Tickets are records in the system which gather all events and documents related to the same subject.
For example, it allows you to put all the interactions related to the same marketing campaign in a same record.

By doing so, you will have the possibility to do better reporting of the actual situation of the company, which will allow you to allocate roles of every employee and organise the work of each one.

In our example "VIFIB Beta Developer Program", the operation manager XU Jingjing will take care of all the Events of the Ticket, including coordinating the interactions between the VIFIB manager Cédric and his contacts, organizing the communication and cooperation between different persons inside and outside VIFIB who are related to this marketing campaign, and so on.

The standard workflow of a ticket is very simple: the operators edit and prepare the Ticket, then request the approval of the campaign's supervisor. If everything is OK, the supervisor will open the submitted campaign. Then the related interactions will be recorded as Events under this Campaign. When the campaign is finished, the operators will close it.
Note that even a closed Ticket can be opened again.

Now that the concept of a ticket is well understood, we will go in deep to the four specific tickets and their workflows in ERP5, which are Campaigns, Sale opportunities, Support requests and Meetings.

1. Press Release:

Press Release is a Campaign starts from sending many different Events to recipients (the left side illustration).

In the case of a product release campaign of SlapOS, we will prepare many different Events in terms of contents (since we want to send personalised emails for each journalist) and methods such as phone calls and visits besides emails (since some journalists are more important than others).
Once the Campaign is ready, we will open it and send the Events (send mails, give phone calls or pay visits) to the VIFIB's contacts of journalists.
We will then receive reactions from the journalists either by mail messages, phone calls, or visits,etc. So in the same time we will have many single interactions with many different journalists.

Thanks to the function of Ticket, every interactions between journalists and VIFIB will be tracked in the Ticket-the product release Campaign

At the end of the Ticket, once we finished all interactions, we will be able to learn from the closed Ticket that how many replies did we get, how many interactions have ended with a "Sale opportunity", etc. These informations would be very useful for the evaluation of this campaign and the market prospects. These kinds of informations are very important if you want to be more efficient next time.

2. Newsletter:

Newsletter is another kind of Campaign. The only difference with Press Release is that Newsletter starts from a single Event with many recipients (the right side illustration), so everyone will receive the same Event.
In our example "VIFIB Beta Developer Program" as presented above, follow the Ticket - the marketing Campaign, we will prepare an Event - a same outgoing email sending the recruitment message to different VIFIB contacts.

3. Other types : Prospect, Partner Acquisition, Public Relations, etc.

Please note that, as the other features of ERP5, the Campaign types can be modified by ERP5 configuration.

The workflow of a Campaign is the standard work-flow of a Ticket. It assumes that there are two hierarchical levels: one person (normally the operator of the campaign) drafts the campaign, and then submits the campaign to the supervisor, while the state of the campaign changes from "Draft" to "Approval Requested" or "Submitted". Then the other person (the supervisor) approves and opens it. The state is marked as "Open" during the process of the campaign, when multiple interactions happen and be recorded under the campaign. After the campaign is finished, they will close it, changing the state to "Closed".

In our example "VIFIB Beta Developer Program" which is exactly a campaign, the operations manager XU Jingjing drafted and prepared the campaign to hire software developers, then she submitted it to the supervisor VIFIB director Mr Smets to approve it. When everything is sure, Mr Smets opens the Campaign, then the community manager Cédric, who is in charge of sending the Mail Message Event "SlapOS Resilient Cloud Beta Developer Program", starts his interactions with his contacts, while all the Events (eg, emails) would be recorded under the Campaign "Beta Developer Program". After the marketing campaign is finished when VIFIB find enough qualified developers, the managers will close the campaign. Then all the Events recorded under the Campaign can be easily accessed when needed.

A sale opportunity starts from customers' replies which express their interests in our product and service. But normally few sale opportunities will come to a result very fast. First, only few clients will maybe take decisions fast. Second, there will be many actors involved in the decision to go with in the same sale opportunity: you might negotiate with the product supplier and the bank while keep in contact with your customers.

In one word, the decision from a sale opportunity can be made very quickly but sometimes it can take more than a year. So we need to use the Ticket "Sale Opportunity" to keep track of your commercial effort-your interactions with all the contacts involved, so to organise and to qualify our sale opportunities.

The Sale Opportunity work-flow is more complex than the basic ticket workflow, it ends by a Sale or a Rejection.
In the case "VIFIB Offer PC Internet", after the operations manager sent the offer to the customers, she got replies. She then created the ticket Sale Opportunity to manage the following interactions between VIFIB, the customers, the PC supplier and the bank. She will submitted the Sale opportunity to the supervisor. If Mr Smets the supervisor verifies and approves the Sale opportunity, the operations manager and sales staff will contact the prospect and negotiate with the PC supplier. When sales condition is set, VIFIB will give the final offer . Finally, if the customer accept the offer, the VIFIB products will be sold ; If not, then sale opportunity is rejected

The third kind of ticket is the Support requests. Supports requests are used for customer help and support. For example, if you sell products through the Internet, some customers might return their products since they are broken or have defaults.
When a customer calls you to let you know the product is defected, you should open a support request: Then if the customer send picture of the product, Warranty scan etc., you can attach all documents in the tickets; Once you have received the product from the customer, you might ask the manufacturer if he will replace or fix it, so you can manage all the interactions between your customer, you and your supplier in the Tickets.

Here's the support request workflow.
Just like a standard ticket workflow, it is assuming that there are two hierarchical levels: one person prepare and submit the support request, then the other approves, opens it and closes it.

The last kind of tickets in ERP5 CRM is the Meeting ticket.
Meeting should not be compared to the Event “visit”. A meeting is for instance a conference. If you prepare a conference you will first contact every speaker you want to ask whether they are interested in or not. You will also have discussion with the place holder and the clients you will invite to the conference. Before the presentation, you will need to call every single one of your speaker to confirm if they are arrived in their hotel rooms, if they are ready for the presentation, etc. Once the meeting is over, you will thank all your speakers for their efforts, etc.

The workflow for the meeting is a standard ticket workflow.