DEV3 AI Helpdesk & Ticket Triage for WordPress

WordPress helpdesk: tickets from a portal, forms and email, an agent inbox with SLAs, a help centre, WooCommerce order context, and AI that summarises, suggests triage and drafts replies grounded in help articles for agents to review. Free download: sign in and click Download ZIP. Add your own Google AI Studio (Gemini) API key to switch on the AI features; the documentation says which features work without one.

How it works

We built DEV3 AI Helpdesk & Ticket Triage as a WordPress plugin in PHP with a React admin and a dependency-free customer portal. The AI runs on the Google Gemini API with the site owner's own key.

Key design decisions

• Own IMAP client. A small IMAP4rev1 client over a socket (SSL, STARTTLS or plain) runs UID SEARCH UNSEEN, fetches with BODY.PEEK[] and marks messages seen only after processing, in background jobs. An inbound webhook also accepts Mailgun, SendGrid Inbound Parse, Postmark, generic JSON and raw MIME.
• Threading in two steps. A [#number] subject token first, then In-Reply-To and References matched against stored Message-IDs of every message the helpdesk sent. A stranger quoting someone else's ticket number opens a new ticket instead.
• Loop and abuse protection. Auto-Submitted, Precedence and auto-reply headers, system senders, our own address, duplicate Message-IDs, a block list and a per-sender limit of 10 new tickets an hour.
• Quote stripping. Only the new text is kept: cut at the reply marker, "On … wrote:" lines in several languages, Outlook headers and signatures.
• AI that drafts. Thread summaries, triage suggestions (category, priority, sentiment, language), reply drafts grounded in help articles via embeddings with cited sources, rewrites, and help articles from solved tickets. Applying triage automatically and auto-sending replies are opt-in switches, off by default; auto-send also needs a cited article, a confidence threshold and no agent reply yet.
• SLAs that are fair. First-response and resolution targets per priority, optional business hours, and a clock that pauses while waiting on the customer.

Architecture

Tickets, replies, events and saved replies live in custom tables, attachments in a private folder behind signed, expiring links. Agents get their own role and capability. Guests reach their ticket through a private link, and WooCommerce customers through My Account. The API client, jobs, encryption, embeddings store and settings screens come from a shared core used across DEV3's plugins.

What's in the download

• The installable plugin zip: upload it through Plugins → Add New → Upload Plugin.
• Full HTML documentation (installation, settings, hooks, FAQ).

Requirements

• WordPress 6.0 or newer and PHP 7.4 or newer. The PHP imap extension is not needed
• Optional: WooCommerce 8.0 or newer for the orders panel, the order number field and the My Account → Support tab (HPOS supported)
• Optional: a support mailbox with IMAP access, or an email service that can forward inbound mail (Mailgun, SendGrid Inbound Parse, Postmark or any service that posts JSON or raw MIME)
• Optional: a Google Gemini API key for the DEV3 AI features. Without one, every helpdesk feature still works

Learn more

• How we built it: the AI Helpdesk & Ticket Triage case study
• Engineering write-up on the DEV3 blog
• Also free in the DEV3 AI Membership, Learning & Support Plugins Bundle with every other Membership, Learning & Support plugin.