Prerequisites: the Day one track, finished. This playbook assumes you already have a workspace, a channel, a triage channel, categories, knowledge, and one agent.
What good looks like
An IT desk is working when:1
Keep intake to one channel
One request channel,
#ask-it. Resist the pull to split by topic. Every extra channel is another place a ticket can sit unnoticed, and Ravenna slices work with views instead.Add the other entry points to the same channel rather than creating new ones: the channel’s inbound email address for your old it@ inbox, DMs to the Ravenna bot for anything sensitive, and the Portal for staff who do not use Slack.Learn more about choosing between channels, views, and categories
2
Build the three forms that cover most volume
Do not build twelve forms. Look at a month of requests and you will nearly always find the same three shapes:
Set defaults on each: priority, tag, and the channel to publish into. That is what saves your team the triage click.
Learn more about forms and custom fields
3
Give responders views, not more channels
Three saved views handle most of the working day:
- Unassigned and not resolved. The safety net.
- Mine, active. What each responder works from.
- Breaching soon, once SLAs are on.
Learn more about views
4
Index the runbooks people actually ask about
Start with VPN, laptop setup, MFA, software requests, and printing. That short list answers a surprising share of tickets.Test in the knowledge chat panel before deploying. If an answer only exists inside a screenshot, the agent cannot read it, and you will not discover that from a dashboard.
Learn more about structuring knowledge for AI
5
Give the agent tools, gated by risk
This is the step that separates a help desk from an answering machine. Attach tools to rules and set the execution policy per rule:
- Auto-execute the lookups: find a user, check group membership, read a ticket.
- Requires confirmation for reversible writes where you want a “shall I?” prompt.
- Requires approval for anything that grants access or changes production, pointed at an approval template with your IT leads.
Learn more about tool execution policies
6
Automate the handoffs, not the judgment
Two workflows are usually enough to start:
- Form-driven routing. Trigger on Form Submitted, branch on urgency, set priority and assignee, post to the triage channel.
- Nothing has happened. Trigger on inactivity and nudge the assignee before the requester has to.
Learn more about workflow triggers and actions
7
Set response targets you can actually meet
Add one SLA before you add five. First response within four business hours, measured against a business schedule that matches your working week, with a pause status for tickets waiting on the requester.
Learn more in SLAs and business hours
8
Review it weekly for a month
Fifteen minutes, same slot every week:
- Read ten agent conversations end to end
- Clear the top two knowledge gaps
- Check CSAT comments, not just the score
- Look at AI Outcome, and expect it to move slowly
Learn more in reporting and briefs
Where teams get this wrong
Too many channels on day one
Too many channels on day one
Splitting
#ask-it-hardware and #ask-it-access before you have volume creates dead channels and confused employees.Forms that ask everything
Forms that ask everything
Every optional field is a field requesters skip and responders read past.
An agent with no tools
An agent with no tools
Answering questions is table stakes. Resolving requests needs tools.
Ungated write tools
Ungated write tools
One bad automated group change costs more trust than a month of good answers.
Next
Employee onboarding
The highest-value process to automate next.
Approval flows
Formalize who signs off on access.