For a while now, osTicket has allowed you, the user, to create custom pages, but we’ve only ever been able to edit text and images.

You - the user - asked for a more flexible page builder and useful widgets for these sections. You begged us to improve Branding and add more UI customization on the user portal and over the years, we listened.

Feature Sections on the CMS

Pages

We’ve built a layout engine directly into the core of osTicket. Instead of being stuck with fixed templates, you now have a canvas. It’s a responsive page builder that behaves like a design tool, giving you the floor to structure content exactly how your team needs it.

To handle the heavy lifting, we’ve introduced customizable widgets. Instead of fighting with code to build standard site elements, you can now drop in the components you need with significantly less effort. Even the portal footer has been overhauled to follow modern web conventions—giving you a dedicated space for navigation and branding that stays consistent across your entire site.

Since a blank canvas can be a bit daunting, we’re also shipping a library of pre-built templates to get you moving immediately.

Knowledge Base & Articles

We’ve overhauled the way you create and organize documentation. Your team can now build a structured knowledge base where users can self-serve and find deep-dives on features or troubleshooting steps.

To keep things manageable as your library grows, we’ve added a tagging system for smarter filtering and grouping. It’s about more than just "text on a page"—it’s about giving your users the right information at the right time, directly within your help desk environment.

FAQs

We’ve made Frequently Asked Questions more robust. By pairing FAQs with Articles, your help center becomes much more than a list of links. Teams can build FAQs based on common customer inquiries and group them into categories to make searching intuitive. Additionally, FAQs can now link directly to related articles, allowing users to dive deeper into a topic without having to search from scratch.

Branding

We’ve introduced more granular controls for your brand identity. You can now define different logos for light and dark schemes to maintain the right contrast on your user’s device. And yes, you can now change the favicon on your website.

The Content Hub

The Content Hub provides a centralized overview of the entire help desk ecosystem. Rather than an editing suite, it serves as a high-level dashboard where all content—from articles to branding assets—can be monitored in one place. Integrated analytics offer immediate insight into how content is performing, while direct redirects allow for quick navigation to specific sections when updates are required. It’s designed to eliminate fragmentation, giving you a clear window into the health and reach of your help center.

What this Means for Your User Portal

The content management system enables you to create a robust and customized help centre to match your brand and business need.(Link to user portal).

Relations

The CMS is closely connected to several other areas of the platform.

For example:

• The Knowledge Base integrates with FAQs to provide layered documentation.

• CMS pages directly shape the User Portal experience.

• Content performance analytics within the Content Hub can inform support workflows and ticket deflection strategies.

These relationships allow content, support operations, and user experience to work together within a single system.

(Reference: User Portal — link placeholder)

Why This Matters

The new CMS transforms the help desk into a self-service support platform.

By giving teams full control over content and branding, organizations can:

• Reduce ticket volume through self-service resources

• Provide clearer documentation for users

• Maintain consistent branding across the portal

• Turn their help desk into a dedicated support website

The result is a more powerful help center that supports both customers and support teams.

It’s a long time coming for the osTicket community; the interface has remained largely unchanged for over a decade. That changes with osTicket 2.0.

Here’s what you should expect:

1. Colorscheme generation from a single base color will make adjust your workspace to your personal preferences

2. Adjustable contrast make osticket more accessible to visual impairment or just your personal preference.

3. Dark mode, you heard me right. Using osTicket in a low light environment won’t make you feel like a vampire anymore.

Theme settings can be configured at multiple levels:

• System / Workspace level – define default appearance for your helpdesk.

• Agent preferences – allow individual agents to customize their working environment.

• User portal branding – ensure customer-facing pages match your organization’s brand.

This shift eliminates the reliance on fragile third-party hacks and brings osTicket into the modern era of web accessibility.

The Ticket Page Has Always Been the Core of osTicket

The ticket page is the heart of osTicket. It’s literally in the name.

For years, features like auto-routing, ticket locking, and threaded conversations have made osTicket a powerful platform for managing support requests. Agents spend most of their time here reading messages, responding to customers, and collaborating with teammates.

However, as teams grew and workflows became more complex, the ticket interface began to show its age. Navigating between tickets quickly was difficult, key tools like canned responses felt hidden, and the layout was not designed for modern mobile devices.

These limitations made a powerful system feel slower than it should.

Moving From a Static Ticket View to a Flexible Workspace

In previous versions of osTicket, the ticket page functioned mostly as a single, static layout. While it contained everything needed to manage a ticket, the structure made it difficult to scan information quickly or move between related tickets.

The new ticket interface evolves that concept into a workspace designed for speed and clarity. Navigation is persistent, key ticket information is easier to access, and the entire layout adapts to different screen sizes.

The goal is simple: less time navigating, more time solving tickets.

Introducing the Redesigned Ticket Interface

The redesigned ticket page introduces a mobile-responsive layout and improved navigation structure that makes it easier to manage tickets from any device.

Alongside the new layout, the response editor and ticket creation flow have been modernized to make common tasks faster and clearer.

This redesign focuses on three major areas:

• Navigation and ticket visibility

• Response and reply tools

• Ticket creation workflows

A Ticket Workspace Built for Speed

The new ticket interface organizes information into a structured workspace that keeps the most important tools always visible.

Messages within the thread can now also be collapsed, similar to Gmail, allowing agents to quickly skim long conversations without losing context.

The interface also adapts to mobile and tablet screens, making it far easier to manage tickets on smaller devices.

Expanded Ticket Information Panels

Important ticket data is now easier to access, including:

• Detailed ticket information

• Detailed user information

• Collaborators on the ticket

• Related tasks

These elements are organized so agents can access context without leaving the ticket.

Collapsible Ticket Threads

Long ticket conversations can now be collapsed and expanded, allowing agents to skim discussions faster and focus on the most recent updates.

Improved Reply Editor

Responding to tickets is now clearer and more efficient with improvements such as:

• Easier management of canned responses

• Signature previews before sending replies

• A cleaner and more focused reply interface

Multi-Step Ticket Creation

Creating tickets now follows a multi-step workflow, guiding agents through the process and reducing errors when entering information.

How the Ticket Workspace Connects to Other Features

The redesigned ticket interface works closely with several other areas of the platform:

• Canned Responses for faster replies

• Tasks for tracking work related to a ticket

• User Profiles for viewing customer information

• Ticket Views for filtering and organizing ticket lists

These components integrate directly into the ticket workspace, reducing the need to navigate away from the ticket being handled.

Example Workflows

Quickly Reviewing a Long Ticket Conversation

An agent opens a ticket with a long history of messages. By collapsing earlier thread entries, they can focus on the most recent responses and resolve the issue faster.

Switching Between Multiple Tickets

Using the static ticket list, an agent can quickly move between tickets without leaving the ticket workspace.

Sending Consistent Replies

While responding to a ticket, the agent selects a canned response and previews their signature before sending the reply.

Why This Redesign Matters

The ticket page is the most frequently used part of osTicket. Improving it directly improves the daily workflow of every agent.

The new interface delivers:

• Faster navigation between tickets

• Better visibility of ticket information

• Improved response tools

• Mobile-friendly usability

From Reactive Support to Shared Visibility

Traditionally, support systems revolve around tickets.

A customer encounters a problem, submits a ticket, and an agent investigates. While effective, this model can leave customers and agents unaware that a problem is already known, actively being investigated, or affecting many users.

As systems grow more complex, organizations need a way to communicate known problems clearly and proactively.

osTicket 2.0 introduces a new capability designed to do exactly that.

We explore the thinking behind this approach in our blog post Why Status Pages Belong in the Help Desk.

A New System Capability

Introducing Issues and the Status Page, a new capability for communicating system health and incidents in real time.

This feature provides a centralized way to track and communicate known problems affecting systems or services.

Users can view system health, monitor active issues, explore past incidents, and subscribe to updates.

This capability includes three pages:

• Status Page - a real-time overview of system health and active issues

• Status History - a searchable history of past issues

• Issue View - a detailed page for a specific issue

Together, they provide a transparent and centralized view of system health.

Introducing Issues

At the center of this feature is a new addition to the support workflow: Issues.

Issues complement tickets and tasks by tracking shared problems that may affect many users at once, with a timeline of updates to communicate investigation progress and resolution.

Issue Status and Severity

Issues move through stages that describe their lifecycle:

• Investigating

• In Progress

• Monitoring

• Completed / Resolved

Each stage is displayed with a visual badge so users can quickly understand the current state of an incident.

Issues also include severity levels ranging from informational events to critical outages, helping teams communicate the scale and impact of a problem.

The Status Page

The Status Page serves as the landing page for system health.

Rather than a single list, the page is composed of widgets that surface key information at a glance.

At launch, the page includes:

Status Bar

A visual timeline showing recent incidents and system health over time.

System Status

Displays the operational state of key services such as email fetching, alerts, APIs, and other administrator-defined systems.

Active Issues

Lists currently active incidents with their latest update and stage.

Recent Issues

Shows recently updated or resolved issues with a link to the full history.

Administrators can reorder widgets through the CMS panel to customize how status information is presented.

Status History

The Status History page provides a complete record of past issues.

Users can browse incidents, filter and sort results, and explore historical data grouped by month by default.

From this page, users can also subscribe to updates for all future issues.

Issue View

Selecting an issue opens the Issue View page, which provides full context for the incident.

This page includes:

• issue details and description

• a timeline of updates

• affected systems

• subscription controls

Updates appear as a chronological thread, allowing users to follow investigation progress and resolution updates.

Public and Internal Updates

Issues support both public updates and internal entries.

Public updates communicate investigation progress, service impact, workarounds, and resolutions.

Internal entries are visible only to agents and administrators, allowing teams to coordinate investigations without exposing internal details publicly.

Subscriptions

Users can subscribe to all issues or individual issues.

Subscribers receive email notifications when updates are posted or when an issue status changes.

Product Impact

Issues introduce a new layer of transparency to osTicket.

Customers gain visibility into system health, active incidents, and resolution progress.

Support teams gain a structured way to communicate incidents and provide updates that help reduce duplicate tickets and improve user awareness.

This feature represents an important step in the evolution of osTicket. It expands the platform beyond ticket management into proactive service communication.

From Queues to Views

One of the defining ideas in early osTicket was Queues.

Queues grouped tickets by criteria and Departmental Access Control (ACL) into tabular views like Open, Overdue, or Assigned to Me Tickets. They helped agents focus on the work that mattered.

In osTicket 2.0, that idea evolves into something much broader.

A System-Wide Capability

Introducing the View Builder.

Views are no longer limited to tickets queues. In osTicket 2.0, views can be applied across the system; tickets, tasks, users, agents, organizations, and more.

The same concept that once powered ticket queues now becomes a core capability across the platform.

Defining How Data Appears

A View defines how records are queried and displayed.

Views can control:

• filtering criteria

• access control

• sorting and pagination

• visible columns

• annotations

• available actions

Views can also be rendered in different layouts, including tabular (table) views for dense datasets and card-based views for richer record summaries.

Customizable Views

Views are fully customizable.

Teams can define which columns appear, how records are sorted, and what criteria determines which records are included.

For example, a team might create views like:

• Tickets waiting on customer response

• Escalations older than 24 hours

• Unassigned VIP tickets

Each view becomes a reusable definition that helps teams focus on a specific slice of work.

A Foundation for the System

Queues helped organize tickets.

With View Builder, the same concept now applies across the entire system.

From Ticket Counters to Operational Insights

Historically, the osTicket dashboard has been intentionally simple, focusing mainly on ticket volume tracking. It provided a quick overview of incoming and open tickets but offered limited insight into overall support performance.

As support teams grew, ticket counts alone were no longer enough. Teams needed clear performance indicators, service quality metrics, and flexible reporting views to understand how their support operations were actually performing.

A New Dashboard Experience

The Workspace Dashboard introduces a customizable analytics environment where teams can monitor operational health through configurable metrics and flexible layouts. Instead of a fixed dashboard, users now have a workspace built from modular widgets that can be arranged to fit their workflow.

Key Metrics at a Glance

The new dashboard expands the data available to teams, including:

• Ticket volume segmented by status

• SLA compliance

• CSAT score

• Granular agent performance

These metrics provide deeper visibility into both workload and service quality.

Flexible Views for Teams and Managers

Dashboards can be filtered to analyze data from different operational perspectives:

• Team

• Department

• Individual agent

• Time range

This allows managers to review department performance while agents can focus on their own activity.

Drag-and-Drop Dashboard Layout

Dashboards are built with a widget-based layout system. Using a simple drag-and-drop interface, users can:

• Add or remove widgets

• Move widgets around the workspace

• Resize widgets to prioritize important data

This makes it easy to tailor dashboards for different roles.

Safe Dashboard Customization

Dashboards can be customized and shared without disrupting other users thanks to built-in version controls:

• Branching / Cloning to create variations of a dashboard

• Rollback to restore previous versions if changes need to be undone

This allows teams to experiment with layouts while keeping stable versions available.

How Dashboards Fit into the Platform

Workspace dashboards integrate with other osTicket systems such as:

• Agent workspaces

• Departments and teams

• SLA policies

These connections allow dashboards to surface operational data across the entire support environment.

Why This Matters

The new dashboard transforms osTicket from a basic ticket counter into a real-time operations view. Teams gain better visibility into workload distribution, service quality, and agent performance—all within a dashboard they can fully customize.

From a Monolithic Web App to a Modern Platform Foundation

Historically, osTicket evolved as a traditional web application where backend logic and the user interface were closely intertwined. This approach worked remarkably well for many years and allowed the project to grow steadily alongside the needs of support teams around the world.

But as the platform expanded, it became increasingly difficult to evolve the system without touching multiple layers of the application at once.

Over time, it became clear that the real limitation wasn’t features; it was the foundation underneath them.

A New Architectural Foundation

osTicket 2.0 introduces a new platform architecture that separates the core system capabilities from the interfaces that present them.

The backend now focuses on the domain of the system — data models, workflows, permissions, and APIs — while the frontend focuses on how those capabilities are rendered and interacted with.

This separation allows the platform to evolve much more easily over time, enabling new interfaces, integrations, and automation without constantly reshaping the core of the application.

Built for the Next Generation of Support Systems

The new architecture provides several long-term improvements:

• Clear separation between platform and interface

• API-driven capabilities for integrations and automation

• Composable UI components and modular features

• Greater flexibility for future interfaces such as mobile and AI-driven workflows

While much of this change happens behind the scenes, it creates the foundation that allows osTicket to grow far beyond what the previous architecture could support.

Learn more about the architecture in depth: Inside osTicket 2.0: A Bird’s-Eye View of the Architecture