Helpie is a helpdesk and AI chat plugin for WordPress. Customers can raise support tickets through a portal page, a chat widget, their WooCommerce account, or plain old email — and every one of those roads leads to the same tidy ticket queue on your side. This page walks you through installing it, activating your license, choosing how much of it you want switched on, and a sensible first half hour.
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Requirements
- WordPress 6.0 or higher
- PHP 8.0 or higher
That’s it. WooCommerce is optional — Helpie adds a Support tab to My Account when WooCommerce is active, and works happily without it for service businesses. The AI chat side needs an Anthropic API key, but the helpdesk works without one.
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Installation
- Download the Helpie ZIP from your Tracksies account
- In WordPress, go to Plugins > Add New > Upload Plugin
- Choose the ZIP file and click Install Now
- Activate Helpie
If you already run other Tracksies plugins, Helpie’s pages appear under the shared Tracksies menu. On its own, Helpie adds its own Helpie menu item. Either way, the pages themselves are the same: Dashboard, All tickets, Customers, Knowledge Base, Chat Logs, Email log, and Settings, reachable from the tab strip at the top of every Helpie screen.
License Activation
- Go to Tracksies > Settings > Licenses
- Enter your license key (it’s in your purchase email)
- Click Activate
An active license keeps automatic updates flowing. If updates ever seem stuck, deactivating and re-activating the key on this tab usually shakes them loose.
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The Two Ways to Run Helpie
Helpie doesn’t assume you want everything at once. Two feature toggles decide the shape of your deployment, and you can change your mind anytime under Tracksies > Settings > Features:
- Full helpdesk (the default). The Helpdesk admin dashboard toggle is on, so you get the ticket queue, the agent dashboard, and the customer portal. Support conversations live in Helpie.
- Chatbot-only. Turn the Helpdesk admin dashboard toggle off and the ticket screens step out of the way. The chat widget still helps customers, escalations still quietly become tickets, and you get a notification email for each one — you handle the conversation from your own inbox. If you turn the helpdesk on later, the history is already waiting as proper tickets. Helpdesk Emails explains this mode in detail.
Two related toggles round out the picture:
- Customer helpdesk portal — the customer-facing ticket page and the WooCommerce Support tab. On by default; see Customer Portal.
- Publish chat to customers — the floating chat bubble. Off by default, on purpose: it stays hidden while you calibrate the AI privately, and flips on when you’re ready.
The full list of toggles, with what each one actually does, is in Feature Toggles.
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Your First 30 Minutes
A comfortable order to set things up:
1. Give customers a door (5 minutes). Create a page — most stores call it “Support” — and drop the [helpie_portal] shortcode on it. That page now has a ticket submission form and a ticket lookup form. Details in Customer Portal.
2. Sort out email (10 minutes). Helpie hands its emails to WordPress, and WordPress needs a proper delivery service to be reliable — install an SMTP plugin if you don’t have one (Helpie tells you on the Email tab whether it’s detected one). Then visit Helpie > Settings > Email and, if you want customers to be able to reply from their mail apps, connect your support inbox. Helpdesk Emails covers how the threading works.
3. Shape the workflow (5 minutes). Under Helpie > Settings > General, pick the default status for new tickets and which view agents land on. Under Settings > Statuses, add any custom statuses your workflow needs — the built-in four (Open, In Progress, Waiting on Customer, Resolved) cover most shops. See Tickets.
4. Make it look like yours (5 minutes). Open Tracksies > Designer to set your logo, brand colours, and email styling. Everything customer-facing picks these up. See Styling with the Designer.
5. Send yourself a test (5 minutes). Submit a ticket through your new portal page using your own email address. Check the confirmation arrives, click the magic link, reply from the ticket screen, and watch the reply land in your inbox. Now you’ve walked the whole road your customers will walk.
The AI chat side — API key, spend caps, knowledge base indexing, the private tester — is its own adventure and has its own guides: start with AI Setup and Knowledge Base when you’re ready. There’s no rush; the helpdesk stands on its own.
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Where Everything Lives
| Screen | What it’s for |
|---|---|
| Dashboard | The agent workspace — open queue on the left, ticket detail on the right |
| All tickets | The full list with filters, bulk actions, and the Add ticket button |
| Customers | Everyone who has ever raised a ticket, grouped by email |
| Knowledge Base | What the AI chat is allowed to know — sources, indexer, prospector |
| Chat Logs | Every AI conversation, with filters |
| Email log | Every email Helpie sends and receives, with delivery status — see Email Log |
| Settings | Twelve tabs: General, Email, AI, AI Spend, AI Tester, AI Cache, Statuses, Permissions, Retention, Privacy, Route rules, Tools |
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Common Questions
Do I need WooCommerce?
No. The helpdesk, portal, chat, and email threading all work on any WordPress site. WooCommerce adds extras — the My Account Support tab and order context on tickets — but nothing breaks without it.
Can I run just the chat widget and skip the ticket screens?
Yes — that’s chatbot-only mode, described above. Escalations become tickets behind the scenes and reach you by email.
Where are the feature toggles again?
Tracksies > Settings > Features. Helpie’s toggles sit under the Tracksies Helpie tile.