Turn the internal request inbox into owned, timed work.
If your IT or operations team runs on an email address that fills up faster than anyone can clear it, Solves gives every request an owner, a priority, a response-time target and an audit trail, without asking colleagues to learn a portal. It is honest, email-first ticketing for internal support, not a heavyweight ITSM suite.
No asset management, change management or CMDB. We say so up front.
This is email-first internal support, not a full ITSM
Solves does not include IT asset management, a CMDB or formal change management, and it is not a contact centre. It is for internal teams that field requests by email and want ownership, response-time targets and a clear record of what happened. If you need to track assets or run change control, a dedicated ITSM platform is the better fit, and we would rather tell you that now.
The short answer
Email requests, but owned and measurable
Internal support runs on email far more often than anyone admits. Staff email IT about a broken laptop, operations about an access request, facilities about a desk move. The address works, until volume rises and messages slip, get answered twice or never get answered at all. Solves keeps the email front door and adds the structure a busy team needs behind it.
Each inbound email becomes an owned ticket with one assignee, a state and a priority. Nothing sits in a shared inbox where everyone assumes someone else has it. A teammate picks up a request, others can see it is taken, and the requester gets a reply from a person who is accountable for it.
Crucially, the requester does not change how they work. There is no portal to sign into and no form to complete; they email the same address they always have. The change is on your side of the desk, where the inbox becomes a queue you can sort, filter, time and report on.
What you get
The parts of a desk an internal team actually uses
Shipped features, scoped to internal email support. No padding, no roadmap items dressed up as live.
Owned tickets
Every email becomes a ticket with one owner, a state and a priority, so requests stop falling between people in a shared inbox.
Assignment and queues
Assign by hand, save the queue views your team works from, and filter by priority, assignee, brand or tag without rebuilding the view each time.
Public replies, private notes
The reply the requester sees and the internal note diagnosing the fix are hard-separated, so working notes never reach the person who raised the request.
Saved replies
Keep tidy, consistent answers for the requests you handle weekly, scoped to a team or shared across the workspace, with no placeholder fields to maintain.
SLA timers
First-response and resolution timers measure each request against per-brand or organisation targets in minutes, with a breaching view for overdue work.
Metadata audit history
A record of who was assigned and when state, priority, replies and notes changed, kept as metadata so the log is not a copy of sensitive content.
How it works
From shared inbox to owned queue
Connect your request address
Point your IT or operations support address at Solves with the guided, forwarding-first mailbox setup. Moving off a Gmail or Outlook shared inbox this way is straightforward, and live sending is gated until the checks pass.
Set owners, priorities and targets
Decide how the team assigns work, what counts as high priority, and the first-response and resolution targets, in minutes, your SLA timers should measure against.
Work one queue, with a record
Requests arrive as tickets. Assign, reply, note internally, and close, while the audit history keeps a metadata trail and reports show how the team is keeping up.
In practice
What internal support looks like day to day
Picture a four-person IT and operations team in a growing firm. They share an internal address, and on a busy Monday it carries a new-starter laptop setup, a shared-drive access request, a printer that has stopped, and a finance system login that is locked. Without a desk, those four sit in one inbox where it is never clear who owns which, and the locked login waits all afternoon because everyone assumed a colleague had it.
With Solves the same four become four tickets. The new-starter setup is assigned and tagged so it is easy to find next month when the next starter joins. The access request gets a private note from a colleague who knows the permission, while the public reply to the requester stays clean. The printer fault carries a high priority and a visible SLA timer. The locked login is owned by one person and resolved before it breaches. Nothing is dropped because nothing is anonymous.
When a request needs a second pair of eyes
Internal work is collaborative. A teammate can be added to a ticket as a light collaborator with notes-only access, so they can advise on the fix without being able to email the requester. The diagnosis happens in private notes; the requester only ever sees the considered reply. That separation is enforced, not a convention people have to remember.
Several internal teams, one workspace
IT is rarely the only team running on email. Facilities, HR and finance often have their own request addresses. Solves lets you run each as a brand inside one workspace, each with its own mailbox and saved replies, worked from one unified queue, with team permissions deciding who sees and answers what. One login, several internal desks, no overlap a colleague has to police by hand.
Measuring without overclaiming
Most internal teams have never had a response-time figure to point at. Reports give you that: how many requests came in, what was answered, where time is going, with first-response and resolution timers measured against targets you set in minutes. It is enough to show the business the team is keeping up, without pretending to staff an around-the-clock contact centre that Solves was never built to be.
Honest comparison
Email-first internal support vs a full ITSM platform
Where Solves fits an internal team that runs on email, and where a dedicated ITSM tool is plainly the better choice.
| Solves | Full ITSM platform | |
|---|---|---|
| Owned email tickets with SLAs | Yes, first-response and resolution timers | Yes |
| IT asset management | Not included, by design | Core capability |
| CMDB and service mapping | Not included | Core capability |
| Formal change management | Not included | Core capability |
| Self-service portal and catalogue | Not yet; email is the front door | Usually included |
| Time to a working internal queue | Same day, forwarding-first | Often a project |
Competitor facts last verified 13 June 2026. Re-check the vendor's current plans before deciding.
Solves does not claim ITSM parity. If your team needs asset tracking, a CMDB or change advisory boards, choose a dedicated ITSM platform. Solves is for internal teams whose real workload arrives by email and needs ownership, timing and an audit trail.
FAQ
IT and internal support questions
Is Solves an ITSM tool?
No, and we will not pretend otherwise. Solves is email-first ticketing for internal IT and operations teams that handle requests by email. It does not include IT asset management, a configuration management database (CMDB) or formal change management. If your team needs to track hardware inventory, model dependencies between services or run a change advisory board, a dedicated ITSM platform is the right tool. Solves is for turning the internal request inbox into owned, timed, auditable work.
Can internal staff raise requests without a portal?
Yes. Staff email your IT or operations address exactly as they do today, and each message becomes an owned ticket. Solves does not currently offer a self-service portal or a request catalogue, so the front door stays the email address your colleagues already use. That keeps adoption simple: there is no new system for staff to learn and no login for them to forget.
Can we set response times for internal requests?
Yes. First-response and resolution SLA timers measure each request against per-brand or organisation targets set in minutes, so you can promise a response time and track how you are doing against it. You can see at a glance what is on track and what is close to breaching, which is usually enough for an internal team that has never had measurable response times before.
Does Solves keep an audit trail for internal tickets?
Every ticket carries a metadata audit history: who was assigned, when the state or priority changed, when a reply or note was added. The history records the actions, not the private content of messages, which stays encrypted at rest. That gives an IT or operations lead a defensible record of how a request was handled without turning the log into a copy of every sensitive message.
Can we separate notes from replies the requester sees?
Yes, and the separation is hard, not a setting you can fumble. Public replies go to the requester; private notes are internal only and never reach them. A light collaborator can be added to a ticket with notes-only access, so a colleague can advise on a fix without being able to email the requester directly. That suits internal work where the diagnosis and the response are often two different conversations.
Can different teams share one internal desk?
Yes. If IT, facilities and HR each run a request address, you can run them as separate brands inside one workspace, each with its own mailbox and saved replies, worked from one unified queue. Team permissions decide who sees and answers what. It is the same multi-brand model the rest of Solves uses, applied to internal teams rather than external customers.
Give your internal inbox an owner and a clock
Start at £29, or let us help you connect your request address and set your targets.