page.
A queue runs on one of two systems, chosen per group:
- Ema Ticketing Desk. Ema is the system of record. Tickets, comments, and history live in Ema, and nothing external is required.
- ServiceNow. A pass-through. Tickets live in your ServiceNow instance and are read and written live through a ticketing connection. Ema stores no copy of them.
Enabled per Workspace. Ticketing is gated behind the ex_ticketing feature flag and additionally requires user groups to be enabled, because a queue belongs to a group and group membership is what grants access to it. If you see no Tickets tab on a group and no My Tickets page, ticketing is not enabled for your Workspace yet: contact your administrator.
How a queue works
The group is the unit of ownership and of access:
- One queue per group. The queue takes the group's name, and a group can have at most one.
- Membership is access. Every read and write requires effective membership of the queue's group, including membership inherited through nested groups. System Admins are the exception and reach every queue.
- The queue names its system. The system and the connection behind it are queue configuration, set by a group admin, and can be changed later without moving the tickets already filed.
- Routing guidance travels with the queue. Each queue carries free-text guidance describing what belongs in it. Autopilot reads that guidance verbatim when it decides where to escalate, so it is the main control you have over routing.
Where tickets come from
| Source | How it happens |
|---|---|
| Autopilot or an AI Employee | The assistant calls the ticket tools, picks a queue from the routing directory, and raises the ticket for the person it is helping. See Ticket Tools. |
| A person, in the app | New ticket on a group's Tickets tab or on My Tickets. See Work a Ticket Queue. |
| Your own code | The ticketing endpoints under /api/v1/hcm-ticketing. See Ticketing API. |
| Existing records in ServiceNow | A ServiceNow-backed queue lists whatever carries its queue label in the instance, whoever created it. See ServiceNow-Backed Queues. |
Who can do what
| Action | Group member | Group admin | System Admin |
|---|---|---|---|
| See the queue and open its tickets | Yes | Yes | Yes, every queue |
| Raise a ticket, comment, add an internal note | Yes | Yes | Yes |
| Change status, priority, request type, title, description, labels | Yes | Yes | Yes |
| Assign, reassign, or unassign anyone | Yes | Yes | Yes |
| Move a ticket to another queue | Yes | Yes | Yes |
| Delete a ticket | No | Yes | Yes |
| Set up the queue, change its system or connection, edit routing guidance | No | Yes | Yes |
| Raise a ticket on someone else's behalf | No | No | Yes |
A group admin is an admin member of the group that owns the queue. A System Admin (system_admin) reaches every queue in the Workspace, member or not. A queue is a shared work list, which is why assignment is open to every member rather than reserved for admins. Deleting is the one everyday action that is admin-only, and each ticket reports whether the person reading it may delete it, so the app never offers a delete that would then be refused.
What a ticket holds
| Field | Notes |
|---|---|
| Number | The human-readable id. On the Ema Ticketing Desk it is the group's initials plus a per-queue counter (a group named Human Resources produces HR-1293). On ServiceNow it is the instance's own number. |
| Title and description | The request. Both are editable while the ticket is open. |
| Status | Open, In progress, On hold, or Closed. |
| Priority | Critical, High, Medium, or Low. |
| Request type | The category of request. A ServiceNow queue publishes the instance's own choice list and rejects a value outside it; the Ema desk accepts free text. |
| Requester | Who the ticket is for. Defaults to whoever raised it. |
| Assignee | One person, or unassigned. |
| Labels | Free-form labels. The emahcm- prefix is reserved for queue membership and is never a label you can set. |
| Linked items | A parent ticket and its sub-tickets. |
| Source | Which system holds the ticket, with a link straight to the record when it lives in ServiceNow. |
| Comments and activity | Public replies, internal notes, and the field-change history. |
Status lifecycle
| Status | Meaning |
|---|---|
| Open | Raised and waiting to be picked up. Also the status a closed ticket returns to when it is reopened. |
| In progress | Someone is working it. |
| On hold | Parked, usually waiting on the requester or a third party. |
| Closed | Done. Closing is its own action, so a ticket cannot be dropped into Closed as an ordinary status change, and every field on a closed ticket is read-only until it is reopened. |
Key terms
| Term | What it means |
|---|---|
| Queue | A group's ticket list, plus the system it runs on and the routing guidance attached to it. |
| Backend | The system of record for a queue: the Ema Ticketing Desk, or ServiceNow. |
| Ticketing connection | A Workspace-level credential for an external ticketing system, created on the Integrations page and bound to one or more queues. |
| Routing guidance | Free text on the queue (up to 2000 characters) describing what should be escalated into it. Autopilot reads it when choosing a queue. |
| Queue label | The reserved emahcm-<group-name> label that marks a record as belonging to a queue. Ema manages it; moving a ticket is the only way it changes. |
| Sub-ticket | A child ticket filed under a parent, one level deep, in the parent's queue or another queue on the same connection. |
What's next
- Set Up a Ticket Queue for the admin path: connection, system, routing guidance.
- Work a Ticket Queue for the day-to-day: filters, detail view, comments, sub-tickets.
- My Tickets for the cross-group view every user gets.
- ServiceNow-Backed Queues for what Ema needs from your instance and how fields map.
- Ticket Tools for the tools Autopilot and MCP clients use to raise and work tickets.
- Ticketing API for the REST surface.