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This guide introduces you to the Serval platform interface, helping you understand where to find key features and how to navigate efficiently.

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Dashboard Overview

When you sign in to Serval, you land on the main dashboard. This is your command center for monitoring help desk activity and accessing key features. The sidebar is organized around workspaces. A workspace switcher near the top lets you move between your personal workspace, the organization workspace (Org Admins only), and each team you belong to. Selecting a workspace swaps the navigation below it to the sections for that workspace, so you only see what’s relevant to where you’re working. Two actions stay pinned above the switcher, available from any workspace:

New request

Submit a new request from anywhere

Inbox

Your notifications and messages
Personal workspace Your own work across teams:

Tickets

Tickets assigned to you

Access

Your access requests

Service catalog

Browse and request access and services

Knowledge

Knowledge articles
Depending on your setup, the Personal workspace can also include Access Review Tasks (when you have access reviews assigned) and Journeys (when you have an active journey). Organization workspace The Analytics and Settings items are visible to Org Admins only. Org chart is available to everyone in your organization except external guests.

Analytics

Metrics across all teams, with no team filter

Org chart

Explore reporting lines and find anyone in the organization

Settings

Org settings and security: users, teams, SSO, SCIM, domains, API keys, audit
Team workspaces Switch to a team to see that team’s tools, grouped so related features sit together. The team’s automation tools sit together at the top:

Catalyst

Build automations from natural language

Workflows

Deterministic workflows for any action

Skills

Guidance for AI agent behavior

Background Agents

Proactive agents that discover problems
A Service Management group holds the everyday pages:

Tickets

The team’s ticket queue

Catalog Import

Import catalog items from connected systems

Campaigns

Broadcast messages and collect responses

Knowledge

Articles and documentation
The team’s remaining sections follow as their own items:

Access

Manage access roles and reviews

Analytics

This team’s metrics and dashboards

Journeys

This team’s active journeys

Databases

Assets and CMDB

Integrations

Connected apps

Settings

Team-level settings
If you don’t see any team workspaces in the switcher, you either haven’t been added to a team yet, or no teams have been created. Ask an Org Admin to create a team or add you to one.
End users People who aren’t part of a team workspace, such as employees who only submit requests, see a simplified sidebar with no workspace switcher: New request, Inbox, Tickets, Access, and Service catalog. Profile menu Your profile sits at the bottom of the sidebar. Click your name or avatar to open your profile, or click the more (⋮) button next to it to open the profile menu:

Theme

Switch between light, dark, or system mode

Take the tour

Replay the guided product tour

Language

Set the Serval UI display language. Saved to your account.

Release Notes

See what’s new in Serval

Documentation

Open the Serval documentation

Get support

Reach Serval support

Logout

Sign out of your account
Collapse the sidebar entirely for more screen space. Hover the edge to peek at it, and it stays collapsed as you move around the product until you reopen it.

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Teams: how Serval is organized

Serval is built around team workspaces, which often correspond to teams in your company (for example IT Support, Security, or HR). Workflows, skills, knowledge, access management, integrations, and the majority of other automations are configured per team. Tickets are routed to teams, and permissions are team-scoped (you might be a Manager on one team and an Agent on another).
You need at least one team before you can set up most team-scoped capabilities (workflows, access, Skills, automations, and similar).

Teams

Read Teams for why teams matter, typical examples (IT, Security, HR, Finance), and step-by-step help to create your first team.

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Quick Actions

Common tasks you can do from anywhere in Serval: To move between pages (tickets, workflows, team settings, and more), open the command palette with ⌘K and start typing. Open a ticket to reveal ticket-specific shortcuts (assign, label, set status, reply, and more), or press ? anywhere for the full, context-aware list.

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Command Palette

Press ⌘K (or Ctrl+K on Windows and Linux) to open the command palette. The command palette provides quick access to navigation, actions, and search from anywhere in Serval: type to find tickets, workflows, teams, or run commands without navigating through menus.

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Keyboard Navigation Between Tickets

When viewing a ticket list, press J to move to the next ticket and K to move to the previous ticket. When you navigate back to the list, Serval returns you to the same position. Press / to focus the search box on the current page, such as the ticket list or app list. To search across Serval for tickets, workflows, teams, and more, open the command palette with ⌘K (Ctrl+K on Windows and Linux).

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Search Tips

  • Ticket search: Search by ticket number, requester name, or content
  • People search: Find users by name or email
  • Workflow search: Search by workflow name or description
  • Filters: Add type:ticket or status:open to narrow results
Use natural language in search. Try “password reset tickets from last week” to find relevant results.