Support

The Support menu holds the help desk (tickets and their rules) and the self-service content that keeps tickets down (knowledgebase, announcements, downloads, network issues). Clients use the other half of it in their own area - see The client area.

The Support menu

Role permissions follow the page names (List Support Tickets, Open New Ticket, Delete Ticket, Manage Ticket Notes, Configure Support Departments and so on). An administrator who is assigned to some departments sees only the tickets of those departments.

The ticket list

Support → Support Tickets opens on Awaiting Reply. The tabs are: Awaiting Reply, Flagged (tickets flagged to you), one tab per status, All Active and Closed, each with a count. Filter by Search (ticket ID, subject, name, e-mail, message text, client), Department, Assigned (anyone, unassigned or a person) and Priority. Columns: Department, Subject, Submitter (a guest has a Guest badge), Status, Priority, Last Reply, Assigned. Unread tickets are bold; a star marks a ticket flagged to someone.

Tick tickets and use With selected: Close, Delete, Change status, Change department, Change priority, Assign to or Merge into the oldest. Merging needs two or more tickets.

The ticket page

Ticket IDs are six digits. The ticket page shows the thread, with staff replies marked, and these tabs.

• Add Reply - Message, Predefined Reply (inserts a canned reply), Attachments, CC Recipients, Status after reply (default Answered) and Add as note (a private note instead of a reply).
• Options - Subject, Department, Priority, Status, Assigned To, Flag To; Update Ticket saves. Also: Change the client (move the ticket to another client by ID or e-mail), Merge another ticket into this one (by ticket ID), Split a reply into a new ticket (choose the reply), Close Ticket, Delete Ticket, and, for a guest ticket, a button to ban the sender's e-mail domain, which also closes the ticket.
• Notes - private notes for staff, never shown to the client. Roles need Manage Ticket Notes.
• Client Tickets - the client's other tickets.
• Log - what happened to the ticket.

Side cards show the Client and the Ticket Information. When the department asks for feedback, a Ticket Feedback card shows the rating. A staff reply sends Support Ticket Reply to the client, a client reply sends it to the assigned administrator (or the department); a new ticket sends Support Ticket Opened to the client and to the department's staff; flagging sends Support Ticket Flagged.

Open New Ticket is for a ticket you start: pick a Client (or type a Name and E-mail Address), Department, Priority, Subject, Message, Attachments, CC Recipients and tick Send E-mail.

Attachments obey General Settings → Support: Allowed File Types, Maximum File Size (MB).

Departments

Support → Support Departments lists departments with their e-mail, tickets, assigned admins and options. The shipped ones are Support, Sales and Billing (Billing is for clients only). A department has:

A department that still has tickets cannot be deleted. The mailbox details are stored here; reading the mailbox is done by a Mail Import add-on, and none is shipped with this version.

Statuses

Support → Ticket Statuses: Open, Answered, Customer-Reply, On Hold, In Progress and Closed ship as system statuses (their titles are fixed and they cannot be deleted). For each status choose a Colour, a Sort Order, and three switches:

• Include in Active Tickets - it appears in All Active.
• Include in Awaiting Reply - it counts as waiting for staff (Open and Customer-Reply by default).
• Auto Close - tickets in this status close by themselves after the inactivity time (Answered by default; the time is Close Inactive Tickets in General Settings → Support, 72 hours, 0 = never). The client gets Support Ticket Auto Close Notification.

You can add your own statuses, for example "Waiting for client".

Predefined replies

Support → Predefined Replies: categories (with a Parent Category) and replies (Name, Category, Reply). A search box looks through all of them. In the ticket's reply box, Predefined Reply inserts one; merge fields such as the client's name are filled in.

Escalation rules

Support → Escalation Rules act on tickets that wait too long. A rule has a Rule Name and conditions: Departments, Statuses (none ticked = every status except Closed), Priorities (none = every priority) and Time Since Last Reply in hours. When a ticket matches, the cron applies the actions: New Priority, New Department, New Status, Flag To (the administrator the ticket goes to), Add Reply (a staff reply to the client) and Notify E-mails (comma separated). A rule fires once per ticket. Escalations run in the hourly cron job tickets, together with the auto close - see Automation.

Knowledgebase

Support → Knowledgebase has a category tree (Name, Parent Category, Description, Sort Order, Hidden) and articles (Title, Slug, Article in an editor, Categories, Tags, Private for signed-in clients only, Hidden). The list shows Views and Useful votes; Preview and View open the public page. With Knowledgebase Suggestions on, the client sees matching articles while typing a ticket subject. Clients vote "useful" on each article.

Announcements

Support → Announcements: Title, Slug, Publish Date, Published (untick for a draft), and the Announcement text with a simple toolbar. They appear on the client home page and on the Announcements page, with an RSS feed at /feed/announcements.

Downloads

Support → Downloads is a category tree of files. A download has a Title, Description, Category and a Type: Upload a file or Link to a file elsewhere. Switches: Clients Only (signed-in only), Product Download (only clients who own a product that includes it) and Hidden (not listed). The list shows Access, Size and the download count. Some file types are refused on upload.

Network issues

Support → Network Issues tells clients about outages and maintenance: Title, Type (Server, System, Other), Server (for type Server), Affecting (for example "Mail" or "All hosting"), Priority (Low to Critical), Status (Reported, Investigating, In Progress, Outage, Scheduled, Resolved), Start Date, End Date and Description. Mark Resolved closes one. Open issues show on the client's Network Status page.

Ratings

Feedback is summed up in Reports → Ticket Ratings (customer ratings per staff member). See Reports and utilities.