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Help Desk Notifications

Purpose: Automatically notify developers and managers when a new ticket is created, delivering both in-app and email notifications without any manual wiring.

Why Built-in Notifications?

New support tickets need to reach the right people immediately. The Help Desk notification system provides:

  • Automatic dispatch on ticket creation with no extra code required
  • Both in-app and email notifications for developers
  • In-app-only notifications for managers
  • HTML-formatted email bodies with ticket details included
  • Environment-aware delivery — sends to DEVELOPMENT_EMAIL in debug mode

How It Works

When ticket.services.create() is called, HelpDeskTicketNotificationService.create_new_ticket_notifications() runs automatically. It identifies two recipient groups and creates the appropriate Notification and channel records for each.

The notifications are created in bulk and then processed in the background by the standard notification automations. See the Notification Automations guide for setup details.

Core Concepts

Recipient Groups

Group How Recipients Are Identified Channels
Developers Users whose email appears in settings.ADMINS App + Email
Managers Users with the delete_helpdeskticket permission App only

HelpDeskTicketNotificationService

Accessed on any ticket instance via ticket.services.notification. Called automatically by HelpDeskTicketService.create() — you do not need to call it directly.

from django_spire.help_desk.services.notification_service import HelpDeskTicketNotificationService

Notification Content

Notification content differs by channel:

App notification body: 

Priority: High - Purpose: App

Email notification body: An HTML block including the ticket ID, priority, purpose, and full description.

URL Generation

  • App notifications use a relative URL (/help_desk/page/<pk>/detail/)
  • Email notifications use an absolute URL with the current Site domain (https://example.com/help_desk/page/<pk>/detail/)

Main Operations

Triggering Notifications

Notifications fire automatically when you use the service layer to create a ticket:

ticket = HelpDeskTicket()

ticket.services.create(
    created_by=request.user,
    purpose=HelpDeskTicketPurposeChoices.APP,
    priority=HelpDeskTicketPriorityChoices.HIGH,
    description='Login page throws a 500 error for SSO users.',
)
# Notifications are created here automatically — no further action needed.

Settings Required

Ensure the following are configured for notifications to reach the correct recipients:

# Users who receive both app and email notifications for new tickets
ADMINS = [
    ('Developer Name', '[email protected]'),
]

# Used as the From address for outgoing email notifications
DEFAULT_FROM_EMAIL = '[email protected]'

# In debug mode, all emails are redirected to this address instead of the real recipient
DEVELOPMENT_EMAIL = '[email protected]'

Adding More Notification Events

The service currently supports the NEW ticket event type via TicketEventType. To add notifications for status updates or comments, extend HelpDeskTicketNotificationService and map the new TicketEventType values in _get_ticket_event_notification_title and _get_ticket_event_notification_body.