Go Help Desk

A self-hosted help desk for teams that want full control. Single binary, batteries included.

What it is

Go Help Desk is an open-source ticket management system. Staff submit and track support requests. Support teams triage, respond, and resolve them. Everything runs on your infrastructure.

• No cloud required. PostgreSQL + a single Go binary.
• No SaaS lock-in. Your data stays where you put it.
• Deploys in one command.

Screenshots

Ticket detail	Admin — categories
Staff ticket list	Admin — settings

Features

• CTI ticket classification (Category → Type → Item) with drag-to-reorder and inline rename in the admin UI
• Customizable ticket statuses — deactivate to hide from workflows, permanently delete only when empty; full status change timeline on each ticket
• Local accounts, TOTP MFA, and SAML 2.0 SSO
• Role-based access (Admin / Staff / User)
• Full user management — edit profile, role, group membership; disable/enable accounts; reset MFA and password; delete accounts
• Groups — named pools of staff; tickets can be assigned to a group and any member can act on them
• Group scoping tied to CTI categories (a group is only assigned tickets it owns)
• CTI-linked group management — assign groups directly from the CTI editor per category or type
• Custom fields — admin-defined fields (text, textarea, number, select) assigned per CTI node; values stored normalized for filterability; editable by staff after creation
• Tags — free-form labels on tickets; staff create tags on first use (stored lowercase); admins can deactivate or restore tags
• Linked tickets (related, parent/child, duplicate, caused-by)
• Live ticket search — by tracking number (prefix), subject, or description keywords; staff/admin can jump directly to a ticket by tracking number or UUID
• Email and webhook notifications
• Optional SLA tracking
• Configurable branding — site name and logo upload (PNG, SVG, JPG, GIF; auto-scaled to 320 × 64 px) via the admin UI
• REST API with API key and OAuth2 client-credential auth
• MCP server for AI assistant integration
• WASM plugin system (sandboxed)
• Guest ticket submission (optional) — name, email, and optional phone captured; tracking number returned
• File attachments (PDF, DOCX, XLSX, TXT, LOG, JPEG, PNG, BMP; 25 MB max; images auto-recompressed; optional ClamAV virus scanning)

Quick start

git clone https://github.com/PubliciaLLC/go-help-desk
cd go-help-desk/docker
cp .env.example .env   # set SESSION_SECRET, JWT_SECRET, BASE_URL
docker compose up -d

Open http://localhost:8080. On a fresh database the app redirects to /setup, where you create the first admin account. The setup route is permanently disabled once any user exists.

Configuration

Environment variables control infrastructure; feature flags (SAML, MFA, SLA, guest submission) and branding are managed through the Admin → Settings UI and stored in the database.

* In Docker Compose, CLAMAV_ADDR is set automatically. The clamav service runs alongside the app on a private internal network. You do not need to set this variable yourself.

Note: SAML, MFA, SLA, and guest-submission are toggled in the Admin UI — not environment variables. Environment variables that existed for these in older versions have been removed.

API

The REST API is documented informally by the handler source at backend/internal/server/. Key endpoints:

OAuth2 client credentials (POST /api/v1/auth/oauth/token) produce short-lived JWTs for machine-to-machine access.

Development

Requires Go 1.24+, Node 24+, PostgreSQL 17+.

# backend
cd backend && go mod download
go run ./cmd/server

# frontend (in a separate terminal)
cd frontend && npm ci && npm run dev

The Vite dev server proxies /api and /mcp to :8080.

Tests:

# Unit tests (no DB required)
cd backend
go test ./internal/domain/... ./internal/config/... ./internal/middleware/... ./internal/server/notify/...

# Integration tests via Docker Compose
docker-compose -f docker/docker-compose.yml --profile test run --rm test

# Integration tests from the host (port 5432 is exposed)
TEST_DATABASE_URL=postgres://helpdesk:helpdesk@localhost:5432/helpdesk?sslmode=disable go test ./...

Schema changes: edit queries/*.sql, add a migration under internal/database/migrations/, run sqlc generate. Never hand-edit internal/dbgen/.

To override the version string at build time:

go build -ldflags "-X github.com/publiciallc/go-help-desk/backend/internal/version.Version=1.0.0" ./cmd/server

License

GNU Affero General Public License v3.0. Modifications — including hosting as a service — must be released under the same license.