Everything you need to make sure that your Freshdesk is up and running in 10 minutes:


Get setup out of your way, mailbox, social accounts and all


If you haven’t added your support email already, we suggest that you troop over to Admin > Channels > Email in your Freshdesk and get this done with. Just make sure that once you’re done verifying your email that you set up forwarding rules from your inbox as well. And clear it up with your DNS as well.  


SLAs and automations 


Service level agreements (SLAs) are the standards you and your customers negotiate on for the resolution of their ticket. You can set SLA policies for the time within which agents should respond to, and resolve tickets based on ticket priorities, and set up automatic escalation rules to notify specific agents about SLA violations. 


You can also make your support reps’ lives a whole lot easier and your Freshdesk more efficient by setting up automation rules. Here are a few examples from our ( Freshworks') Freshdesk instance:

  1. A rule to assign tickets to various groups (Sales, QA) based on subject/description. You can set this up by using the automations that run on ticket creation
  2. Send out friendly reminders every time your customer defaults on a reply, using the time triggers in automations.
  3. Escalate tickets if the number of iterations is greater than 4, with the help of the time triggers in automations
  4. When a customer fills out a Satisfaction Survey with a smile, make your agents feel special, using rules that run on ticket updates
  5. The rules that run on ticket updates is used to automatically reopen tickets when the customer responds.

Integrating Freshdesk with your other tools 


Freshdesk integrates with 30+ tools, including invoicing, analytics and CRM software, like Salesforce, Harvest, Freshbooks, Google contacts, Calendar, Analytics and so on. So, you can bring in your contacts, analyze your support portal and generate invoices, all without leaving Freshdesk. Here’s a list of all the tools that we get along with. 


Logos, color palettes and other portal customization capabilities 


Give your support portal a personality; jazz up your support by setting up a logo, mixing in your color palette and branding your Freshdesk. To customize your portal, go to:


1. The Helpdesk icon (Admin > Account > Helpdesk Settings) to set up basic settings of your Freshdesk like language, time zone and colour schemes.


2. The Portals icon (Admin > Channels > Portals) to rebrand your portal. You can also change what language your portal supports here.


More information on customization is available here.


Adding agents


Now that your Freshdesk is all set to rock on, it’s time to bring your team on board. Remember, you can bring your support agents onto the team as permanent full-time agents and just buy day passes for the others who are only occasionally needed. So, you don’t have to make Mark, the Finance Whiz, a full-time agent just because a customer needs his expertise, every now and then.