Set up Ravenna categories to automatically classify new tickets by topic, department, or any structure that matches how you report on requests.
Categories are a workspace-wide classification system. Once you define them, Ravenna classifies each new ticket against your list automatically, which is what makes reporting and category-driven routing possible.Time: about 10 minutes.
Categories and forms do different jobs. A form captures the details for one specific kind of request. A category gives every ticket in the workspace a high-level label, whether it came from a form, a Slack message, or an email.
Assigned to tickets automatically at creation, or by hand at any point
Referenced in agent rules as @Category Name, so an agent can classify a request during conversation
Trigger workflows through the Category Assigned trigger
Filter views so a team sees only the requests it owns
Group analytics, so you can see which topics actually drive volume
Interactive walkthrough
Step-by-step
1
Open workspace settings
Click your workspace name and select Settings.
2
Go to Categories
Click Categories in the left sidebar. You can write your own or import a prebuilt set from the template library.
3
Create a category
Click New Category, or browse the Template Library to import a ready-made set.
4
Fill in the details
Name it after the kind of request, not the team that handles it
Description matters more than you would expect. Ravenna uses it to decide which category fits an incoming ticket, so write it as guidance: “Use for requests to add, remove, or change access to a SaaS application.”
Color so categories are distinguishable at a glance in views
5
Set a default (optional)
Toggle Set as default if this category should be preselected when someone creates a ticket.
6
Save
Click Save. The category is now available across the workspace.
7
Add the rest
Repeat for each kind of request your team handles. A typical IT Operations starting set:
Between five and twelve. Automatic classification degrades when categories overlap, and a list nobody can hold in their head is a list nobody reports on. If you find yourself wanting a fifteenth category, it is usually a tag instead.
Learn more about categories and how they differ from tags
