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).

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).

1. 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).

2. Set the general queue

   Under Settings → Integrations → Helpdesk mirror, paste it into General help queue address. This lane receives every everyday (non-crisis) request.

3. Optionally set a crisis queue

   A crisis request routes from a different place: Settings → Integrations → Crisis alerts → Crisis help-desk queue address, alongside your Slack and SMS crisis channels, 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.

4. Save, then Send test

   Save, then use Send test to fire a sample ticket to your queue. Check that it opens a ticket: the subject starts with [TEST].

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.

1. 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.

2. Copy the signing secret

   It's shown once. Your endpoint uses it to verify the X-First-Six-Signature header so it knows the event genuinely came from First Six. Store it somewhere safe. You can't see it again.

3. 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.

Common questions

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