Most companies, big and small, have some sort of ticketing system in place to track, manage and resolve internal issues, especially for Tech Ops, IT, and internal support teams. Using a ticketing system ensures that nothing falls through the cracks and people get the help they need to do their work.

As more of those companies continue to use Slack to communicate, the experience of having to switch from one app to another to report an issue can feel like a time-waster. If you’re already chatting with Jim from Accounting on Slack, why switch to a different software to create a ticket? Or why copy over endless messages from the #it-support channel?

Seeing that there was room for improvement in this workflow, a lot of folks have built their own integration to bring the two systems together. Integrations are then used to connect an existing ticketing system to Slack, easing the pain of having to switch between multiple apps. Don’t you love technology?!

But it can be hard to decide which integration would work best for you and your team. In this article, we’ve selected some of the best integrations out there. Use them to connect your Slack to your ticketing software to easily turn it into a help desk.

The best ticketing systems apps and integrations for Slack

The place to go if you’re looking for an integration to connect your existing help desk to Slack is the Slack App Directory. We’ve analyzed the top five integrations on the following three main points:

Depth of Integration: what functionality is available through the integration? Can you both push and pull information through the integration? Ideally, integrations have two-way sync so that you can both view and update information in both systems.

Ease of Ticketing System Setup: from the gate to implementation, how long does it take to set up? Do you need an expert or someone with a specialty? Ideally, apps are quick to launch and require minimal set-up to be useful (but still offer customization).

Overall Impressions: what is the TL;DR? Is there anything else you should know about this integration?

Halp

With Halp, what happens in Slack, stays in Slack. And rightly so: If your team is already communicating via Slack, why should they switch to a different platform to get the help they need?

Halp works as a turnkey system, letting you build an entire help desk in Slack in just a few minutes. Use it to let employees submit tickets directly from Slack. Help desk staff will then be notified so they can troubleshoot, collaborate and resolve it, thus reducing response time. Once a ticket has been submitted, your IT or support team can triage it and assign it to the right person (for example, using an emoji). Tickets will always be visible in the ticket queue and you’ll always be able to assign, edit, and reply or add private notes directly in the thread on desktop or mobile.

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Another useful feature is that you can create fully-customizable forms to make it easier to organize tickets right from the start. That way you’ll know right away if the ticket relates to the onboarding of a new employee, a question for HR, or comes from a specific location.

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Analysis

✅ Depth of integration: Halp offers the only two-way integration with Slack. Not only can you turn Slack messages into tickets, but you can prioritize, update and respond to tickets right within your Slack workspace.

✅ Ease of setup: Because Halp is built as a Slack first integration, it’s extremely intuitive to set up and use. If you use Slack, you can use Halp.

✅ Overall impression: The Halp integration makes your Slack workspace a super-powered, intuitive help desk. If you are on Slack and need a ticketing system, Halp is your best option to see the full ticket lifecycle in Slack and never deflect outside of Slack.

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Jira Service Desk

If you’re familiar with the Agile methodology, then you probably know Jira. It’s arguably one of the best-known collaborative software tools used in software development. The tool is often used to plan, track and manage software development projects but they also offer a service desk tool that can double-up as an internal ticketing system in Slack — thanks to its integration, of course.

To set it up you’ll need the Jira Service Desk Slack integration. Once installed, you’ll be able to use the integration to see what tickets have been created in Jira. Once the issue has been created, the team can work and ultimately close the tickets just like they do with development bugs reported in Jira. With the Jira Cloud app, you can stay up to date without leaving Slack. @jira is at your service, sending customizable notifications from Jira Cloud to you and your channels.

Analysis

⚠️ Depth of integration: Teams using the Jira integration can push Slack messages into Jira to create new tickets and view tickets in Slack. They aren’t able to update Jira tickets within Slack, which makes this a one-way integration.

Ease of setup: Like everything in Jira, customization comes at a price. While Jira has a lot of options to change things up, it’s very complicated to use. You’ll need a competent administrator to make this work for you!

⚠️ Overall impression: If you’ve already set up Jira, it’s worth it to track your tickets in Slack, however the lack of a two-way integration means you’ll be swapping between Jira and Slack to get your work done.

Zendesk

Zendesk is a widely used customer support platform that helps thousands of companies help out their customers. Not surprisingly, being a platform precisely specialized in customer support, they offer a Slack integration which also serves as a ticketing system.

The same ticket workflows used to solve customer problems can also be used internally to track requests made from your own employees. From there, IT teams work through issues and requests in the queue just like the support team would.

For example, say you need help booking a trip to a conference. If the admin team has a dedicated channel for travel, thanks to the integration you can turn a message in Slack into a  Zendesk ticket. And, if you need to work on your tickets in Zendesk Support, you’ll be able to use filters to see those tickets created in Slack.
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Analysis

⚠️ Depth of integration: Zendesk only provides one-way sync. While you can push Slack messages into Zendesk, you cannot update and work on Zendesk tickets within Slack.

⚠️ Ease of setup: If you’re already using Zendesk, enabling the integration is simple. However, to build useful workflows, some advanced admin knowledge is required.

⚠️ Overall impression: The Zendesk integration is helpful to connect Slack to your helpdesk, but doesn’t help your support team work more efficiently in Slack.

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Now Actions (for ServiceNow)

ServiceNow is a widely-used cloud computing company that helps teams digitize their workflows, managing requests and troubleshooting issues. Aware of the friction caused by switching between apps to keep up with incidents and tasks, the platform built an integration, Now Actions, which made a lot of people happy  — it was one of the most requested integrations of all time!

Analysis

⚠️ Depth of integration: Now Actions will show notifications from ServiceNow in Slack and allow administrators to approve them. It also allows Slack users to log incidents in ServiceNow.

✅ Ease of setup: Setup is straightforward due to a limited number of actions to configure. As they add more functionality this is likely to become more complicated.

✅ Overall impression: With Now Actions, you won’t need to log into your ServiceNow account separately to keep up with requests. Instead, the notifications will show up in your Slack.

Conclusion

As Tech Ops & IT, teams and companies continue to grow and rely on Slack for a lot of day-to-day communication. It can be tedious or feel like a burden for your team to have to context switch out of Slack to a different app whenever someone needs to update, create, or triage a support ticket.

By implementing a Slack app ticketing integration to your helpdesk that provides a full two-way sync will ultimately help your team resolve tickets faster, reduce flipping costs, help to avoid missing deadlines. Providing the teams you support with faster answers, better service, and, ultimately, a more organized workflow.