Setting up Microsoft Teams as an internal ticketing system: A step-by-step guide

Microsoft Teams has seen phenomenal growth as a business collaboration tool over the past few years—especially after the pandemic. Thanks to its seamless integration with the rest of the Microsoft ecosystem, like Word, Powerpoint or other Office 365 apps, businesses quickly started seeing the productivity and cost benefits of using Microsoft Teams.

No wonder that, as of 2024, 320 million+ monthly active users have adopted MS Teams as a powerful collaboration platform for cross-team communication.

With most internal conversations happening within Teams, it’s not uncommon for enterprises to consider using Microsoft Teams as a ticketing system. Employees can reach out to multiple teams, such as HR, finance, and IT, with their support queries and requests through Microsoft Teams.

If you’re still wondering why and how you can use Microsoft Teams as a ticketing system, this article will walk you through the steps to convert it into a powerful help desk.

Why are enterprises leaning towards the Microsoft Teams ticketing system?

Employees are inundated with multiple products and tasks everyday, thanks to the nature of digital work.

When you add in a new support portal to the mix for them to raise internal requests, it’s a recipe for disaster.

After much trial and error, IT teams have realized over the years that it is easier to shift service management to MS Teams rather than taking them to a completely different tool for basic support.

Since most employees are already familiar with using MS Teams, the barrier to adopt Teams as a channel to reach internal support is significantly lower.

Organizations can use Microsoft Teams to allow:

• Employees to raise service requests to different teams (HR, IT, or finance) and assign the requests directly to respective support executives
• Employees to raise requests seamlessly from different user devices (laptop, desktop, or mobile)
• Employees to get an overview of the tickets raised and the status of all requests (solved or unsolved). If required, they can put reminders to fast-forward the ticket resolution process
• Support team admins to track all the tickets and take required actions

Benefits of using MS Teams as a ticketing system

The other benefits of using the MS Teams ticketing system include:

1. Enabling employee self-service for faster resolutions

MS Teams help desk empowers employees with public support channels to access knowledge documentation. It helps employees solve simple, repetitive queries when IT executives are occupied or unavailable. As employees need to rely less on manual support every time they are stuck, their productivity improves, and the process of accelerating support queries accelerates.

2. Reduce IT team workload

Without a structured ticketing system, IT agents face a constant barrage of direct messages (DMs) from employees seeking support. This unorganized approach leads to scattered conversations, duplicated requests, and overwhelmed support staff who must juggle multiple chat windows while trying to track and resolve issues.

Implementing Microsoft Teams as a ticketing system creates a streamlined support channel that significantly reduces the burden on IT agents. Instead of fielding numerous direct messages throughout the day, agents can focus on tickets in a single organized queue.

3. Teams can create automated support workflows

Different teams can create automated support workflows for their respective use cases with the MS Teams ticketing system. For example, assigning a service request to a skilled executive, updating the status of tasks, and reminders require dedicated manual effort. Teams can create tailored workflows and automate these tasks for faster query resolution.

9 steps to create a ticketing system in MS Teams

This section will explain the steps to convert MS Teams into a ticketing system. We will focus on IT support here, but you can follow the same steps to create support channels for HR, finance, or other teams.

Step 1: Set up public channels for support

Create a dedicated channel for every service team and name them as #it-support, #hr-support, or something obvious. Make this channel a default channel so new employees are automatically added.

The public channel serves multiple purposes:

• Creates a centralized space for all IT-related queries
• Increases visibility of common issues and solutions
• Enables knowledge sharing among team members
• Allows service teams to share org-wide issues and solution steps

💡Pro tip: Announce the channel in company-wide communications and include it in employee onboarding materials to ensure employees know where to seek help.

Step 2: Pin critical messages to the channel

Pinning is a powerful feature in Teams that helps organize and find crucial information quickly.

You can use this MS Teams feature to:

• Pin frequently asked questions, and their answers
• Keep important announcements visible (like system maintenance schedules)
• Highlight the emergency contact information
• Store quick-reference guides
• Maintain links to important resources

Regularly review and update pinned messages to keep information current and relevant.

Step 3: Add links to policy docs, wikis, and knowledge bases

Microsoft having integrated communication and collaboration solutions, offers multiple ways to manage documentation. You can:

• Upload PDFs directly to the Files tab for quick access
• Connect SharePoint libraries to create a comprehensive knowledge base
• Add Wiki tabs for maintaining living documentation
• Integrate OneNote for collaborative troubleshooting guides
• Use tabs to embed Power BI dashboards for service metrics

💡Pro tip: Structure your documentation in clear categories to make information easily discoverable.

Step 4: Set up automated workflow responses

Guide employees to FAQ documents by setting up an automated workflow to suggest reading materials when specific keywords are mentioned in the support channel.

You can create intelligent workflows that:

• Automatically suggest relevant documentation based on keywords
• Send troubleshooting guides when common issues are mentioned
• Provide instant responses for basic queries
• Track frequently triggered keywords to identify areas needing documentation

Some example workflows for basic issues can be:

• ‘Password reset’ triggers steps for self-service password recovery
• ‘Software request’ automatically sends the software catalog
• ‘VPN issues’ provides basic troubleshooting steps

Step 5: Integrate Teams with Outlook

If you handle both email and support via Teams, direct all Teams messages to your support Outlook inbox or vice versa using Power Automate workflows so you can manage all support queries in one place.

You can follow the below steps to create a seamless support experience across both platforms:

• Set up Power Automate flows to sync messages between Teams and Outlook
• Create unified ticket tracking across both platforms
• Enable agents to respond from their preferred platform
• Maintain conversation history in both systems
• Generate automated email notifications for Teams updates

Step 6: Implement task management workflows

Another powerful feature of Microsoft Teams is the ability to deeply integrate with Microsoft’s built-in task management tools like Lists, Planner, or Forms. This makes setting up simple reminders and notifications on task related to request followups straightforward so the IT team can stay on track without a lot of workflow overhead.

For example, assign the ‘Get reminded to follow up on a message’ and ‘Add to project management board (for example, Asana or Jira)’ tasks to keep track of new service requests and their status.

A few tips to organize tasks:

• Create Planner tasks directly from Teams messages
• Set up automated task creation based on message content
• Use Lists to track ticket status and priorities
• Integrate with project management tools for complex issues
• Set up automated reminders for follow-ups
• Use Power Automate to update task status based on message reactions

Step 7: Use Microsoft Forms to capture structured requests

Use Microsoft Forms to capture complete request information and send it to managers or respective task owners/approvers for approval.

Create comprehensive request forms that:

• Include conditional questions based on request type
• Automatically route requests to appropriate teams
• Trigger approval workflows
• Generate standardized tickets
• Allow file attachments for additional context

For instance, you can send a form and set up the default ‘Start approval when a response is submitted in Forms’ workflow to trigger approvals.

Step 8: Create efficient triage channels

Set up a triage channel for agents and forward messages to the channel using automated workflows.

Triage channels will help you to:

• Create separate threads for complex issues
• Enable team discussion without cluttering the main channel
• Organize issues by priority and expertise
• Use channel tabs for tracking ongoing issues
• Set up agent assignments and handoffs

Step 9: Streamline with an AI assistant

Use an AI Assistant like Atom, powered by Atomicwork, to be your employee’s concierge on MS Teams. By integrating Atom with Teams, you can bring all service requests to Teams. Atom helps reduce employee asks by 50% with tailored automation, navigates employees to knowledge guides to streamline service experience, and automates routine requests like a pro.

Atom will help you to:

• Provide 24/7 response to queries
• Automatically categorize and route requests
• Suggest solutions based on historical data
• Handle routine tasks automatically
• Guide users to relevant documentation
• Learn from interactions to improve responses
• Reduce agent workload through intelligent automation

Conclusion

Converting Microsoft Teams into a ticketing system offers numerous benefits for enterprises, including centralized communication, improved self-service, and enhanced IT team efficiency. By following the outlined steps, organizations can transform MS Teams into an efficient help desk.

Plus, with an intelligent enterprise assistant—like Atom—integrated with your MS Teams environment, you can truly streamline all your internal support processes.

Schedule a demo to try Atomicwork with Microsoft Teams.