How to Submit a Ticket and Manage Support Requests – COHMIS

COHMIS Help Desk Overview

The COHMIS Help Desk provides a single point of contact for users to report issues and request assistance. Centralizing communication on system issues, policies and procedures, and general support helps the HMIS Leads manage and prioritize support needs effectively.

Common support requests include:

Consolidating duplicate client records.
Correcting or deleting data such as program enrollments, assessments, or files that were entered incorrectly or by mistake.
Locked out of HMIS - for password reset instructions, please review this article.
Updating ROI records created by another agency.

The COHMIS Help Desk is hosted on the Zendesk platform. Because of this, when you create an account, reset your password, or verify your email address, you will see <@cohmis.zendesk.com> as the sender in your inbox. Additionally, in various communication, you may see the terms "Help Desk" and "Zendesk" used interchangeably. For the purposes of this article, we will use the term "COHMIS Help Desk".

The following article explains how to create your COHMIS Help Desk account, how to submit a Help Desk ticket (i.e., support request), and how to manage support requests. We will also cover how to submit a support request without a COHMIS Help Desk account.

Creating a COHMIS Help Desk Account

Starting March 24, 2026, Zendesk will require all users who submit a support request to verify their email. Zendesk is making this change to reduce spam attacks and enhance security.

To avoid the additional step of email verification when submitting a support request, we strongly recommend creating a free COHMIS Help Desk account—you will never need to pay for this account. Creating an account allows you to quickly request support and manage your requests.

Please follow these steps to learn how to create your account.

1. Visit https://cohmis.zendesk.com.

This is the COHMIS Help Desk website URL. If you are reading this article, you are already here! We recommend bookmarking this website for future use.

2. Click Sign in.

In the top right corner of the webpage, click Sign in.

3. Select the option to Sign up.

At the bottom of the dialog box, select Sign up next to New to COHMIS Help Desk?

4. Enter your name and email address.

While it only shows (required) next to Name, please note that both Name and Email are required to create an account. Please enter your preferred name and your work email address.

5. Click Sign up and review next steps to Check your email.

After you click Sign up, a pop-up will appear confirming your account creation submission and notifying you of next steps.

Note: If an "Invalid CSRF Token" error occurs, this means the session has expired. Please refresh the web page and try again.

6. Open email and select Activate account.

Check your inbox for an email with the subject line "Activate account for COHMIS Help Desk", making sure to check your spam/junk folders. You may also wish to add support@cohmis.zendesk.com to your Safe Sender list to bypass administrator firewalls.

Within the email, click Activate account. You will then be prompted to create a password.

7. Create a password.

After selecting Activate account in your email, you will be redirected to the web page to create your password. Enter a unique password that meets all criteria listed—you will know criteria has been met when there are green checkmarks next to each item (do NOT use the example password below).

Click Create password to complete your account set up.

🎉 Finished!

Your name should now be visible in the top right corner. Click the dropdown to review your Profile, Requests, Activities, and Contact Details, or to sign out.

Submitting a Request / Help Desk Ticket

You may submit a request for support by submitting a COHMIS Help Desk ticket. Because of this, "requests" and "tickets" may be used interchangeably. When your HMIS team says, "Please submit a ticket", this is the same as "Please navigate to the Help Desk and submit a request".

Keep in mind the following:

Starting March 24, 2026, users who are not logged into their COHMIS Help Desk account will be required to verify their email each time they submit a support request. To avoid this verification step, we strongly recommend creating a free COHMIS Help Desk account and submitting support requests through that account.
To submit a support request under your account, you must be signed in. If you do not see your name in the top right corner, sign in and then proceed with the following steps.
If you will not be creating a support request under your account, keep in mind there will be additional verification steps.

1. Navigate to the request form.

There are two ways to create a support request or Help Desk ticket. From the COHMIS Help Desk home page, you can either:

Click Submit a Ticket along the top banner.
Click Submit a request to the left of your name (if you are logged into your COHMIS Help Desk account)

2. Fill out the request form.

Support requests should tackle one topic at a time. If you have multiple topics to request support on, submit a request for each topic/issue.

Please see below for notes regarding each field of the request form:

CC: An advantage to creating and using a COHMIS Help Desk account is that you can CC other individuals on support requests when needed. If you do not have an account, you will not be able to include anyone else on the communication.

Continuum of Care: Select the Continuum of Care you are associated with: MDHI, Balance of State, Pikes Peak, or Northern Colorado. If you are unsure, please check with your agency's DPAL or your supervisor prior to submitting a request.

Subject: Set the Subject as you would an email. As you start typing, relevant COHMIS Help Desk articles may populate. Review the suggested articles to see if there is a resource available related to your request.

Description: The Description box is the body of your email. Please share any relevant information and additional context for HMIS staff to effectively support you.

Please note we are not able to encrypt request submissions. When discussing clients, please refer to them solely as their Unique Identifier. Never include Personally Identifiable Information (PII), such as full name, partial name, initials, DOB, or SSN. This ensures we are protecting our client's data in accordance with the HUD Privacy & Security Guidelines.
If PII is necessary for your request, please notify the HMIS team within the description box and we can follow up in a separate encrypted email. For example, you may include, "I am unable to communicate my need for support without discussing PII", and your HMIS team will know what to do!

Attachments (optional): You may also include any relevant Attachments, such as documents or images, to help HMIS staff better understand your need.

PII should never be included in attachments. If PII is necessary for your request, please notify the HMIS team within the description and we can follow up in a separate encrypted email.

3. Review and submit the form.

Please review your request to ensure each field is complete and no PII is included. Then click Submit on the bottom right corner.

🎉 Submission Confirmation

If you are NOT submitting a support request under a COHMIS Help Desk account: Starting March 24, 2026, please following additional verification steps, further explained in the Requesting Support Without a COHMIS Help Desk Account section.

If you ARE submitting a support request under your COHMIS Help Desk account:

Once you click Submit, the details of your submission will populate in your Requests with a pop-up stating "Your request was successfully submitted" in the top right corner of the web page.

At the bottom of the request, you can add more details or provide updates by clicking Add to the conversation.

Details of the requesting are found on the right-hand side, including the date and time the request was submitted, the date and time of the latest activity, CC'd individuals, request ID, request status (status definitions below), priority (if set by the HMIS staff), the selected Continuum of Care, and any attachments.

Managing Your Requests

To manage and monitor your support requests, you must be signed into your COHMIS Help Desk account. If you do not see your name in the top right corner, then you are not signed in.

Once you sign in, you can click on the dropdown arrow to the right of your name and click Requests to navigate to the "My requests" screen.

On the My requests screen you can:

View requests you have submitted.
View requests you have been CC'd on.
Search for specific requests.
Filter your requests by Status.
See the status of your requests.

Under the Status column, you will see the status of your ticket(s). See below for definitions of each status:

Awaiting your reply	"Awaiting your reply" means the HMIS team has provided an update, asked a question, or is otherwise awaiting for your response before being able to resolve your request.
Open	"Open" means the HMIS team is actively working on your request.
Solved	"Solved" means the HMIS team has resolved your request. For example, if you submitted a ticket to merge duplicate client profiles, once the profiles have been merged, your request status will be "Solved".

Requesting Support Without a COHMIS Help Desk Account

The instructions below apply starting March 24, 2026, when this verification process goes into effect.

If you are a service provider who engages with COHMIS, we strongly recommend creating an account for ease of requesting support and managing your requests.

If you don't create a COHMIS Help Desk account and/or you are not logged in when you submit a support request, you will be required to verify your email each time you submit a support request.

When you complete and submit a request form, you will see the following notification in the top righthand corner of the page:

Screenshot of the message "Request not yet submitted. Please check your email to verify and submit your request."

Check your email and then click the one-time link in the verification email:

Screenshot of the email verification message and link to click in order to verify.

You should then see a web page with a success message:

Screenshot of the confirmation message. It reads: "Email confirmed. Your request was sent. An agent will get back to you soon. You'll receive updates by email."

If you do NOT see this message, and you instead see a message notifying you that the link has expired (see screenshot below), this means that your HMIS team has already manually approved the ticket—they are reviewing your request and there's nothing more you need to do.

Screenshot of the Link Expired message. The message reads: "Link expired - To submit your request, fill out the request form again to receive a new confirmation email." There is a button below titled "Go to request form."

Notes/Troubleshooting

If you do not receive the email verification, please check your spam/junk folders. Otherwise, you may need to add support@cohmis.zendesk.com to your Safe Sender list.
If you try to click on the email verification link and you see a message that the link has expired, this means your HMIS team has already manually approved the ticket—they are reviewing your request and there's nothing more you need to do.
We encourage you to create a COHMIS Help Desk account to avoid additional verification needs in the future. Creating an account will allow you to efficiently request support and monitor your requests.
"Invalid CSRF Token" means the session has expired. Refresh the web page and try again.

Still need help? Contact COHMIS Help Desk