Getting started

What Alba Ticket is, its five modules, how to log in, and where things are.

Alba Ticket is a ticketing system for helpdesks, software projects and any team that tracks work through a workflow. Every project has tickets that move through statuses, and every change is recorded. If your team came from Jira, everything you had there, including keys, history, comments and custom fields, is here unchanged.

The five modules

Alba Ticket is five modules that work on the same tickets, people and customers. Every workspace has all five, and an administrator chooses which of them the team uses (see Modules and features): a module or a feature that is switched off in your workspace is not shown there, and an administrator is the one to ask if you need it. This guide has a section for each module.

The five modules share one set of tickets, people and customers Projects Tickets, workflows, boards, sprints Helpdesk Requests, portal, queues, SLAs Knowledge base Spaces, pages, versions, comments Time Activities, reports, invoices CRM Contacts, companies, deals, interactions Shared by all five Tickets · People and roles · Customers and organisations · Projects Each module adds to the same records; nothing is copied between them.
  • Projects are where work is tracked: tickets that move through a workflow, with history, comments, custom fields and attachments, and boards and sprints to plan and run it. Every team uses this one.
  • Helpdesk serves customers from a project of its own kind: request types and a portal for them, queues for the people who answer, internal notes customers never see, SLAs and approvals.
  • Knowledge base holds the documentation: spaces of pages for the workspace and for each project, with every version kept, comments and restrictions, published pages that answer customers, and spaces kept in step with a folder in Git.
  • Time records what people work on, on a ticket or not, and turns it into effort reports and invoices for customers at their contracts' rates.
  • CRM keeps the people and companies: contacts with their addresses and phones, companies that may or may not be customers, deals in a sales pipeline, and the interactions and follow-ups with each of them, email among them.

The pages after the five cover what applies everywhere: writing in Markdown, searching, keyboard shortcuts, your account and AI agents. The Administration section at the end is for the people who set the workspace up.

First-run setup

A new installation with no accounts shows a setup page instead of the login page. It creates the first administrator, with a password so login works before email is configured, and names the installation. It then asks, once, what the installation uses: every module is on, and a few features (the REST API, the MCP server for AI agents, public request forms and iCloud calendars) are off until you switch them on. Choose, or press Continue to keep the defaults; all of it can be changed later under Administration, Modules and features. After that, everything else is done while logged in: invite the team, connect single sign-on, create projects, or import from Jira.

Sample data

An installation of your own, set up to try Alba Ticket, can start with something to look at. Tick Add sample projects to explore on the setup page, and the installation opens with the hosted demo's data: an online shop's software project with its tickets, boards and sprints, an IT helpdesk with request types, queues, SLAs and customers, a knowledge base, a customer with a contract, and a few weeks of logged time.

The sample people made all of it, so none of it is yours: you are no ticket's reporter or watcher, and nobody is notified of anything. They are deactivated, so they cannot log in and are never counted as seats; their names stay on what they did. Loading it is refused once the installation has any projects, spaces, customers, contacts or activities, so the sample data never mixes with real work. To start again without it, set up a fresh installation.

Logging in

Open the address your administrator gave you. What you see depends on how the installation is set up:

  • Log in with email. Enter your email address. The page tells you that a link is on its way, who it is from and how long it works. Opening the link logs you in; no password is needed. The page says the same whether or not the address has an account, so it never reveals who has one. If no email arrives, check your spam folder, then use Use a different address, or send it again. If you have set a password in your account settings, you can use that instead.
  • Too many tries. To keep robots out, one connection gets five login links an hour for an address and ten wrong passwords in a quarter of an hour, and somewhat more across addresses; one address gets twenty links an hour from everywhere together. Past that, no link is sent (the page looks the same) and the password form asks you to wait a few minutes. Logging in successfully counts for nothing, and somebody guessing your address from elsewhere never stops your right password from working. The licence portal's login and workspace sign-up are limited the same way.
  • Continue with your organisation. When your organisation uses single sign-on, the login page offers it as soon as you type an email address from your organisation's domain. Some organisations require it.
  • Create an account. Registration may be open, by invitation only, or reserved for single sign-on. With an invitation, use the link in the email you received.

On a hosted installation each team has its own workspace at its own address, for example your-team.albaticket.com. Everything in this guide applies inside a workspace.

Your home page

Once you are logged in, the home page (the wordmark in the header) is your overview. It has these lists and a side column:

  • Service levels lists every request with a running or paused SLA clock that is assigned to you or unassigned in your projects, the most urgent first: your own requests before unassigned ones, and within each, breached clocks first (the most overdue at the top), then running clocks by the time they have left, then paused ones. Each row names the customer, the clock, the time left or over, the assignee and the request type. A red badge is a breach, an amber one a clock within a quarter of its goal, and a grey one a paused clock. The times move by themselves and the list reorders as tickets change.
  • Boards shows the boards you opened most recently as cards, each with its name and whether it is kanban or scrum. A click opens the board; All boards lists every board you can see.
  • In progress shows the tickets you are working on, those with an active clock first, and how many are in progress in each of your projects. All of mine beside it lists every open ticket assigned to you, started or not.
  • Follow-ups lists the open follow-ups assigned to you in the CRM, the soonest due first, with Done beside each. It is there only while you have some.
  • Recently updated is the latest activity across your projects.
  • The side column counts the open tickets assigned to you and reported by you, and lists the projects you visited most recently. If you may see the CRM, a Pipeline card there gives the open deals and those expected to close this month, and opens the sales reports.

A row opens its ticket. A ticket that is on a board also has a board icon at the end of its row, which opens the board with the card outlined (or the backlog, on a scrum board, when the ticket is not in the active sprint), and a menu of boards when it is on several. Long lists show ten rows and Show all. Customers see the help centre instead of this page.

Finding your way around

The header links to the parts you use most:

  • Projects lists the projects you belong to. A project holds tickets. Once you have opened some, a small arrow next to the link opens a list of the five you visited most recently.
  • Boards shows kanban and scrum boards across your projects, with the same list of your five most recent boards.
  • Knowledge lists the knowledge base's spaces you can read.
  • Time opens your activities, where time is recorded.
  • Search and the New ticket button sit to the left of the links; the bell beside your name shows unread notifications and opens them.
  • Help opens this guide.
  • Your name opens the user menu: your account settings, Invitations, Admin for installation administrators, the colour theme (system, light or dark) and Log out.

On a phone or a narrow window the links move into the menu button at the left of the header, with your recent projects and boards listed under Projects and Boards; your name becomes a person icon.

Every page updates live. When someone else changes a ticket you are looking at, you see it without reloading.

Times and time zones

Every time in the app is shown in your browser's time zone, the one your device is set to. The tooltip on a time names the zone and the second. A time you type, such as when an activity started or a sprint's dates, is read in that zone too. There is no setting: change the device's zone and the next page you open follows it. A page that has not yet connected, or a browser that names no zone, shows UTC and says so in the tooltip. Emails and the API give times in UTC.

Getting help

The footer of every page links to this guide and to the terms and privacy policy. An installation may also show a support contact on its home page. Every page of this guide is also plain Markdown at its own address with .md added (https://your-workspace.albaticket.com/docs/getting-started.md), for an AI assistant to read.