Connect your help desk
If your team already lives in a help desk or CRM, you don't have to watch First Six as a second inbox. Under Settings → Integrations you can have each student request also open a ticket in the tool you already use, or push signed events to your own systems. You'll need the Manage settings permission (webhooks also need Manage integrations).
These are additive. Everything a student raises still lands in the First Six inbox, and a crisis still fans out through First Six's own channels immediately. The ticket or webhook is a mirror, so your staff can act from the tools they prefer, not a replacement for the inbox.
Helpdesk mirror (email-to-ticket)
The simplest option. First Six emails a structured ticket to a queue address, and your help desk's email-to-case turns it into a ticket. Works with ServiceNow, Salesforce, Jira Service Management, Zendesk, Freshservice (anything that opens a case from an email).
- Find your queue address
In your help desk, get the inbound email address that creates tickets (e.g. your Email-to-Case address or an inbound-action mailbox).
- Set the general queue
Under Settings → Integrations → Helpdesk mirror, paste it into General help queue address. This lane receives every everyday (non-crisis) request that you haven't routed somewhere more specific below.
- Optionally send some requests elsewhere
Students choose one of your help categories when they ask for help, and different teams often own them. Under Send certain requests somewhere else you can give each button its own queue: "I have money troubles" to financial support, "I want to talk to someone" to counselling, and so on. Anything you leave blank keeps going to the general queue, so you only need to fill in the ones that differ.
The list here is your categories, in your own wording, including any you have added. Rename or add one under Student resources → Help routes and it appears here to be routed. A retired category drops off this list; its address is kept, so restoring the category brings the routing back with it.
This matters most when your teams run different systems. A counselling case management system usually sits under stricter rules than a service desk, and routing per category keeps each request in the system that is meant to hold it.
- Optionally set a crisis queue
A crisis request routes from a different place: Settings → Crisis → Crisis help-desk queue address, alongside your Slack or Teams crisis webhook, since they're all crisis destinations. Point it at your wellbeing or safeguarding team, not the general IT queue. If you leave it blank, crisis requests are not mirrored to a help desk (they still fan out through First Six's own crisis alerts). The crisis lane never falls back to the general queue, and never to a per-category queue either.
- Save, then Send test
Save, then use Send test to fire a sample ticket to every everyday queue you've set, the general one and any per-category ones. Check that each opens a ticket: the subject starts with
[TEST]and names the queue it was sent to, so you can tell them apart.
A request raised inside a demo never sends real email (demos never notify real people). Configure and test on your real tenant.
Outbound webhooks
If you run your own integration layer (an iPaaS, ServiceNow scripted REST, Azure Logic Apps), subscribe it to signed First Six events instead. Requires the Manage integrations permission.
- Add an endpoint
Under Settings → Integrations → Outbound webhooks, paste your HTTPS endpoint, tick the events you want (request created, crisis, updated, resolved), and add it.
- Copy the signing secret
It's shown once. Your endpoint uses it to verify the
X-First-Six-Signatureheader so it knows the event genuinely came from First Six. Store it somewhere safe. You can't see it again. - Test and watch deliveries
Use Test to send a signed sample event, then Deliveries to see the outcome of each send (delivered, or retrying with the HTTP code). Failed deliveries retry automatically with backoff.
The developer webhooks reference has the event payloads and a copy-paste signature-verification snippet for your engineers.
What leaves First Six, and what doesn't
Tickets and webhook payloads carry enough to open and route a case: the request reference, category, priority, crisis flag, the student's name/ID and a link back into First Six. They do not carry the message the student wrote. That stays inside First Six's access controls, and staff open the request here to read it.
Troubleshooting
Mirrored tickets stopped arriving in the help desk
Work the chain from your side back: the queue address in Settings is still the live one (help-desk migrations quietly retire old intake addresses), your help desk is not quarantining the sender, and the lane is right, since crisis and general mirroring are configured separately and pointing only one of them at a queue is easy to do without noticing.
Crisis tickets arrive with no message text
Deliberate. The mirror carries who, what category, and a link, never the student's own words: those stay inside First Six's access controls, so a help-desk queue with wide membership never becomes a second copy of a student's disclosure. Open the deep link to read the request in the console.
Common questions
Where did crisis routing and the events feed go?
Crisis routing now has its own page: Settings → Crisis. Crisis alerts (a Slack or Teams webhook and the crisis help-desk queue, together) live there. The events calendar feed stays under Settings → Integrations, alongside the general help-desk mirror and webhooks.
Will this double-alert my responders on a crisis?
A crisis fans out through First Six's own channels immediately, and the mirror is an extra copy. Point the crisis lane at the right team; responders can dedupe on the First Six reference, which is stable across channels.
Can I turn an endpoint off without deleting it?
Yes. Disable pauses delivery to that endpoint (including anything already queued); enable resumes it. Delete removes it entirely.
Next steps
Related
The fastest answer is usually one question away.