Help & Support
Browse documentation, open support tickets, and manage your institution's support desk.
Account → Help & support (/help) is the in-app help centre. Every officer can browse guides, open tracked requests, and follow replies. ICT administrators with support:manage also run the institution Support desk at /support.
Help centre
Open Help & support from the sidebar or the header book icon. The page includes:
| Section | What it does |
|---|---|
| Documentation | Category cards and popular guides deep-link to govconnect.ke/docs/mailer |
| Talk to a human | Open a ticket, report an incident, or email support |
| Your open tickets | Quick list of active requests with status pills |
| System status | Operational summary for API, dashboard, SMTP, webhooks, and inbound |
The search bar opens the public docs site. Full-text search ships in a later release.
Taifa Mail is free for government institutions: there is no billing section in the docs. Ignore any legacy billing links in older UI copy.
Contact channels
| Channel | Availability |
|---|---|
| Support ticket | Tracked end-to-end; weekday replies within about 2 hours |
| support@govconnect.ke | |
| Live chat | Coming soon (Monday to Friday, 09:00 to 21:00 GMT+3) |
| Schedule a call | Coming soon |
Opening a request
From Help & support, choose New ticket or go to /help/new. Four request types are available:
| Type | Use when |
|---|---|
| Support ticket | Technical or account questions: domains, API, mailboxes, webhooks |
| Incident report | Security events or service outages; routed to the security team immediately |
| Deliverability | Messages landing in spam or bouncing; include affected domain and sample bounce text |
| Dedicated IP | Request a dedicated sending IP with volume and region details |
Each form accepts a subject, description, priority, and optional links, plus a few type-specific fields (for example affected domain and bounce text for a Deliverability request). After submit you receive a reference (for example REQ-204) and can attach supporting files on the confirmation screen.
Priority and SLA
| Priority | Target first response |
|---|---|
| Urgent | Within 1 hour |
| High | Within 4 hours |
| Normal | Within 24 hours |
| Low | Within 72 hours |
All request types default to Normal priority; set it yourself when you open the request.
Following your tickets
- Your open tickets on the help centre lists active items (
open,in progress,waiting). - All tickets at
/help/ticketsshows every request you have opened, open or closed. - Open a ticket to read the thread, reply, upload attachments, or Escalate to ICTA once the ticket is overdue (past your institution's first-response window).
Escalated tickets move to the ICTA tier and appear read-only in the institution support desk.
Institution support desk
Authorizing Officers and ICT administrators manage tickets opened by staff in their institution workspace.
- Open Support desk at
/support(requiressupport:manage). - Review the queue: open, unassigned, and overdue counts appear at the top.
- Filter by status, assignee, or search text.
- Open a ticket to assign an ICT officer, change status or priority, reply (public or internal note), request more information, attach files, or escalate to ICTA.
Tickets show a tier pill:
| Tier | Meaning |
|---|---|
| Institution ICT | Handled inside your org |
| ICTA | Escalated to platform operators |
Platform admins triage escalated and cross-org tickets in Admin → Support (/admin/support).
Tips for faster resolution
- Include error messages, timestamps, and affected domains or mailbox addresses.
- For deliverability issues, paste a full bounce or attach the raw
.eml. - Link to relevant docs pages or dashboard screens in the Links field on
/help/new. - Check Deliverability and Domain DNS guides before opening a ticket when the answer may already be documented.
Next steps
- Notification preferences: alerts for team and security events
- Audit Log: institution activity history
- Request mailboxes: ICTA allocation for hosted inboxes