Start with Zammad¶
This guide walks you through the basic configuration of a fresh Zammad instance. If you don’t have a Zammad instance yet, you can spin up a free 30-day trial to follow along. The navigation menu on the left mirrors the structure of the admin settings in Zammad, so the same mental map applies in both places, except for this Guides section and the Misc section at the end, which cover items that don’t belong under a single settings area.
Concept¶
Zammad is a ticketing and helpdesk system that helps you manage communication with customers and internal departments. Even without advanced configuration, Zammad helps you work in a much more structured and transparent way, and helps you avoid duplicate work.
Zammad can be invisible to customers and doesn’t require your customers to use the system at all (but they can, if you allow them to). You just connect a communication channel and customer requests are created as tickets in Zammad.
A ticket is a central entity which holds all information about a customer request in one place. A ticket is created automatically when someone sends a message, or manually by an agent, e.g. when a customer calls. A ticket includes all conversation parts as articles.
Because the ticket itself gathers everything related to a customer request, multiple people can work on it without losing context, so side channels (separate emails, chat threads, or phone calls) that split the information across tools are not needed.
Your colleagues who work on tickets are called agents in Zammad. Zammad ships with three roles: Admin, Agent, and Customer. The first two are for internal users. When a new ticket gets created and the email address is not yet known to Zammad, Zammad automatically creates a user with the Customer role.
The diagram below shows how users, roles and groups relate. Don’t worry if it isn’t fully clear yet; the next sections walk through each piece.
Basic Setup¶
This guide assumes your Zammad is not yet configured. If the getting-started wizard appears, provide as much information as you like or skip it and configure things later.
Organization Details¶
The basic customization step in Zammad is to add your organization name and your logo. If you haven’t already set this in the getting-started wizard, open the admin settings (click the cogwheel icon at the bottom of the primary navigation on the left side) and go to Settings > Branding to adjust it. See the Branding page for details.
Create Groups¶
A group in Zammad typically represents a department of an organization. You can define which agents have access to which group and set permissions per group. A group can also have a specific email address and department name. Start by renaming the default Users group, then add additional groups as needed. If you want a hierarchy, set parent groups accordingly. Staying with one group is fine, too.
Create or Modify Roles¶
Zammad comes with three pre-defined roles for admins, agents and customers. A user can have one or more roles assigned. A role defines the application permissions (which areas and features are accessible) and the access level for each group (read, create, change, overview, full).
These three roles cover most standard scenarios. Common examples for additional roles are:
Team leader
Reporting person
Knowledge base editor
You can also assign group permissions directly to a specific user. If more than one person needs the same permissions, prefer using a role and assigning it to the users. In any case, you should stick with one method.
Connect Email Accounts to Zammad¶
Depending on your email system, follow the matching guide:
After adding an email channel, open the channel and go to the Signatures tab to create one or more signatures. You can use one signature for many groups or create different signatures depending on your organization’s department structure. The assignment of signatures is done in the group settings, see the next section.
Configure Groups¶
After setting up an email-based channel, revisit your groups. Go to Manage > Groups, open each group, set an outbound email address and select the signature to use.
Create Agent Accounts¶
Create a user for each of your agents
from the First Steps section: select Dashboard
in the primary navigation on the left side, switch to the First Steps tab
and use the Invite agents/colleagues to help working on tickets link. Assign
the correct role to each agent. This step sends invitation emails to your
agents.
Further Steps¶
At this stage, you are ready to use Zammad in production. To customize it further, follow the additional customization guide or browse the documentation for the area you want to adjust.