Work a case
Cases live in a split-pane workspace: a list (or board) of cases on one side, and the open case — title, description, discussion, and a dock of side panels — on the other. This article walks through the day-to-day mechanics of creating and working a case. For the underlying data model and lifecycle, see What are cases?.
Create a case
Click New (or press N) to open the case composer. Give it a title and description, and optionally attach a workflow at creation — attaching a workflow puts the case on that workflow’s stage pipeline instead of the plain open/closed lifecycle. If you don’t attach a workflow, the case is workflow-less and only ever has a lifecycle status (open or closed).
Workflows themselves are built by an admin — see Case workflows for how stage pipelines are configured.
List vs. board view
Toggle between List and Board at the top of the case pane.
- List shows every case as a row, regardless of workflow. This is the only view that shows workflow-less cases alongside workflowed ones.
- Board groups cases into columns. What it groups by depends on your filter:
- If you’ve filtered to a single workflow, the board groups by that workflow’s stages.
- Otherwise, it groups by lifecycle status (Open / Closed).
- Workflow-less cases only ever appear in the list or in a lifecycle-grouped board — they never show up on a stage board, since they have no stages.
Above both views is a status scope dropdown reading “Showing: Open cases ▾”. Open it and you’ll find:
- Lifecycle — Open, Closed
- Your tenant’s custom Status list
- A Manage statuses… link at the bottom
Custom statuses are configured by an admin — see Create custom case statuses.
Open a case
Click a row (or a card, in board view) to open it in the right-hand pane of the split view. The top of the case shows its title and description. Below that sits the internal discussion, and along the right edge sits the dock.
Set priority, assignee, and due date
In the case header, set:
- Priority — the urgency level for the case
- Assignee — a single user or a team
- Due date — when the case is expected to be resolved
These fields are visible and editable directly on the open case; you don’t need a separate panel for them.
Hold the internal discussion
The case discussion is where the work actually happens:
- Comments — write internal notes for other agents. Type
@to mention a teammate; mentioned users get notified. - File attachments — attach files directly to a comment.
- Inline checklist items — create checklist items right from the discussion composer, without leaving the case.
This discussion is internal-only — it’s separate from any customer-facing conversation linked to the case (see below).
Use the dock panels
Along the right edge of the case workspace is a dock with four panels:
- Info — case metadata
- Conversations — customer conversations linked to this case
- Files — attachments across the case
- Activity — an audit trail of what changed and when (status changes, stage transitions, assignment changes, etc.)
Click a panel icon to open it as an overlay; click the pin icon to keep it open alongside the discussion instead of it auto-closing. Only one panel can be pinned at a time.
Press G then F to toggle the case into full-screen, hiding the list pane so the open case takes the full window — useful when you’re deep in a discussion or checklist.
Link and open a conversation
Conversations and cases are linked many-to-many — one case can reference several conversations, and a conversation can be linked from several cases. Link a conversation from the Conversations dock panel. Click a linked conversation to open it inline inside the case workspace; a breadcrumb at the top lets you jump back to the case without losing your place.
Advance or close a case
How a case closes depends on whether it has a workflow:
- With a workflow — use the Advance to
<stage>action to move the case to its next stage. Completing the final stage closes the case. - Without a workflow — use Mark done to close the case directly; there’s no intermediate stage to advance through.
Bulk actions from the list
Select one or more rows in the case list to reveal an inline bulk-action bar in the toolbar (it’s part of the toolbar, not a floating overlay). From there you can, across the whole selection:
- Mark done
- Assign
- Tag
- Workflow
- Priority
- Change status
This is the fastest way to triage a batch of cases — for example, selecting every case in a stale status and reassigning or re-prioritizing them in one action.