Documentation

Requirements

WordPress 6.2 or later
PHP 7.4 or later
Works with any theme; no other plugin required

Installation

Upload the ThickGrass folder to /wp-content/plugins/, or install it as a .zip via Plugins → Add New → Upload Plugin.
Activate the plugin. Activation seeds sensible defaults — ticket statuses, priorities, a REQ/INC ticket type, a default organization — and creates the front-end portal pages automatically.
Go to ThickGrass → Admin to review or adjust those defaults for your team.
Add the front-end shortcodes you need to any page (see below).

By default, WordPress Administrators become ThickGrass Managers, Editors become Agents, and Subscribers become End-users. This mapping can be adjusted for your site’s own roles.

Where to find everything

Activating the plugin adds a ThickGrass menu to the WordPress admin sidebar:

Menu item	What’s there
Dashboard	The agent/manager workbench — ticket queue, filters, saved views, and the full ticket detail screen.
Record new Call	Log a phone call, email, or walk-in, and browse calls already logged.
Chat	The live chat console and agent roster.
SLA reports	SLA performance reporting with CSV export.
Reports	Volume reports, saved/custom reports, and KPI goals & reports.
Automation	Automation rules, recurring ticket templates, email routing rules, and webhooks.
Setup	Every configurable list and CRUD screen: assignment groups, ticket types, priority, impact, status, on-hold reasons, call close reasons, contact types, custom forms, category, organizations, agents, end-users, asset types, assets, SLA definitions, knowledge base, canned responses, checklist templates, custom fields, business services.
Settings	Email inbox (IMAP), email templates, directory sync, single sign-on, API keys, wallboard.
Administration	License activation and audit log.

Front-end shortcodes

Add these to any WordPress page to build your customer-facing portal:

Shortcode	Purpose
`[thickgrass_new_ticket]`	The “open a new ticket” form for logged-in end-users.
`[thickgrass_my_tickets]`	A logged-in end-user’s list of their own tickets, with status.
`[thickgrass_kb]`	The public Knowledge Base search/browse page — no login required.
`[thickgrass_custom_form slug="..."]`	Renders a custom intake form built in Setup → Custom forms.
`[thickgrass_custom_form_group slug="..."]`	Renders a group of related custom forms together.
`[thickgrass_chat]`	The live chat widget for visitors.
`[thickgrass_csat]`	The per-ticket satisfaction rating form.
`[thickgrass_periodic_survey]`	The recurring satisfaction survey landing page.
`[thickgrass_approval]`	The page an approver lands on when responding to an approval request by email — used internally, you generally don’t need to place this manually.

Setting up ticket types, statuses, and SLAs

Setup → Ticket types — confirm or edit the prefix, number padding, and starting number for each type (defaults: REQ and INC).
Setup → Status — review the ticket lifecycle. Each status has checkboxes controlling whether it counts as resolved, closed, on hold (pauses the SLA clock), a one-time-only state, or auto-assigns the ticket to whoever moves it there.
Setup → Priority, Impact, Category — adjust the values offered on the ticket form.
Setup → SLA definitions — define response/resolution targets per organization, priority, category, and/or ticket type.
Setup → Organizations — set each organization’s weekly business hours; SLA deadlines are calculated against these hours, not the wall clock.

Logging a call and turning it into a ticket

ThickGrass → Record new Call — pick how the person reached you (phone, email, self-service, chat, walk-in), enter the requester and a short description, and save. From the call, either convert to ticket (choose a ticket type and requester; the full ticket form opens pre-filled) or close without a ticket (pick a close reason and the call is done).

Every ticket opened by staff traces back to a logged call, by design — nothing gets created out of nowhere.

Working a ticket

Open a ticket from the Dashboard queue to change its status, priority, or assigned agent/group; add a public comment (visible to the requester) or an internal work note (staff only); attach files; insert a canned response or knowledge base article; or request an approval. Every change appears in the ticket’s activity timeline, most recent first.

Automation, in brief

Admin → Automation rules — define triggers (ticket created, field changed, comment added, SLA breached/at-risk, approval requested/approved/rejected), optional conditions, and actions (set a field, add a tag, fire a webhook).
Admin → Recurring tickets — build a template that opens a real ticket on a schedule.
Settings → Email routing rules — auto-assign new tickets by the requester’s email domain.
Settings → Webhooks — send a signed payload to an external URL (or a ready-made Slack/Teams format) on ticket events.

Reporting, in brief

SLA reports — CSV-exportable compliance reporting.
Reports → Volume — ticket-creation heatmap and backlog trend.
Reports → Saved reports — build and share your own custom report.
Reports → KPI goals — set per-agent targets and see actuals against them.
Settings → Wallboard — configure the live team-floor dashboard.

Integrations

REST API — the thickgrass/v1 namespace covers tickets, chats, mentionable users, and agent presence. Authenticate with a logged-in session, a shared API key, or a personal per-user API key with its own read/write scope and optional expiry (Settings → API keys).
Directory sync — connect Azure AD / Entra ID via Microsoft Graph to provision users automatically, with optional group-to-organization mapping (Settings → Directory sync).
Sign in with Microsoft — enable a first-party OIDC login connector for your team (Settings → Single sign-on).

Bonus: the ThickGrass-SupportPortal theme

ThickGrass ships with a second, companion WordPress theme — ThickGrass-SupportPortal — built specifically for the front end your own end-users and agents see day to day. Instead of building a portal from scratch out of the shortcodes above, install and activate it and it seeds pages for you automatically: Home (a welcome screen with quick links), Open a Ticket, My Tickets, Knowledge Base, Live Chat, and a portal-specific Help page — each already wired to the matching shortcode, with an editable menu and the same visual language as the rest of ThickGrass. It’s meant to run on your customer’s own site (wherever ThickGrass itself is installed and active), separate from this sales site.

Licensing & updates

Go to Administration → License to activate your site with the key you received at purchase. A valid license enables one-click automatic updates and removes the admin reminder — but ThickGrass keeps working at full functionality whether or not a license is active. See Pricing for license details.

See the FAQ page for common questions about accounts, email, and licensing.