Platform Orientation - Pylon 101

Last updated: February 20, 2026

Setup & Configuration

Core Concepts

Pylon is organized around three core objects:

Object

What It Represents

Equivalent In Other Tools

Issues

A customer conversation or support request. Created from Slack, email, chat widget, portal, or API.

Zendesk ticket, Intercom conversation, Front conversation

Accounts

A company or organization you support. Linked to contacts and issues. Syncs with your CRM.

Zendesk organization, Salesforce account

Contacts

An individual person at an account who submits or is involved in issues.

Zendesk user, Intercom contact

Every issue is associated with a contact, and every contact belongs to an account. This hierarchy lets you see all support activity rolled up to the company level.

Platform Areas

Pylon is organized into several major product areas, accessible from the left sidebar navigation:

Area

What It Does

Issues

Your support inbox. View, filter, and respond to customer issues across all channels. Supports Kanban and List views with customizable filters and layouts.

Accounts

Manage customer accounts with custom fields, health scores, activity timelines, and CRM-synced data. View all issues, contacts, and interactions per account.

Contacts

Manage individual contacts with custom fields and filtering. View contact-level activity and issue history.

Knowledge Base

Host support articles organized in collections. Includes a WYSIWYG editor, templates, translations, AI-powered gap detection, and a customer-facing support site.

Product Intelligence

AI-powered feature request detection and grouping. Automatically identifies product feedback from issues and call recordings, with linked evidence and customer accounts.

Analytics

Built-in dashboards for support metrics (General, CSAT, SLA, Workforce, AI Agent, Community). Also supports custom dashboards with flexible chart configurations.

Broadcasts

Send proactive updates to customers across channels. Create broadcasts from feature requests to notify customers of shipped features.

AI Agents

Configure AI-powered agents that can auto-respond to issues, suggest responses, and run automated workflows (runbooks).

Settings

Configure everything: custom fields, tags, triggers, macros, teams, roles, integrations, SLAs, ticket forms, and more.

The Issue View

The Issues page is where your team spends most of their time. Key elements:

  • Views — Saved filter configurations (e.g., "My Open Issues", "High Priority", "Unassigned"). Switch between Kanban and List layouts. Each view can have its own filters, grouping, sorting, and columns.

  • Issue Sidebar — When you click into an issue, the right sidebar shows issue details, custom fields, account info, contact info, integration modules (Jira, Linear, GitHub, etc.), and KB search.

  • Editor — Reply to customers, add internal notes, use macros, and leverage AI assistance. Internal notes are only visible to your team.

  • Search — Global search across issues, accounts, contacts, and KB articles. Accessible via the search bar or keyboard shortcut.

Key Terminology

Term

Definition

Issue State

The lifecycle status of an issue: New, Open, Waiting on Customer, Waiting on You, Closed. Custom states can be configured.

Tags

Simple labels for quick categorization. Can be created on-the-fly. Used in views, triggers, and macros.

Custom Fields

Typed, structured fields (text, number, select, date, etc.) on issues, accounts, or contacts. Support AI autofill, CRM sync, and conditional logic.

Triggers

Automated rules that fire on events (issue created, updated, etc.) and perform actions (assign, tag, notify, set fields). Pylon's automation engine.

Macros

Templated responses with dynamic variables. Can also perform actions like tagging or closing. Accessible via the editor with the m shortcut.

Teams

Groups of agents. Used for routing, assignment, views, and permissions.

SLAs

Service Level Agreements that track first response time, next reply time, and resolution time. Configurable per priority, account, or tag.

Internal Threads

Side conversations within an issue for internal collaboration, visible only to your team.

Settings Overview

Key settings areas to configure during setup:

  • Custom Fields — Define issue, account, and contact fields (Settings → Issue Fields / Account Fields / Contact Fields)

  • Tags — Manage issue and account tags (Settings → Issue Tags / Account Tags)

  • Triggers — Build automation rules (Settings → Triggers)

  • Macros — Create templated responses (Settings → Macros)

  • Teams — Set up team structure (Settings → Teams)

  • Roles & Permissions — Configure RBAC (Settings → Roles)

  • Integrations — Connect Slack, email, CRM, product ticketing, etc. (Settings → Apps)

  • SLAs — Define service level targets (Settings → SLAs)

  • Ticket Forms — Configure intake forms for web, Slack, and portal (Settings → Ticket Forms)

  • Chat Widget — Set up in-app chat (Settings → Chat Widget)

Best Practices

Organizing Your Workspace

  • Start with Views — Create views that match your team's workflow. Common views: "My Open Issues", "Unassigned", "High Priority", "Waiting on Customer", and per-team queues.

  • Play around with Triggers - this is the backbone of all automation & workflows within Pylon. The Trigger Template Library is a great place to start to take a look at common Triggers our customers create.

  • Define your field schema early — Plan which custom fields you need for issues, accounts, and contacts before migrating data. Fields drive views, triggers, analytics, and AI categorization.

Keyboard Shortcuts

Pylon has keyboard shortcuts for common actions. Some key ones:

  • m — Open macro picker in the editor

  • Search shortcut — Quick access to global search

  • Navigation shortcuts — Move between issues, views, and pages

Hit cmd+K and search "Keyboard Shortcuts" to get a full list of shortcuts that are relevant based on where you are in the platform.

Understanding Issues vs. Tickets

In Pylon, every customer message in a connected Slack channel creates an issue. A ticket is a specific type of issue created via emoji reaction, @mention, ticket form, or explicit ticket creation. All tickets are issues, but not all issues are tickets. This distinction matters for Slack-heavy workflows — your views can filter by issue type to focus on formal tickets vs. general conversation tracking.

First Steps Before Data Migration

  1. Set up integrations — Connect Slack, email, CRM, and product ticketing tools

  2. Configure custom fields and tags — Define your issue, account, and contact schemas

  3. Build triggers — Set up routing, auto-tagging, notifications, and SLA rules

  4. Create views — Build views that match your team's workflow

  5. Set up the Knowledge Base — Import or create support articles

  6. Configure AI — Enable AI fields, AI agents, and response suggestions

  7. Invite your team — Add users, assign roles, and set up teams

  8. Test end-to-end — Send test messages through each channel and verify routing, triggers, and notifications work