Respond to a help request
Staff see this same walkthrough inside First Six under Guides & Articles → Respond to a help request. This is the reference copy.
Two flows live in this guide. The first is the standard triage path: open a ticket, acknowledge it so the student knows it's seen, reply or hand off to a real service, mark resolved when it's done. Most tickets only ever need this flow.
The second flow is the crisis branch. It sits below in its own elevated section because the standard reply-and-resolve path does not apply. When a ticket reads as a possible self-harm or safety risk, you stop the normal flow and follow your institution's configured crisis protocol. This guide will not give you that protocol; it points at it. The platform reads from your help-route settings, and if nothing is configured yet, the next step says so plainly so an admin can fix it before any student opens the platform.
The crisis branch is the one place where being wrong is dangerous. Read it before you need it, not when you do.
About 8 min · Reference guide.
Responders and institution admins working the help inbox.
First time, then refer back any time a crisis-flagged ticket lands.
Open the ticket
Find what needs you and get into it.
Find the ticket in the inbox
Open /inbox. The Tickets section shows everything not yet resolved, sorted with crisis-flagged tickets pinned at the top, then by age. The oldest unanswered ticket is the one most at risk of becoming a complaint, so work upward from the bottom of the open queue if you have time, downward from the top if you don't.
Each card shows: who raised it, when, the priority pill (crisis / urgent / normal), and the first line of their message. Click Open to see the full thread in the side panel.
Walk through it
- Open Inbox.
- Scan the open queue. Crisis is pinned at the top.
- Click Open on the ticket you're taking.
In the console: Open Inbox.
Read the whole message before doing anything
Before you acknowledge or write a reply, read the whole student message. Twice if it's longer than a paragraph. You're looking for:
What they actually asked for. The visible category ("falling behind") is what they picked from the help-route menu, but the message body often clarifies the real issue ("I'm falling behind because I'm working three jobs and can't make the tutorials").
Any crisis signal you should escalate immediately. Explicit mentions of self-harm, of being unsafe, of being scared. If you see any of these, jump straight to the crisis branch below.
The priority First Six auto-tagged. Crisis is automated where we can detect it; staff still need to read for the cases the model missed.
Walk through it
- Read the message all the way through.
- Check the priority pill.
- If anything reads as a crisis, go to the crisis branch.
In the console: Open Inbox.
Triage
Acknowledge, then act.
Acknowledge so the student knows it's seen
Set the status to Acknowledged. The student sees the status change under Help → your requests; the email they get is your reply, so don't leave acknowledge as the last touch.
If you're the right responder, also Assign to me at the same time. If someone else should take it, use Assign and pick them. They get notified, and the ticket carries their name from then on.
Walk through it
- Set the status to Acknowledged.
- Assign to yourself, or to the right responder.
In the console: Open Inbox.
Reply or hand off
Most tickets get a short reply: it goes to the student in-app and by email, and their reply lands back in this thread.
Some tickets need a hand-off to a service First Six can't deliver: counselling, financial aid, academic advising. Use Reassign with a note: name the service, paste the contact, and let the student know in the reply who'll reach out and roughly when.
If you're stuck, Reassignment notes are how you tag the next responder with context. Use them. The next person opening this ticket needs to know what you tried.
Walk through it
- Write a short reply.
- If handing off, reassign with a note explaining context.
- Send.
In the console: Open Inbox.
Mark resolved when it's actually done
Once the student's confirmed they got what they needed (or you've done everything within scope and they've gone quiet), click Resolve. The ticket moves to the resolved section and the SLA timer stops.
Avoid leaving tickets in Acknowledged forever. If you're waiting on the student, leave a final note and resolve. If they re-engage, their message lands back in the thread; re-open the ticket yourself when that happens.
Walk through it
- Confirm the student has what they need.
- Click Resolve.
In the console: Open Inbox.
This part of the guide is safety-critical. Read it before anything else in this section.
If this is a crisis
Stop the standard flow. Follow your institution's protocol.
Recognising a crisis ticket
Some tickets need the standard flow stopped immediately. Signals to watch for: explicit mention of self-harm or suicide, of being unsafe at home or on campus, of harming someone else, of threats to the university or staff. First Six auto-flags tickets that match these patterns as crisis priority and pins them at the top of the inbox.
Auto-detection isn't perfect. If the student's message reads as a crisis to you and the platform didn't flag it, you're right and the platform's wrong. Escalate the ticket: open it, click Mark as crisis in the drawer, add a short reason if you like, and confirm. The system pages your responder team across email and Slack or Teams the same way an auto-detected crisis would, and the ticket pins to the top of everyone's inbox. See the limits of automated detection for when this is the right call.
Crisis tickets are NOT for replying-and-resolving on your own. You follow your institution's configured crisis protocol. See the next step.
Walk through it
- Look for the crisis priority pill on the ticket.
- If you see crisis language in the message and the pill isn't there, click Mark as crisis in the drawer to escalate. Escalation is one-way. Priority can only ever go up.
In the console: Open Inbox.
Follow your institution's crisis protocol
This step follows your institution's configured crisis response protocol. First Six never prescribes crisis wording of its own. In the console this step shows your institution's configured crisis protocol. If nothing is configured yet, the console says so plainly: ask an admin to configure the crisis (talk-to-someone) help route in Library before any student opens the platform.
After following the protocol
Once you've followed your institution's protocol (notified the on-call person, dispatched the welfare check, made the referral), come back to the ticket and add a Reassignment note that says: who you notified, when, and the case reference if there is one.
Do not write clinical content into the ticket reply. The ticket thread is a record of what was escalated, not advice for the student. The protocol owns the student-facing response.
Mark the ticket Resolved only when the on-call / responding service confirms the handoff is complete. Until then, keep the ticket Acknowledged with the latest note.
Walk through it
- Add a Reassignment note with who you escalated to, when, and any case reference.
- Mark Resolved only when the responding service confirms handoff.
In the console: Open Inbox.
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