Web DevelopmentCloud MigrationCDN & SecurityDevOps & Automation
A customer support portal with email-to-ticket and SLA automation
Client: IT services provider supporting business customers
We replaced an early prototype with a production support desk: customers raise and follow tickets by web or email, agents work from shared queues, and SLAs, reminders and escalations run automatically — on a near-zero-cost cloud stack.
The challenge
- •The first prototype had broken core flows — tickets could not be created reliably and assignment failed.
- •Several endpoints were reachable without proper access checks.
- •There was no email integration, no SLA tracking and no automation, so everything depended on someone remembering to follow up.
- •The client wanted it to run for close to nothing while they had only a few customers.
What we did
- →Rebuilt the backend with one central set of access rules, so each customer only ever sees their own organisation’s tickets.
- →Email-to-ticket: customers can open a ticket or reply simply by emailing support — replies land on the right ticket via signed reply addresses, with loop and spam protection.
- →SLA engine with first-response and resolution targets per category and priority, automatic escalation on breach, and the clock paused while waiting on the customer.
- →Automation: auto-assignment (round robin or least-loaded), reminders and auto-resolve when customers go quiet, auto-close after resolution.
- →Agent tools: queues and saved views, canned replies, tags, custom fields, internal notes, attachments with malware checks, and live updates without page refreshes.
- →Moved hosting to a serverless edge platform with a managed Postgres database close to its users, plus nightly encrypted backups with a tested restore.
Results
- ✓All core support flows working end to end — web, email and notifications.
- ✓Around 200 automated tests covering permissions, SLAs, email handling and automation.
- ✓Hosting runs within free cloud tiers at the client’s current volume.
- ✓Nightly encrypted database backups, verified by a full test restore.
Technology
Next.jsCloudflare WorkersPostgreSQL (Neon)Cloudflare R2Transactional emailGitHub Actions