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This guide walks you through the essential setup tasks to get Serval operational for your organization. By the end of this guide, you’ll have a fully configured help desk ready to receive and process tickets.
Most organizations complete this setup in 1-2 hours. You can pause and resume at any point—your progress is automatically saved.

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Prerequisites

Before you begin, ensure you have:
  • Admin access to your organization’s Serval account
  • Access to your identity provider (Okta, Azure AD, or Google Workspace)
  • Access to your Slack workspace (if using Slack integration)
  • A list of team members who will be help desk agents

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Setup Flow

You may follow this process out of order, depending on what prerequisites you have filled.
1

Create Your Initial Team

Teams organize your help desk agents and control ticket routing. Start by creating your first team with test members.
  1. Navigate to Settings → Teams
  2. Click Create Team
  3. Name your team (e.g., “IT Support”, “Security”, “HR”)
  4. Add a few test members to get started
  5. Configure team-specific settings
  6. Assign roles and permissions
Recommended starting teams:
  • IT Support — General IT requests and troubleshooting
  • Security — Security reviews, access approvals
  • HR — People operations questions
Each agent can belong to multiple teams, but should have one primary team for default ticket assignment.
2

Connect Your Identity Provider

Link your identity provider to enable single sign-on and automatic user provisioning. Go to Settings → Integrations and connect one or more of the following:
After connecting, verify that users are syncing correctly by checking the People section.
3

Configure Your Help Desk Channels

Set up how employees will submit requests to Serval—via Slack, Microsoft Teams, email, web portal, or phone.Configure Help Desk Channels →
Start with Slack or Teams as your primary channel. You can add email and web portal later as adoption grows.
4

Build Your First Workflow

Set up a simple automation to see Serval’s AI in action.Recommended first automation: Password Reset
  1. Navigate to Workflows → Create Workflow
  2. Describe: “When someone requests a password reset, send them instructions for self-service password reset through Okta”
  3. Review the generated workflow
  4. Test with a sample request
  5. Publish the workflow
Create Your First Workflow →
5

Learn About Serval Automation Tools

Explore the full range of automation capabilities available in Serval.Learn about Serval Automations →
6

Orient yourself to the platform

Learn more about platform organization and settingsLearn about Platform Organization and Settings →

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Post-Setup Verification

After completing the setup, verify everything is working:
  1. Open Slack and DM your help desk agent
  2. Send a test message like “I need help with my laptop”
  3. Verify a ticket is created in Serval
  4. Check that it’s routed to the correct team
  1. Go to Settings → People
  2. Confirm your organization’s users are listed
  3. Verify job titles and departments are populated
  4. Check that managers are correctly assigned
  1. Submit a request that should trigger your automation
  2. Verify the workflow executes correctly
  3. Check the ticket history for automation logs

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Common Day 1 Questions

Initial sync typically completes within 5-10 minutes for organizations under 10,000 users. Subsequent syncs run automatically every hour.
All progress is automatically saved. You can close your browser and return later—just sign back in to continue where you left off.
Start with 2-3 IT team members who will help configure and test the platform. Expand to the full team once you’re comfortable with the setup.