Welcome to DeskNova

DeskNova is a simple, all-in-one helpdesk for small and growing IT and support teams — one place to receive requests, track them to resolution, manage your assets and vendors, and keep everyone in the loop. These guides show you how to set it up and get the most from it.

New to DeskNova? Start with Getting started. Running a support team day to day? Jump to Handling tickets. Want to connect DeskNova to your other tools? See Outbound webhooks.

Getting started

This guide walks you through setting up DeskNova for your team. It takes about 15–20 minutes, and you can come back and change anything later.

1. Your workspace

When you sign up, DeskNova creates a private workspace for your organisation at your own web address — for example yourcompany.desknova.in. This is where your team logs in and where your employees raise requests.

During sign-up you choose your industry. DeskNova uses this to pre-fill sensible defaults — request categories, ticket statuses, SLA targets, and a few starter knowledge-base articles — so you are not starting from a blank page. All of it is editable.

2. Brand your portal

In Settings → General, add your logo and brand colour. Your self-service portal and the emails DeskNova sends will use them, so the experience feels like your support desk, not a generic tool.

3. Invite your team

In Team, invite the people who will handle requests. Each person gets a role:

• Admin — full access, including settings and billing.
• Agent — works tickets, but cannot change account settings.
• Viewer — read-only access to tickets and reports.

You can fine-tune what each person can do with permissions (for example, who can manage assets or view reports).

4. Set up how requests are handled

A few things shape how tickets flow. You will likely find good defaults already in place from step 1, but it is worth a look:

• Categories — the types of requests you handle (e.g. Hardware, Software, Access).
• Statuses — the stages a ticket moves through. DeskNova has Open, In progress, Resolved, and Closed built in, and you can add your own.
• SLA targets — how quickly you aim to respond and resolve, by priority. DeskNova tracks these automatically and flags anything at risk.
• Automation — auto-assignment, auto-reply during business hours, and reminders for ageing tickets. Turn these on in Settings → Automation.

5. Turn on your channels

Decide how people will reach you and switch on what you need:

• Self-service portal — on by default; share the link with your team.
• Email to ticket — let people email a support address that turns messages into tickets.
• Live chat — embed a chat widget on your website or intranet.

See How requests reach you for setup details.

6. Optional add-ons

Switch these on in Settings only if you need them:

• Assets — track hardware, software, and licences, and link them to tickets.
• Approvals — require sign-off on certain requests before work starts.
• Onboarding / offboarding — checklists for joiners and leavers.
• Single sign-on (SSO) — let your team log in with Microsoft or Google.
• AI assistance — AI-drafted replies and one-click ticket summaries (you add your own AI key; see the AI section in Settings).
• Microsoft Teams — post a card to a Teams channel whenever a ticket is raised.

You are ready

Once your channels are on and your team is invited, you are live. The next thing to read is Handling tickets so your agents know the workflow.

Handling tickets

This guide covers working a ticket from the moment it arrives to the moment it is closed.

The life of a ticket

Every ticket moves through stages. Open means it is new and waiting. In progress means someone is working on it. Resolved means you have delivered a fix. Closed means it is done. If the employee replies after a ticket is resolved, it reopens automatically so nothing gets lost.

Throughout, DeskNova tracks your SLA timers — first-response time and resolution time — against the targets your admin set, and flags anything getting close to breaching.

Working a ticket

Open a ticket from the Tickets list to see the full conversation, the requester's details, and the actions you can take.

Reply to the requester. Write your message in the reply box and send. The requester receives it by email (or on their original channel), and it is recorded in the conversation.

Add an internal note. Switch the reply to an internal note when you want to leave a comment for your teammates. Internal notes are never shown to the requester and are never sent out of DeskNova — they are for your team only.

Assign and prioritise. Set the assignee, priority, and status so everyone can see who owns the ticket and where it stands. If auto-assignment is on, new tickets may already have an owner.

Link assets. If the Assets add-on is on, you can link the hardware or software involved. This is handy for recurring issues and for seeing a device's history.

Let AI help (if enabled)

If your admin has turned on AI assistance, two tools speed things up:

• Summarize this ticket — at the top of the conversation, this gives you a short briefing (the issue, what has happened so far, the current status, and a suggested next step). Great for picking up a long thread or a handover.
• Draft with AI — drafts a reply for you, grounded in your knowledge base.

Both are suggestions only — you always read and edit before anything is sent. Treat AI output as a helpful first draft, not the final word.

Resolving and closing

When the issue is fixed, set the ticket to Resolved. The requester is notified and invited to rate how it went (a quick satisfaction score). Once everything is confirmed, the ticket can be Closed.

Those ratings feed your CSAT score in Reporting, so encourage requesters to leave one.

Handy extras

• Merge duplicate tickets so the whole conversation lives in one place.
• Watchers let other staff follow a ticket and get notified of activity.
• Canned responses save you typing the same answer twice.

Raising & tracking requests

This short guide is for the people DeskNova helps — employees raising a request and following it to resolution. If you support others, share this with your team.

Raising a request

Open your organisation's support portal (your IT or support team will give you the link, usually something like yourcompany.desknova.in). Choose New request, describe what you need, set how urgent it is, and submit.

You will get a confirmation with a ticket number you can refer to later. If your organisation has email-to-ticket switched on, you can also simply email their support address and a ticket is created for you automatically.

Tracking your requests

Under My requests, you can see everything you have raised and its current status:

• Open — received, waiting to be picked up.
• In progress — someone is working on it.
• Resolved — a fix has been delivered.

Open any request to read the full conversation. When the support team replies, you will get an email — and you can reply right back, either from the portal or to the email. Replying after a request is resolved automatically reopens it, so you are never stuck.

Rating the help you got

When your request is resolved, you will be asked to rate it with a quick score. It only takes a second, and it helps your support team see what is working and where to improve.

Your assets (if enabled)

If your organisation tracks equipment in DeskNova, My assets shows the devices and licences assigned to you — useful when you need to raise an issue about a specific laptop or tool.

That is everything. Raising a request, checking on it, and replying all happen in the same place, so getting help stays simple.

How requests reach you

DeskNova brings every request into one shared queue, no matter how it arrives. This guide explains each channel and how to turn it on.

Self-service portal

Your portal is on from the start. It is the branded web page where employees raise and track requests, and where they can search your knowledge base for answers before raising anything. Share the link (e.g. yourcompany.desknova.in) with your team — pin it in your intranet or a chat channel so it is easy to find.

Email to ticket

Let people get help by emailing a support address — every message becomes a ticket, and your replies go back by email. Replies from the requester attach to the same ticket, keeping the whole thread together.

This channel is managed by your DeskNova administrator and is off by default. Once it is enabled, share the support address with your organisation. (If you are an admin and want this on, get in touch and we will help you set it up.)

Live chat widget

Add a chat widget to your website or intranet so people can start a conversation in the moment. Chats become tickets automatically, so they are tracked and answered like everything else — nothing lives only in a chat window.

You will find the embed snippet in your settings; paste it into your site's HTML and the widget appears.

WhatsApp (optional)

DeskNova can also take requests over WhatsApp for teams that want it. This one needs a bit of setup with your WhatsApp Business account — if it is something you want, reach out and we will walk you through it.

The point of channels: whichever way someone reaches out, it lands in the same place, gets a ticket, and is tracked to resolution. That is how nothing slips through the cracks.

Reporting & insights

DeskNova turns your day-to-day activity into a clear picture of how your support is doing — so you can answer "are we keeping up?" at a glance and spot problems before they grow. You will find it under Reports (and Insights).

The numbers at the top

The Reports page opens with your key figures for the period you choose (last 7, 30, or 90 days):

• Created and Resolved — how many tickets came in versus how many you closed out.
• Open right now and Unassigned — your current workload and anything without an owner.
• Average resolution time — how long tickets take to resolve.
• SLA met % — the share of tickets handled within your targets.
• Satisfaction (CSAT) % — how happy requesters are, from their ratings.
• Time logged — effort recorded against tickets in the period.

Are you keeping up?

The created-vs-resolved trend plots new tickets against resolved ones, day by day. Next to it, a backlog signal tells you in plain words whether your queue is growing, holding steady, or shrinking over the period — the single most useful health check for a support team. If it says the backlog grew, you are taking in more than you are closing, and it is time to adjust.

Digging deeper

Further down you will find breakdowns to help you understand what is driving the numbers:

• By status, priority, and category — where your tickets sit and what they are about.
• Ageing — how long open tickets have been waiting, so old ones do not get forgotten.
• Agent performance — workload and resolution stats per team member.
• SLA breaches — the specific tickets that missed targets, so you can learn from them.
• Satisfaction comments — what requesters actually said.

Asset and vendor dashboards

If you use the Assets add-on, two dedicated dashboards give you an at-a-glance view:

• Assets — a breakdown of your equipment by type, department, and status, plus a list of warranties and contracts expiring in the next 90 days so renewals never surprise you.
• Vendors — contracts coming up for renewal, which vendors have the most open issues, and your key escalation contacts in one place.

Using reports well

You can change the date range at any time, and filter the view. The goal is not to stare at every chart — it is to glance at the top figures and the backlog signal regularly, and dive into the breakdowns only when something looks off.

Outbound webhooks

Webhooks let DeskNova notify your own systems the moment something happens to a ticket — so you can post to Slack, trigger a Zapier or n8n flow, update a CRM, or run any custom automation. No polling, no public API needed.

How it works

You register an https endpoint and choose which events it cares about. When one of those events happens, DeskNova sends an HTTP POST to your endpoint with a JSON body describing what occurred. Every request is signed so you can confirm it genuinely came from DeskNova.

Setting one up

In Settings → Integrations → Outbound webhooks:

1. Paste your endpoint URL. It must start with https:// and be publicly reachable (internal and private addresses are blocked for security).
2. Tick the events you want to receive.
3. Click Add webhook. A signing secret is shown once — copy it now and store it in your receiver. It is never displayed again.
4. Use Test to send a sample ping and confirm your endpoint is reachable.

You can pause, edit, or delete a webhook at any time, and the list shows the result of the most recent delivery.

The events

The payload

Every delivery has the same shape:

{
  "event": "ticket.created",
  "at": "2026-06-28T10:15:00.000Z",
  "data": {
    "id": 1284,
    "ticket_number": 1284,
    "subject": "Laptop won't connect to VPN",
    "status": "open",
    "priority": "high",
    "category": "Network",
    "requester_name": "Priya Sharma",
    "requester_email": "priya@acme.com",
    "created_at": "2026-06-28T10:15:00.000Z"
  }
}

The data fields vary slightly by event — for example ticket.comment_added includes the body and author_name of the reply. Build your receiver to read the fields it needs and ignore the rest, so new fields never break you.

Verifying the signature

Each request includes two headers:

• x-desknova-event — the event name.
• x-desknova-signature — sha256= followed by an HMAC-SHA256 of the raw request body, keyed with your signing secret.

To confirm a request is genuine, recompute the HMAC over the raw body and compare. Always compute against the raw bytes you received, before JSON parsing.

Node.js

const crypto = require('crypto');

function isFromDeskNova(rawBody, signatureHeader, secret) {
  const expected = 'sha256=' + crypto.createHmac('sha256', secret)
    .update(rawBody)
    .digest('hex');
  // constant-time compare
  return signatureHeader.length === expected.length &&
    crypto.timingSafeEqual(Buffer.from(signatureHeader), Buffer.from(expected));
}

Python

import hmac, hashlib

def is_from_desknova(raw_body: bytes, signature_header: str, secret: str) -> bool:
    expected = 'sha256=' + hmac.new(secret.encode(), raw_body, hashlib.sha256).hexdigest()
    return hmac.compare_digest(signature_header, expected)

If the signatures match, the request is authentic. If not, reject it.

Best practices

• Verify every request with the signature before acting on it.
• Respond quickly with a 2xx status. Do any slow work afterwards, not while DeskNova is waiting — requests time out after 5 seconds.
• Expect occasional retries or gaps. Treat events as "this happened" signals; if exact ordering matters, use the ticket data to reconcile.
• Keep your secret private. Anyone with it can forge requests. If it is ever exposed, delete the webhook and create a new one.

Security, briefly

DeskNova only delivers to public https URLs, never follows redirects, and never sends internal notes. Each customer's webhooks are isolated to their own account. Together with the signature, that keeps deliveries safe in both directions.