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Ticket Workspace

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Ed Mozley edited this page Oct 27, 2026 · 3 revisions

The ticket workspace

A ticket can be laid out for working rather than reading: its properties in a column on the left, and its conversation, its work, its links, its time and its history on tabs beside them. Linked tasks open in place, in the ticket, with their own checklists, forms and subtasks.

It is optional at every level. An administrator decides whether it is used at all, each analyst decides for themselves, and nothing changes on an upgrade until someone switches it on.

Added in 4.3.0, contributed by @Dr4inder (#211, #212). Developers: Ticket workspace - developer guide.

What it looks like

Area What is in it
Header The ticket number and subject, the requester, the SLA summary and the toolbar - Add note, Reply, Forward, Schedule, Checklist, Ask AI, Link to..., More - the same buttons as the reading pane
Properties (left column) Department, type, status, priority, team, owner, company, sensitivity, origin and the custom fields, in three groups: Classification, Responsibility and Other details
Conversation tab The message thread, attachments, recordings, the AI summary and the notes - with every reading-pane option (collapsing, quoting, split)
Work tab The ticket's checklists and its linked tasks. A checklist lists every step with its tickbox - Collapse shrinks it to the next step and Expand brings the rest back (your browser remembers which), and Pop out opens it in a window. Click a task to open its editor here
Links tab Problems, changes, related tickets, equipment, configuration items, domains, projects and tracker issues
Time and SLA tab The SLA clocks and the time entries
History tab The audit trail, loaded the first time you open the tab

Every control is the one the reading pane has, saving the same way and checked the same way - the workspace only changes where things sit.

On a narrow screen, or with the list columns made wide, the properties move under the tabs and fold away, as they do in the reading pane.

Switching it on (administrators)

Tickets → Settings → General → Ticket workspace:

Choice What happens
Off (the default) No workspace anywhere. FreeITSM looks exactly as it did
Only tickets turned into a workspace A ticket opens as a workspace only once somebody has turned it into one (below). Every other ticket opens in the reading pane
Every ticket Every ticket opens as a workspace

Changing the setting never changes a ticket: switching from Only tickets turned into a workspace to Off and back brings back the same tickets.

Turning one ticket into a workspace

With the setting on Only tickets turned into a workspace, open the ticket and choose More → Make workspace. More → Back to the reading pane undoes it.

  • It belongs to the ticket, not to you, so everyone working the ticket sees it laid out the same way. That is the point: a password reset is quicker in the reading pane, a server move with six linked tasks is easier in a workspace.
  • It is recorded on the ticket's History (Workspace: off → on).
  • It does not start a workflow - it changes how the ticket is shown, not anything about the work.
  • Over the REST API it is the ticket's workspace field - see REST API - Tickets.

Make workspace is not offered in Every ticket mode, where every ticket already is one.

Your own choice

Once an administrator has switched the workspace on, each analyst can still turn it off for themselves:

  • Use the workspace in the ticket list's filter menu (the funnel button), or
  • System → Preferences → Ticket workspace.

It is on unless you turn it off. With it off you get the reading pane for every ticket - and a ticket someone turned into a workspace shows a small Workspace badge, so you know a colleague is working it that way. A preference template can set it for new analysts (Preference templates).

Install setting Your switch on Your switch off
Off Reading pane Reading pane
Only tickets turned into a workspace Workspace for those tickets, reading pane for the rest Reading pane, with a Workspace badge on those tickets
Every ticket Workspace Reading pane

Linked tasks, opened in place

On the Work tab, click a linked task and its own editor opens inside the ticket: the fields, the description, checklists, forms, procedures, subtasks, comments, documents and the task report. It is the real task editor, so anything you change is saved exactly as it would be in Tasks.

  • Open separately opens the task in its own window, as before; so does Ctrl-click (⌘-click on a Mac) on the task.
  • Close puts the task away. Only one task is open at a time.
  • Opening a subtask from the editor keeps you in the ticket.
  • You need access to Tasks to edit a task here. A task that is unlinked, or that you lose access to while it is open, says so instead of carrying on.

Nothing half-typed is lost

Moving to another ticket, closing a task, or switching the workspace off with something unsaved - a reply, a note, a custom field, a task change - asks first, and offers Discard. Anything still saving is waited for. And when the ticket has to be redrawn while you are typing - after you drag it to a folder, say - the redraw waits until you have finished, so the screen never changes under you.

Related pages

FreeITSM — an open-source IT Service Management platform · github.com/edmozley/freeitsm · MIT licence

FreeITSM

Getting Started

Modules

Multi-tenancy (planned)

Blue sky thinking

Bugs resolved

Links

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