How to Set Up Your BoldDesk Site

Once you have created a BoldDesk account, you need to set up your BoldDesk instance. Several customizations and settings are available in the Admin module when setting up your BoldDesk instance. In this guide, you will walk through the important settings and customizations to set up your instance for getting started with BoldDesk. Learn more on;

Check out this video for more details

Customer Portal and Agent Portal

After creating your account, you will get two portals as follows,

Name of Portal	Description	URL
Customer Portal (Support Center)	This portal is for end-users (contacts) to raise support tickets by reporting issues, requesting help, and tracking progress. It improves communication between users and the support team.	yoursubdomain.bolddesk.com
Agent Portal	This portal is used by the support team (agents) to respond to tickets raised by customers. To access it, add “/agent” to the customer portal URL.	yoursubdomain.bolddesk.com/agent

Customizing your agent portal settings

To customise your agent portal name, sidebar colour, logo, ticket default settings, login, single sign-on settings, go through Admin > Settings > Agent Portal. Learn more on How to Customize Agent Portal Settings in BoldDesk.

Customizing your customer portal settings

Customer portal settings can be customised from Admin > Settings > Customer Portal. While customising your customer portal, you can white-label or rebrand the customer portal by modifying the Portal Name, Logo, Footer Links, Login, and Security Settings to match your organisation’s branding. Options are available to change the portal URLs and map your company’s custom domain. For example, yourcompany.bolddesk.com can be changed to support.yourcompany.com. Learn more on How to map a custom domain and BoldDesk Customer Portal Customization: Step-By-Step Guide.

Changing your instance date and time settings

Date and Time settings can be changed from Admin > Settings > General. By default, the date and time will be used across the agent and customer portals. Users have an option to personalise these settings in their profiles. Explore How to Configure General Help Desk Settings.

Configuring support email

Support emails are used as email addresses when a notification email is sent to a user for any event. This email address can also be used for ticket creation. When a customer sends an email to this email address, a ticket will be automatically created. Options are also available to add and configure your company’s support emails.

You can configure a support email from Admin > Settings > Support Emails. Learn more on

Adding agents, groups, and permissions

Agents are the users in charge of handling tickets and dealing with customers’ issues. You can add as many agents as possible based on the licence you have purchased. Agents can be added from Admin > Users and Permissions > Agent module. Explore How to Manage Agents in BoldDesk.

Apparently, only the organisation owner is added as a support agent.

Groups (teams) in an organisation help to associate the related agents together. Groups can be utilised in auto assignments, automation, ticket permission restriction, and sharing filters. Learn more on How to Create and Manage Agent Group or Team in BoldDesk.

Roles and permissions give you fine-grained access control over your support agents. Explore more on Managing Roles and Permissions in BoldDesk.

While adding roles and permissions:

Custom roles are also supported.
These permissions are applicable only to agents.

Customizing the ticket creation form

The ticket creation form can be customised from Admin > Fields and Forms > Ticket Forms module. From this module, you can modify the ticket forms that are to be used by the customers and agents. Through customising, fields can be set mandatory, hidden from customers, and much more. Several types of custom fields are supported which can be created and added to your ticket form. By default, the category and type fields are added but if the fields are not required, they can be removed. Moreover, you can customise the Dropdown option values for category and type fields. Learn more on How to Manage Dropdown Field Values and How to Manage Fields and Forms in BoldDesk.

Setting up work schedules

Work schedules include both business hours and holidays. Work schedules can be set up from Admin > Settings > Work Schedules.

Business hours help with setting up different work timings for your support team across different time zones. Business hours can be used as criteria when setting up Service Level Agreements (SLAs). Explore more on Configuring Business Hours in BoldDesk for SLA & Support.
Holiday list can be used for setting up holidays for your support team. It can be associated with business hours, used in setting up the SLA. Learn more on How to Create and Configure SLA Policies in BoldDesk? and How to Set Up Holiday List for Your Organisation.

Setting up service-level agreements (SLA)

SLAs help to set the response and resolution times in support tickets. Each SLA can be configured to operate either for calendar hours (24*7) or specific business hours. SLAs can be created from the Admin > SLA module. By default, one SLA is created. It can be customised to change response and resolution time. You can also create more SLA rules and set reminder and escalation settings. Learn more on What is Service Level Agreement (SLA)? and How to Create and Configure SLA Policies in BoldDesk?.

Automation rules

BoldDesk supports powerful no-code automation. Automation rules can be accessed from the Admin > Automations module. Automation rules are created to run and execute a set of actions when certain criteria are met. For example, configuring Auto ticket assignments. Several types of automation are available. Learn more on Automation Rules in BoldDesk: Boost Productivity with Triggers.

Setting up the knowledge base

A knowledge base is a self-service portal and central repository of information for your customers and employees. With BoldDesk knowledge base software, you can create unlimited informational articles for different brands and products. You can organise and group your knowledge-base articles by using categories and sections. BoldDesk supports the creation of public and internal knowledge bases.

Learn more on Get Started With Knowledge Base.

Frequently Asked Questions (FAQs)

1.) What’s the difference between the Customer Portal and the Agent Portal?

Customer Portal (Support Center): Where customers/contacts submit and track tickets. (example: yoursubdomain.bolddesk.com).
Agent Portal: Where agents manage and respond to tickets. You access it by adding /agent to your customer portal URL (example: yoursubdomain.bolddesk.com/agent).

2.) Where can I change the date and time settings for my BoldDesk instance?
You can change date and time settings from:
Admin > Settings > General
By default, the selected date/time settings apply across both portals. Users can also personalise these settings in their own profiles.

3.) How do I customise the Agent Portal in BoldDesk?
To customise your agent portal name, sidebar colour, logo, ticket defaults, login options, and SSO settings, go to:
Admin > Settings > Agent Portal

4.) How do I customise the Customer Portal in BoldDesk?
You can customise the customer portal from:
Admin > Settings > Customer Portal
Common branding options include Portal Name, Logo, Footer Links, Login, and Security settings. You can also rebrand the portal and configure portal-related settings to match your organisation.

5.) Can I use a custom domain for my customer portal URL in BoldDesk?
Yes. BoldDesk supports mapping a custom domain, such as changing:
yourcompany.bolddesk.com → support.yourcompany.com
This is done through customer portal/domain configuration (custom domain mapping).

6.) What are “Support Emails,” and why do I need to configure them?
Support emails serve two purposes:

They’re used as the from/reply email for notifications sent by BoldDesk.
They can be used to create tickets via email—when a customer emails your support address, BoldDesk automatically creates a ticket.

You can configure support emails from:
Admin > Settings > Emails

7.) How do customers create tickets using email in BoldDesk?
Once a support email is set up, customers can send their queries to that address. BoldDesk will automatically transform these emails into tickets. Additionally, any replies to emails sent by BoldDesk will be recorded as ticket responses.

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