The Inbound Helpdesk is a Workflow that manages your agent's responses to students who reach out across any channel. When a student initiates contact, the helpdesk picks it up, determines the right response based on the channel, and ensures timely follow-up — all without manual intervention.
How it works
The helpdesk activates on any inbound event from a student: a direct message, email, SMS, or phone call to a designated email address or phone number. The agent will respond as soon as possible to inquiries, escalating to partner staff when needed.
What happens after an initial exchange between a student and the helpdesk depends on the channel:
Messaging (DM or email): The agent immediately sets an alarm to follow up with the student in the same channel.
SMS or phone call: The agent schedules a follow-up alarm in the same channel and sends a concise summary email to the student within 24 hours of the initial contact.
The agent uses the following tools to execute these actions:
set_alarm,text_constituent,call_constituent, andemail_constituent.
Escalation
If any tool fails three consecutive times, the helpdesk automatically invokes escalate to notify CollegeVine support and stops further actions on that interaction.
Escalations can also be configured by your CollegeVine Success team. Your agent can escalate requests to you based on specific topics that you define. Please reach out to the success team for additional support on this topic.
Important: quiet hours
By default, the agent respects quiet hours — meaning it won't respond to inbound messages that arrive late at night. For a helpdesk, this usually isn't the right behavior.
Make sure to toggle on "Ignore quiet hours" for the text_constituent action in your helpdesk workflow. Without this, students who reach out outside of standard hours won't get a response until the next day.
Testing the helpdesk
You can simulate the helpdesk before going live. From the Workflows page, open the helpdesk workflow and click Test in the top-right corner. You'll be prompted to either search for a specific constituent or generate a new random one, then click Start simulation to run through a test interaction. Learn more about testing using the test harness.
Finding your workflows
All workflows — including the helpdesk — live under Workflows in the left sidebar under your agent. Each workflow shows its current status (Draft, Live, or Archived). The helpdesk must be set to Live before it will respond to real inbound events.
Note: Email helpdesk behavior (including how forwarded emails are handled and escalation key configuration) requires setup by your CollegeVine team. Contact your success manager for configuration details.