Categories are a general-purpose grouping field.

The main way to group tickets in Deskpro is using departments (and sub-departments); categories can be used to break down types of tickets within departments.

For example, you could use categories to classify tickets as ‘Product Defect’/’Other’; that would then enable you to get reports about the number of tickets about product defects between different departments, assign product defect tickets differently, etc.

Category choices can apply to all tickets or can be linked to tickets in specific departments. As with all custom fields, you can control this with the Ticket form layouts editor.

The category field is a good choice if it applies to tickets across more than one department; if you need a field that is only relevant to tickets a single department, you will find it easier to create a custom field and link that to the department in the form layout editor.

To create categories:

1. Go to Tickets > Fields and make sure that the Categories switch control is on.
2. Click Categories, fill in the name of the category you want to create in the Enter a title... box, and click Add.
3. Enter your desired categories, then click Save.

Categories can have subcategories one layer deep. For example, you could divide the ‘Questions’ category into ‘Basic’ and ‘Advanced’.

To create a ‘child’ category, enter a new category as normal, then change the drop-down menu to the right from No parent to the desired parent category. For example, this would create the subcategory ‘Basic’ within ‘Questions’:

If categories are enabled, users and agents can select a category when they create a ticket, through the portal Contact Us form or the agent interface, respectively.

Setting a Default category prefills that category in the user and agent forms. The user/agent can change the category; they can clear it unless validation is enabled. Tickets submitted via email will be assigned to the default category.

Under Validation you can require users and/or agents to select a category when they submit a ticket through the web. This does not apply to tickets submitted via email; so if it is important that all tickets are assigned a category, you should set a default category.