Before I built the IT Ticket Portal at Crowe UAE, support requests were managed through email. Someone had a problem, they emailed the IT team, the IT team tried to track it, things got missed, priorities were unclear, and there was no data to understand what was actually going wrong or how quickly it was being fixed.
This is a common problem. And the typical answer is to buy a helpdesk tool — ServiceNow, Freshdesk, Zendesk. All of them cost money, require onboarding, and introduce another platform for people to learn.
I built the same core functionality using tools the organisation already had — completely inside Microsoft 365.
What the System Does
The portal handles the full lifecycle of a support ticket:
- Submission — User fills out a Microsoft Form describing their issue
- Logging — Ticket automatically appears in Microsoft Lists with a unique ID
- Assignment notification — When IT assigns the ticket, the user gets an automatic message
- Resolution notification — When the ticket is marked resolved, the user is notified again
- Rating — User receives an automated rating request to score the IT team member
- Reporting — All data feeds into a Power BI report for management review
The Architecture
Microsoft Forms handles the user-facing submission. It is familiar, accessible from any device, and requires no login for internal users.
Microsoft Lists acts as the database. Each form submission creates a new list item. The IT team works directly in Lists — updating status, assigning tickets, and adding notes.
Power Automate is the engine connecting everything. A flow triggers on each new list item creation (new ticket) and on status change events (assigned, resolved). It handles all notifications automatically.
Microsoft Copilot Studio was used to build a bot that allows users to check ticket status conversationally without navigating to Lists.
Power BI connects to the Lists data and provides the IT team and management with dashboards showing open tickets, resolution times, team performance, and recurring issue patterns.
The Training Guide Outcome
One outcome I did not initially anticipate: the Power BI data revealed which issues were being raised repeatedly. The IT team used this insight to build specific step-by-step guides for the most common problems and distributed them across the organisation.
This reduced repeat ticket volume — the system did not just resolve problems faster, it helped prevent them.
Why This Works Better Than It Sounds
The honest concern when I proposed this was: will it actually feel like a proper ticketing system, or will it feel like a Microsoft Forms hack?
After deployment, the feedback was consistently positive. Users got a clear submission process, automatic updates, and a way to give feedback. The IT team got structure, visibility, and data. Management got reporting without asking for it.
Total hours saved: 500+ across all users and the IT team of 7.
Cost of additional software: zero.
How to Replicate This
If you want to build something similar in your organisation, the minimum components are:
- Microsoft Forms (for submission)
- Microsoft Lists (for tracking)
- Power Automate (for notifications and automation)
- Power BI Desktop (free) connected to your Lists data
Start with just the form and the list. Get people using it. Then layer in notifications and reporting over time. Trying to build everything at once is the fastest way to build nothing.
I also built a separate Admin Ticket Portal following the same architecture for administrative support requests. The pattern is reusable across any department that manages requests, tasks, or cases.
If you are thinking about building something similar and want to talk through the design, feel free to get in touch.