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Help desk ticket tracker in a SharePoint list

Short answer: yes, one SharePoint list can run a small help desk. Each ticket is one row, with a requester, category, priority, status, owner, opened date and resolved date. Save three views (open, mine, oldest) and add a Power Automate flow that emails the owner when a ticket is created. It suits a small IT or office team, and the last section says where a list stops being enough.

At a glance

Swipe sideways to see all columns.

ItemNumberWhat it means for you
Items in one list30 millionA small team will never fill the ticket list.
List view threshold5,000 itemsYears of tickets can pass 5,000. Keep the open view filtered to open tickets.
File attached to a list item250 MBA screenshot of the problem fits on the ticket.
Ticket flow run time30 daysA flow run with a waiting step times out after 30 days.
Daily flow requests, Microsoft 365 plans10,000 a dayPer flow for now. Microsoft's official limit is 6,000 per user once its transition ends.

What this tracker is for

Think of an office where people ask for help all day: a laptop will not start, a printer is jammed, someone needs access to a folder, a chair is broken. The requests arrive by email, chat and walk-ups. Someone remembers some of them. Others are lost.

A ticket list fixes one thing: every request gets a row, a status and a name next to it. You can see what is open, who has it and what has waited longest. You can also see which kinds of problems come back.

This guide is for an internal team of roughly 10 to 200 users with one to five people who answer requests. It is a how-to for a tracking list. It does not replace your security rules, your policies on user accounts, or any contract you have with an outside support company.

If your problem is that requests land in one shared mailbox, see "Requests lost in a shared inbox: add an owner and a status". If you track problems at a work site or in operations, see "How to set up an incident log in SharePoint". If requests come from customers, see "Customer complaints fall through the cracks: one log that closes the loop". If you track sales contacts, see "How to set up a simple CRM for a 20-person team in SharePoint". This guide is about internal tickets only.

Before you start

Make three choices first. They are easy to change now and painful to change after 500 tickets.

  1. What counts as a ticket. Write one sentence. For example: "Any request to fix, change or set up something for a coworker."
  2. Who answers tickets. Name the people. A ticket with no owner is not being handled.
  3. What the status words mean. Keep them few and plain. One way to start: New, In progress, Waiting on requester, Resolved.

Step 1. Check the ready-made template

Microsoft's article on creating a list says you can choose a starting point on the Create a list page: a blank list, an existing list, an Excel file, a CSV file or a template. It uses "Issue tracker" as its example template and says you can preview the columns and sample data before you use it. That page does not list the template's columns, so look at the preview on your own screen.

One way to start: open the Issue tracker template if you see it, read its columns, and compare them with the columns in Step 3. Keep what fits. If it is more than you need, start from a blank list. The exact names may differ in your tenant.

Step 2. Create the list

Microsoft's steps for the web are these:

  1. Open the Lists app, or go to your SharePoint site and select + New, then List.
  2. On the Create a list page, choose a starting point.
  3. Enter a name, such as "Help desk tickets", and an optional description.
  4. Select Create.
  5. Add columns with + Add column.

Exact menu names may differ on your screen. If you do not see a choice, ask your SharePoint admin.

Step 3. Add the columns

Microsoft's page on adding a column says: select + Add column to the right of the last column heading, choose the column type, enter a name in the Create a column panel, fill in any other required fields and select Save.

Microsoft's page on column types says a Choice column lets people pick from options you define. A Person or Group column gives a searchable list of people. A Date and Time column stores dates, or dates and times. A Multiple lines of text column holds long text.

One way to start, with these columns:

Use the Title column for the short summary, as above.

About "age": you may want a column that shows how many days a ticket has been open. A calculated column cannot do this, because SharePoint blocks [Today] in calculated column formulas. Use the Oldest view in Step 5 instead. It sorts by the Opened date, so the oldest tickets show first, and no formula is needed.

Choice columns matter. If Category and Priority are free text, one person types "Printer" and another types "printers", and you can no longer count or filter them.

Step 4. Add one test ticket

Before you tell anyone, add one fake ticket, check that it reads well, and delete it. Here is a sample:

If the row is hard to fill in, remove a column now. Every extra column is one more thing a busy person will skip.

Step 5. Build the three views

Microsoft says a personal view is visible only to you, and a public view is visible to everyone who uses the list. You need permission to make a public view, and only a public view can be the default. Make these three public if you can.

Microsoft's steps for a new view in the modern experience: in the command bar, select View options, then Create new view. In the Create view dialog, enter a name, choose how to show it (List, Calendar or Gallery) and select Create. You can also change the sort, filter or grouping from the column headers or filters pane, and then select Save view as and enter a name. Exact names may differ on your screen.

Important about filters: Microsoft says filters with [Today] or [Me] need the classic view editor (Edit current view, then Filters), not a column header. Our advice, not a Microsoft rule: use the classic view editor for blank and "is not equal to" filters too. Microsoft says you can't use [Today] or [Me] when filtering from a column header, and that the classic path is to select the view name, choose Edit current view, and scroll to Filters. That page does not cover blank filters, so check your own screen when you try one.

The three views:

  1. Open tickets. In the classic view editor, under Filters, set Status is not equal to Resolved. Sort by Priority, then by Opened, oldest first. Everyone on the help desk team starts the day here.
  2. My tickets. In the classic view editor, set Assigned to is equal to [Me], and Status is not equal to Resolved. Each person opens this one first.
  3. Oldest tickets. In the classic view editor, filter Status is not equal to Resolved, and sort by Opened with the oldest first. The lead checks this view each morning. A ticket that sits here for days needs a decision: help, reassign or close.

Choose the sort order that matches your team's habits. Microsoft says classic sorting allows up to two criteria (same views page).

Views are not security. A filtered view only changes what is shown on screen. If some tickets hold private details, for example a request about a staff member's account, do not rely on a view to hide them. Use permissions, or keep those requests out of the list. Ask your SharePoint admin about this.

Step 6. Make it easy to open a ticket

A list that is hard to use will lose to email. Give people one simple way in.

Option A: the Add new item form in the list. Share the link to the list with your coworkers and ask them to select + Add new item. Microsoft's create a list page names this as the way to add items. Keep the number of required columns small.

Option B: a Microsoft Forms form. Microsoft's page says you create a form at forms.office.com, add a title, add questions and share it. That page does not explain how answers reach a list. For that, see "Save Microsoft Forms answers to a SharePoint list". A form lets people describe the problem in their own words without seeing the whole list.

Option C: add the list as a tab in a Teams channel; see "Add a SharePoint list as a Teams tab".

One way to start: use Option A with five people for two weeks. Move to Option B if coworkers will not use the list directly.

Step 7. Email the owner when a ticket is created

Use a Power Automate flow so the owner hears about a new ticket without opening the list.

  1. In Power Automate, create an automated cloud flow. Choose the SharePoint trigger "When an item is created" and pick your site and the help desk list.
  2. Add an email action, such as "Send an email (V2)" from Office 365 Outlook. In To, put the Assigned to Email field from the trigger, and the Title and a link to the item in the body.
  3. Save and add one test ticket.

Our advice, not a Microsoft rule: if requesters open tickets with Assigned to empty, send the email to the help desk lead instead, or the email step has no address and fails.

Microsoft's SharePoint connector page also lists "When an item is created or modified". If you use it to alert on changes, a flow that updates the same item can start itself again; see "Power Automate flow keeps running itself over and over". A daily digest of old tickets is a separate scheduled flow; see "Send a reminder before a due date in a SharePoint list".

Step 8. Set a weekly habit

The list does not run itself. Pick a rhythm:

For a Teams message when a new ticket arrives, see "Post to Teams when a SharePoint list item changes".

What to avoid

When a list is enough, and when it is not

This section is my judgment, not a Microsoft fact. It is based on what a small team can handle. Your case may differ.

A list is enough when:

A list starts to strain when:

Some of this can be added with Power Automate. For example, Microsoft says approvals in Power Automate can notify approvers who can review and act on a request. But the more you add, the more you maintain by hand. At some point a dedicated service desk product may cost less than the time you spend patching a list. Compare current prices and features on each vendor's own pages before you decide, and ask your admin which licenses your company already has.

One way to decide: run the list for a quarter. If the same missing feature comes up in the weekly review three times, it is time to look at something bigger.

When to get help

You can build all of this yourself in Microsoft 365. If you would rather have it built and tested for your team, I do that. A tracker like this is a fixed price: $5,000 for one, built in 2 weeks. See "What a SharePoint tracker costs to build". Bring one example of the problem to a free call.

Tell me what's still manual

I am Al Davies. I run 250 High Street LLC and build SharePoint trackers and Power Automate flows for operations teams. I work remotely. The first call is free, and I will not try to sell you anything.

See trackers I built: Tools I built

FAQ

Updated 2026-10-27.

Is there a ready-made help desk template in Microsoft Lists?

Microsoft's create a list page uses an "Issue tracker" template as its example and says you can preview its columns and sample data before you use it. Compare its columns with the ones in this guide.

How do I build a ticketing system with SharePoint and Power Automate?

Use the SharePoint trigger "When an item is created" on the ticket list, then an email action to the Assigned to Email field (or the help desk lead if it is empty) with the Title and a link to the item.

How many columns should a ticket have?

As few as work. The nine in this guide are a starting point. If people skip a column, remove it or make it optional.

Can the list show how long a ticket has been open?

Not with a calculated column that uses today's date, because SharePoint blocks [Today] in calculated column formulas. Sort an Oldest tickets view by the Opened date instead.

When should I move to a real service desk product?

If you need response timers, email-to-ticket, a portal or audit-grade reports, and the weekly review keeps asking for them, look at a bigger tool. Until then, a list is a fine place to start.

Sources