Most small IT teams have the same problem: someone reports an issue by email or in passing, it gets lost, and nobody is sure whether anyone picked it up. So I built a simple IT service portal that turns every request into a tracked ticket, routes it automatically, and makes sure a human acknowledges it — all with tools most companies already have: a form, SharePoint, Power Automate, and Slack. Here’s how it works.
The portal: one place for everything
The front door is a clean IT Service Portal with a few simple options:
- Submit a ticket — report a problem or request help. Critical issues are auto-escalated.
- Check status — look up any ticket you’ve submitted.
- Ticket dashboard (admin) — view, filter, acknowledge, and update every incoming ticket.
- Guidance & Solutions (Q&A) — a knowledge base of common issues and fixes.
- IT Solutions Assistant — a chatbot that answers from past resolved tickets, so people can often fix things themselves.
Where the tickets live
When someone submits the form, the ticket is written to a SharePoint list (and a backing database) as the single source of truth. Every ticket gets an ID, a status, a priority, and a timestamp — so nothing is just floating in an inbox.
The automation (Power Automate)
A Power Automate flow does the heavy lifting the moment a ticket is created:
- Trigger: a new item is created in the SharePoint list.
- Route it: the flow reads the priority and decides which of three support tiers should handle it.
- Notify: it sends the requester an email confirmation, and posts the ticket into Slack for the right tier.
- Wait for acknowledgment: the flow waits for a team member to ACK the ticket in Slack.
- Escalate if ignored: if no one acknowledges within the time window, it automatically escalates to the next tier and re-notifies — so critical issues never sit unanswered.
- Update & close the loop: the ticket’s status is updated back in SharePoint, and the requester is kept in the loop by email.
Slack acknowledgment — the key piece
Instead of hoping someone reads an email, each ticket lands in a Slack channel with an Acknowledge action. One click tells the whole team “I’ve got this,” updates the ticket, and stops the escalation timer. It’s the difference between “someone should look at that” and a named person owning it.
The 3-tier model
Tier 1 handles quick, common fixes. Anything unresolved or higher-impact rolls up to Tier 2, and the most critical or specialized issues reach Tier 3. Because escalation is automatic and time-based, tickets move up on their own if they stall — no one has to remember to chase them.
Self-service: knowledge base + AI assistant
To cut down on tickets in the first place, the portal includes a searchable Q&A knowledge base of common fixes, plus an IT Solutions Assistant chatbot that answers from previously resolved tickets. A lot of “how do I…” questions get solved before they ever become a ticket.
Why it works
- Nothing falls through the cracks — every request becomes a tracked ticket with an owner.
- Accountability — the Slack ACK puts a name on every ticket.
- Automatic escalation — critical issues rise on their own if ignored.
- Fewer tickets — self-service Q&A and the assistant deflect the easy stuff.
- Built on tools you likely already have — SharePoint, Power Automate, and Slack.
Want the build details or a template to adapt for your own team? Reach out via our Contact page — happy to share how the flow is wired together.