Service Management
XBuddy Service Management runs the delivery side of a services business — from the support ticket a customer opens, through the service contract and orders that govern the work, to the agent timesheets that get billed and the SLAs that hold the whole thing to a standard. It gives service teams one place to capture demand, deliver work, meet commitments, and turn effort into invoices — without re-entering the same facts three times across sales, delivery, and finance.
Who uses it: support agents resolving tickets, service managers overseeing contracts and SLA compliance, delivery agents logging billable time, dispatchers coordinating field visits, and finance users billing against delivered service. Because tickets, contracts, orders, and timesheets all reference the same customer account and service catalog, nothing has to be re-typed to bill for it.
Service Management is not the same queue as the Customer Success Helpdesk. They are two separate ticket tables serving two different jobs — see Two ticket queues, not one below before you build automation or reporting that assumes there is only one.
Before you start
Prerequisites
| You need | Why | Where |
|---|---|---|
| A service catalog with priced items | Service order lines resolve their rate from the catalog; without it every line is priced by hand | /service-management/catalog |
| A contact / account | The customer on the ticket, contract and order | /crm/contacts |
| An SLA policy (if you promise response times) | Ticket clocks and breach reporting derive from it | /service-management/settings/sla-policies |
| Technicians with user accounts | Assignment targets a user, not a bare name | /hr/employees |
| A contract (for retainer or T&M work) | Sets billing model, rate card and included hours | /service-management/contracts |
Permissions that unlock each area
| Permission | Unlocks |
|---|---|
service_management:read / :write | View / create service records |
service_management:assign | Assign a ticket or order to a technician |
service_management:billing | The billing queue and timesheets |
service_management:approve_timesheets | Approve billable hours |
service_management:amend_contract | Make a contract amendment effective |
service_management:config | SLA policies and app configuration |
service_management:reports | Reports and the SLA report |
service_management:admin | Full administration |
tickets:read / :write / :assign / :close | The ticket queue this app owns |
timesheets:read / :write / :approve | Time capture and approval |
Two ticket systems exist and they are not the same table. Service Management tickets live at /service-management/tickets; the Customer Success helpdesk queue lives at /customer-success/helpdesk. They have separate permissions and separate data. A user with helpdesk access does not automatically see service tickets.
Which records you see
Service records are owner-scoped. own shows what a technician is assigned or created; team extends through the manager chain; all shows the company. Single-record reads that fall outside the tier return 404, not 403 — a 403 on a real id would confirm the record exists to someone not entitled to know it.
Key Features
- Service Catalog of standard offerings, service items, and rates that price everything downstream consistently
- Service Orders — the billable unit of work, with line items, parts, milestones, and a defined lifecycle
- Service Contracts governing ongoing relationships, with formal amendments for scope/price changes mid-term
- Ticket lifecycle with a customer portal, SLA inheritance, and a full activity timeline
- Four billing models — one-off, fixed-price milestones, time & material, retainer — all converging on one Billing review queue
- Projects for grouping related orders and tracking a larger engagement’s progress and budget
- Agent Timesheets captured against tickets/orders and rolled into Billing
- Dispatch to Field Service for on-site work: technician scheduling, parts consumption, customer acceptance
- SLA Policies and SLA reporting for response/resolution commitments
- Reports on ticket volume, agent utilization, and SLA compliance
- AI Hub with the Support Concierge assistant
Two ticket queues, not one
Service Management is the single entry point for Service Management tickets. This is a genuinely different queue from the Customer Success Helpdesk, which handles general customer support requests on its own, separate table. The two never merge automatically. If a Helpdesk ticket needs to become a formal, billable engagement, it’s promoted into Service Management from the Customer Success side — Service Management itself doesn’t reach back into the Helpdesk queue.
| Service Management Tickets | Customer Success Helpdesk | |
|---|---|---|
| Typical use | Contracted service work, billable support, work tied to a Service Order/Contract | General customer support, pre-sale questions, non-billable requests |
| Billing | Ticket time can feed the Billing queue directly | Not billed through Service Management |
| SLA | Inherits from an SLA Policy tied to the ticket’s priority | Has its own SLA handling in Customer Success |
| Promotion path | — | Escalated/converted into a Service Management ticket or Service Order when it becomes billable |
Reports, dashboards, and workflow automation built in Service Management only ever see the Service Management table. If ticket volume looks lower than support actually handled, check whether some of that traffic is sitting in the CS Helpdesk instead.
Screen map
| Screen | Route | What it is for | Permission |
|---|---|---|---|
| Overview | /service-management | Open tickets, orders in flight, SLA health | service_management:read |
| Tickets | /service-management/tickets | The service ticket queue | tickets:read |
| Ticket detail | /service-management/tickets/[id] | Timeline, SLA clock, resolution, hand-off to order or job | tickets:read |
| New ticket | /service-management/tickets/new | Intake | tickets:write |
| Service orders | /service-management/service-orders | Billable work with its own lifecycle | service_management:read |
| Service order detail | /service-management/service-orders/[id] | Lines, scheduling, completion, invoicing | service_management:read |
| New / edit order | /service-management/service-orders/new, /[id]/edit | The order builder | service_management:write |
| Contracts | /service-management/contracts | Retainers, SOWs, MSAs | service_management:read |
| Contract detail | /service-management/contracts/[id] | Rate card, included hours, amendments, billing events | service_management:read |
| New / edit contract | /service-management/contracts/new, /[id]/edit | Contract authoring | service_management:write |
| Catalog | /service-management/catalog | Priced service items | service_management:read |
| Catalog item | /service-management/catalog/[id] | Rate, unit, defaults | service_management:config |
| Projects | /service-management/projects | Delivery containers for larger engagements | service_management:read |
| Project detail | /service-management/projects/[id] | Milestones, members, billing | service_management:read |
| Timesheets | /service-management/timesheets | Billable hours awaiting approval | service_management:billing |
| Billing | /service-management/billing | The staged billing queue | service_management:billing |
| Agents | /service-management/agents, /[id] | Service agents and their load | service_management:read |
| Reports | /service-management/reports | Service reporting | service_management:reports |
| SLA report | /service-management/sla-report | Breach and attainment | service_management:reports |
| SLA policies | /service-management/settings/sla-policies, /[id] | Response and resolution targets | service_management:config |
| Settings | /service-management/settings | App configuration | service_management:config |
| Automation | /service-management/automation/agents, /automation/workflows | AI agents and workflows | agents:read / workflow:read |
AI in Service Management
The Support Concierge assistant lives in the AI Hub and works directly against incoming tickets: it triages new tickets by priority and category, drafts a first-pass response an agent can review and send, flags tickets at risk of an SLA breach before the deadline actually slips, and suggests the next resolution step based on how similar tickets were closed before. Every suggestion is reviewed by a human agent before it goes out — the assistant proposes, it doesn’t send.
Full feature reference
| Nav item | What it does |
|---|---|
| Overview | Service dashboard with open tickets, SLA compliance, agent utilization, and a chart of ticket volume by period. |
| Tickets | Support request workspace with lifecycle, assignment, internal notes, customer portal, and activity timeline. |
| Projects | Service delivery projects grouping related orders/tickets and tracking progress toward a larger engagement. |
| Service Contracts | Ongoing service agreements defining scope, rates, and term that govern service orders and billing; supports formal amendments for mid-term changes. |
| Service Orders | Specific billable engagements (often under a contract) with line items, parts, milestones, and linked timesheets. |
| Service Agents | Registry of delivery/support agents, their assignments, and utilization. |
| Service Catalog | Standard service offerings with rates, used to price orders and timesheet lines consistently. |
| Timesheets | Billable time logged by agents against tickets/orders at catalog or contract rates, feeding billing. |
| Billing | Reviews unbilled timesheets, orders, and milestones and generates customer invoices in Finance. |
| Reports | Service reporting hub: ticket volume, resolution time, agent utilization, and revenue with CSV export. |
| SLA Report | Compliance report showing met, at-risk, and breached SLA commitments across tickets. |
| SLA Policies | Definitions of response/resolution deadlines by priority, applied to tickets. |
| AI Hub | Run the Support Concierge assistant and review its triage and resolution suggestions. |
| Workflows | Automation for service events — e.g. auto-assign a ticket by category or alert on an SLA-breach risk. |
| Settings | Configure SLA policies, service catalog rates, portal branding, data scope, service master data, and billing features (e.g. Recurring Retainer Billing). |
Integration points
| Connects to | How the data flows |
|---|---|
| CRM | Tickets, contracts, and orders reference the CRM account, giving one view of the customer’s service history. |
| Finance | Reviewed timesheets, completed orders, and staged milestones/retainer events generate customer invoices with hours, parts, and rates pre-filled. |
| Inventory | Parts lines on a Service Order consume against a linked inventory item, keeping stock in sync with service delivery. |
| Field Service | On-site work dispatched from Service Orders flows to the Field Service app and reports completion, parts used, and customer acceptance back. |
| Customer Success | Tickets and SLAs align with the CS support pipeline; Helpdesk tickets can be promoted into Service Management when they become billable. |
| Communications | Connected email/chat channels create and update tickets and log customer replies automatically. |
Related AI agents
| Agent | What it does |
|---|---|
| Support Concierge | Triages incoming tickets, drafts responses, flags SLA-breach risk, and suggests the next resolution step to the agent. |