Work a Ticket Queue
A group's queue lives on its Tickets tab. The list is on the left, the ticket you select opens beside it, and everything you change saves immediately: there is no draft state and no save button on a ticket.
The queue list
Columns are ID, Subject, Requester, Assignee, Priority, Status, and Updated. The default order is newest first.
Filtering. Status sits in the bar itself, with search, priority, assignee, and a created-date range (today, last 7, 30, 90, or 365 days) under Filters, which shows a count while any of them is active. Search is a plain case-insensitive match over title and description, not a ranked search.
Sorting. Click ID, Priority, Status, or Updated to sort the whole queue, not just the page you can see. Priority sorts by Ema's own ranking (Critical, High, Medium, Low) whatever the underlying system stores, and status sorts Open, In progress, On hold, Closed. A queue whose backend cannot honor a column says so and stays in the default order, which is most likely on a ServiceNow queue whose field mapping leaves that column out.
Paging. The queue loads a page at a time, with Load more at the bottom. Filters and sort apply to the full queue, so paging never reorders what you already read.
Raise a ticket
New ticket takes a title, a description, and a priority. On a group's Tickets tab the queue is the group you are in; from My Tickets you pick the group first. The requester is you, unless you are a System Admin raising it on someone else's behalf.
Request type. On a ServiceNow queue, request type comes from the instance's own list of categories and Ema rejects anything outside it. On the Ema Ticketing Desk it is free text. Either way it is set on the ticket after it exists, in the details rail.
The ticket view
The header carries the ticket number and title, the status control, Ask Ema, and a refresh control. Below it: the original request, the reply box, and the comment and activity history. The details rail on the right holds every other field, and Hide details collapses it when you want the width.
Fields you can edit
| Field | How it behaves |
|---|---|
| Title, description | Edit in place. Both are required to be non-empty, so clearing one is a cancel rather than a save. |
| Status | Open, In progress, or On hold. Closing is a separate action. |
| Priority | Critical, High, Medium, or Low. |
| Request type | Chosen from the queue's list where the backend publishes one, free text otherwise. |
| Assignee | One person, or nobody. Assign to me and Unassign are one click. |
| Labels | Add and remove freely. Queue membership is not a label, so the reserved emahcm- values never appear here and are refused if you try to add one. |
| Requester, created, last update, source | Read-only. On a ServiceNow queue, Source links straight to the record in the instance. |
A closed ticket is read-only. Every editable row disables itself and says why while the ticket is closed. Reopen it (set the status back to Open) before making changes.
Assignment
Any member of the group can assign, reassign, or unassign anyone, including themselves: a queue is a shared work list rather than an admin-managed one. The picker offers the group's own people first, then lets you search the rest of the Workspace directory, because handoffs cross team boundaries.
On the Ema Ticketing Desk the assignee has to be a real person in your Workspace. A queue backed by ServiceNow instead needs an address the instance can resolve to one of its own users. Either way, an address that belongs to nobody is refused rather than stored.
Comments and internal notes
The reply box sends either kind:
- Public replies are visible to the requester. This is the default.
- Internal notes are for the people working the queue, and the requester never sees them.
Both are labeled in the thread, and on a ServiceNow queue both are written into the instance's own journal, so the record stays complete for anyone reading it there.
Activity
Activity is the ticket's history: comments, internal notes, and every field change, oldest first, with Comments, History, and All views. Entries name who acted, and attribute to Ema when an AI Employee did it or to System when the platform did (a parent closed by its last sub-ticket, for example). On a ServiceNow queue the history comes from the instance itself rather than from a copy Ema keeps.
Close and reopen
Close ticket is the only way to reach Closed, and it takes an optional resolution, which is also recorded as a comment. Reopening is setting the status back to Open.
A connected system can settle on a different status than the one you asked for, because its own rules run on the record. When that happens the ticket says what it saved instead. The usual cause is an assignee: some instances move assigned tickets along automatically, so clearing the assignee may let the status you wanted stick.
Sub-tickets
New sub-ticket in Linked items files a child under the ticket you are reading. Sub-tickets sit one level deep, so a child cannot itself have children, and a child can live in the parent's queue or in another queue on the same connection.
Parents follow their children:
- Closing the last open child of a parent that has two or more sub-tickets closes the parent too, attributed to the system.
- Filing a new sub-ticket under a closed parent, or reopening any child, reopens the parent. The new-sub-ticket dialog warns you before it does.
A parent's Linked items lists its children. A child whose queue you cannot read shows as a plain reference rather than a link.
Move a ticket
Move re-triages a ticket into another queue on the same connection and clears the assignee, since the new queue's members have not picked it up yet. Two limits are worth knowing:
- The target queue must share the current queue's connection. Moving between two different ticketing systems is not supported, and Ema refuses it with a message that says so rather than one that looks like a configuration error you could fix.
- Moving is also the only way a ticket's queue label changes, which is why labels you manage yourself can never collide with it.
Delete
Group admins and System Admins can delete a ticket, and the confirmation says it cannot be undone. Every ticket already carries the answer to "may this person delete it", so the action is offered only where it will be permitted.
Ask Ema
Ask Ema hands the ticket to Autopilot as a prompt, without leaving the page:
| Action | What it asks for |
|---|---|
| Summarize | A recap of the request and what has happened so far. Available on closed tickets too. |
| Recommend resolution | A fix suggested from your policies and Knowledge Bases. |
| Draft reply | A reply to the requester for you to review before sending. |
| Escalate | Who to loop in, and why. |
Autopilot answers in the chat panel, and nothing it drafts is sent or saved to the ticket until you do it yourself.
What's next
- My Tickets for the cross-group view of your own tickets.
- Ticket Tools for the same operations run by Autopilot or an MCP client.
- ServiceNow-Backed Queues for why a status or priority can come back changed.