Ticket Categorization & Taxonomy

Somebody once sat down with good intentions and built the category list. It had Hardware, Software and Network. Then Hardware got Printers, and Printers got Jams. Someone added Printer - Toner because Jams did not fit, and a new application arrived and got its own entry. Three years later the list has four hundred and eleven categories, of which nine are used, one of which is Other. Other holds forty percent of the tickets. The monthly report, faithfully produced, says that the desk's biggest problem is Other. Category lists breed in the dark. Nobody plants a monster; they plant a reasonable list and stop weeding.

This series is about keeping the list small enough to be true. It covers why categories exist at all and the three people a category serves. It covers designing a two-level tree that stays useful, with a starter tree for a general IT desk. It covers how the four-hundred-category monster grows and the quarterly pruning that stops it. Then comes categorizing at close as well as at open, so the report shows causes and not just symptoms. It covers categories that make reports worth reading. And it covers retiring, merging and renaming categories without losing the history behind them. The tool rarely helps here and rarely hinders. The discipline is yours.

Articles in This Series

• Why Ticket Categories Exist and Who Uses Them
  Routing, reporting and knowledge, not filing: the three users of a category, the test of what decision a category supports, and a category purpose checklist.
• Designing a Category Tree That Stays Useful
  Two levels at most, twelve to twenty-five at the top, symptom versus cause, and naming rules. Covers an Other bucket kept small on purpose, and a starter tree for a general IT desk.
• Avoiding the 400-Category Monster and Pruning the One You Have
  How trees grow (one-offs, vendor names, every application gets one), and why a huge tree is worse than a small wrong one. Covers the rule that a category must earn its place, and a quarterly pruning sheet.
• Categorize at Close, Not Just at Open: Symptom In, Cause Out
  Symptom at open, cause at close; who recategorizes and why it is not an insult; the closing-category check; and a table of common open-and-close pairs.
• Categories That Make Reports Worth Reading
  The top ten by category, trends by category, what a bad taxonomy does to a report, reading for the source rather than the symptom, and a monthly category report layout.
• Retiring, Merging and Renaming Categories Without Losing History
  The mapping table from old to new, the deprecated state, and whether to re-tag old tickets. Covers documenting the change so next year's report still makes sense, and the mapping table to copy.

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This series is part of the QuerySolv helpdesk topic library. It covers the foundations, processes, communication, knowledge, tooling, metrics, classic ticket domains, people and strategy behind a support desk that works. The library pairs well with the software we build: QuerySolv. It is a self-hosted help desk that runs as one Windows service on your own network. It is licensed once per installation, not per agent per month.