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Description

The Support Manager is a support plugin included with Blesta. It may be installed under [Settings] > [Company] > [Plugins and ], but is not installed by default. It integrates a ticket system and knowledgebase to allow for clients to request support.

Tie-Ins

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The support plugin ties into the following areas.

1. Staff Area
   1. New "Support" primary navigation tab.
   2. Client Profile page, new "Actions" box link "Open Ticket".
   3. Client Profile page, new "Tickets" widget.
   4. Company Settings, Automation,  new "Download Tickets" task.
   5. New option "Ticket Search" in primary search box.
2. Client Area
   1. New "Support" navigation link.

Support Emails

Support related email templates can be found under [Settings] > [Company] > [Emails] > Email Templates, in the section labeled "Plugin Templates".

Ticket Bounce

The ticket bounce email template does not support any tags.

Ticket Received

The ticket received email template allows for the following tags:

*

* Plugins are powerful and are not limited to the tie-ins listed above, these are just some of the most common

Support Emails

Support related email templates can be found under [Settings] > [Company] > [Emails] > Email Templates, in the section labeled "Plugin Templates".

Ticket Bounce

The ticket bounce email template does not support any tags.

Ticket Received

The ticket received email template allows for the following tags:

Ticket Updated

The ticket updated email template alows for the following tags:

Ticket Updated

The ticket updated email template allows for the following tags:

Staff Ticket Updated

The ticket received email template allows for the following tags:

Staff Ticket Assigned

This email is sent to a staff member when a ticket has been assigned to them. This email template was made available in v2.6.0 of the plugin. The following tags are supported:

Staff Ticket Updated (Mobile)

The ticket received (mobile) email template allows for the following tags:

Departments

Name

Description

Permissions

Default Priority

Email Handling

The following types are supported for email handling:

• None
• Piping
• POP3
• IMAP

Security

Box Name

Message Handling

Authentication

Port

Visibility

Email Piping

If your department is set up to receive tickets via email piping, your server must be configured to pipe those messages into the support manager.

Email should be piped to "/plugins/support_manager/pipe.php".

In your /etc/aliases file, it might look something like this..

support: "|/usr/bin/php /home/user/public_html/plugins/support_manager/pipe.php"

If you experience any trouble with that, you can alternatively pipe mail to "index.php plugin/support_manager/ticket_pipe/index/1" assuming "1" in the company ID.

support: "|/usr/bin/php /home/user/public_html/index.php plugin/support_manager/ticket_pipe/index/1"

In some cases, when piping using the 1st method above, it may be necessary to update the hashbang for the path to php in the pipe script located at "/plugins/support_manager/pipe.php".

The first line of the file should begin with the hashbang, for example:

#!/usr/bin/php -q

#!/usr/local/bin/php -q

On some systems you may need to create a symlink to php and pipe.php in /etc/smrsh..

cd /etc/smrsh
ln -s /usr/bin/php
ln -s /home/user/public_html/plugins/support_manager/pipe.php

Formatting, Styling, and Adding Links to Replies

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stdClass Object
    (
        [id] => 2
        [user_id] => 3
        [first_name] => First
        [last_name] => Last
        [email] => first.last@domain.com
        [email_mobile] => 
        [status] => active
        [username] => first.last@domain.com
        [two_factor_mode] => none
        [two_factor_key] => 6017d177a590b9cf0c04806e3634566a8f00190f
        [two_factor_pin] => 
        [groups] => Array
            (
                [0] => stdClass Object
                    (
                        [id] => 1
                        [company_id] => 1
                        [name] => Administrators
                    )
            )
        [notices] => Array
            (
                [0] => stdClass Object
                    (
                        [staff_group_id] => 1
                        [staff_id] => 1
                        [action] => payment_ach_approved
                    )
            )
    )

Staff Ticket Updated

The ticket received email template allows for the following tags:

Staff Ticket Updated (Mobile)

The ticket received (mobile) email template allows for the following tags:

Support Messages

Support related message templates can be found under [Settings] > [Company] > [Messengers] > Message Templates, in the section labeled "Plugin Templates".

Staff Ticket Updated

The ticket received message template allows for the following tags:

Departments

Creating a Department

A support department may be created under [Support] -> [Departments] -> [Add Department].

Options

Anchor
email-piping email-piping

Email Piping

If your department is set up to receive tickets via email piping, your server must be configured to pipe those messages into the support manager.

Email should be piped to "/plugins/support_manager/pipe.php".

In your /etc/aliases file, it might look something like this..

support: "|/usr/bin/php /home/user/public_html/plugins/support_manager/pipe.php"

If you experience any trouble with that, you can alternatively pipe mail to "index.php plugin/support_manager/ticket_pipe/index/1" assuming "1" in the company ID.

support: "|/usr/bin/php /home/user/public_html/index.php plugin/support_manager/ticket_pipe/index/1"

The first line of the file should begin with the hashbang, for example:

#!/usr/bin/php -q

#!/usr/local/bin/php -q

On some systems you may need to create a symlink to php and pipe.php in /etc/smrsh..

cd /etc/smrsh
ln -s /usr/bin/php
ln -s /home/user/public_html/plugins/support_manager/pipe.php

Testing Piping

If you are having trouble with piping, it may be useful to try piping a sample email manually via SSH. This will bypass your mail server and help determine where the issue exists.

Step 1: Enable Error Reporting and Debugging

To enable error reporting, edit /config/blesta.php and change Configure::errorReporting(0); to Configure::errorReporting(-1); You may also wish to enable System Debug (Version 4.0+). To do so, change Configure::set("System.debug", false); to Configure::set("System.debug", true);

You should change these settings back when you are done.

Step 2: Create a Sample Text Email

Copy the following content into a text file called email.txt, changing all instances of support@domain.com to your department email. You may also need to update the from address customer@domain.com to a valid customer email if your department only allows customers to create tickets. Then upload to your web server at ~/plugins/support_manager/

From - Thu Jun  1 10:15:17 2017
Return-Path: <customer@domain.com>
Delivered-To: support@domain.com
Received: from localhost (localhost.localdomain [127.0.0.1])
	by mail.blesta.com (iRedMail) with ESMTP id 2E05935C4CC
	for <support@domain.com>; Thu,  1 Jun 2017 13:14:48 -0400 (EDT)
To: Support Department <support@domain.com>
From: Test Testerson <customer@domain.com>
Subject: Test Ticket Subject
Message-ID: <59304B86.2080303@domain.com>
X-ASG-Orig-Subj: Test Ticket Subject
Date: Thu, 1 Jun 2017 10:14:46 -0700
User-Agent: Mozilla/5.0 (X11; Linux x86_64; rv:38.0) Gecko/20100101
 Thunderbird/38.8.0
MIME-Version: 1.0
Content-Type: text/plain; charset=utf-8
Content-Transfer-Encoding: 7bit
Test ticket body. Please disregard.

Step 3: Direct the Output of the Text File to Blesta

Via SSH, change directories to ~/plugins/support_manager/ i.e cd /path/to/plugins/support_manager/

Run the following command:

./pipe.php < email.txt

Did that work? Did you get any errors?

Possible Errors & Solutions:

• ERROR: "Use of undefined constant STDIN - assumed 'STDIN' on line 34 in ~/plugins/support_manager/controllers/ticket_pipe.php" SOLUTION: Edit ~/plugins/support_manager/pipe.php and add the following on its own line after $company_id = 1;: define('STDIN', fopen('php://stdin', 'r'));
• ERROR: "Uncaught Error, code 0 in ~/vendors/minphp/bridge/src/Components/Session.php on line 75 Message: Call to a member function save() on null" SOLUTION: Edit ~/plugins/support_manager/pipe.php and make sure there is only a single line between your hashbang and the <?php tag. <?php should begin on line 2 and you should not have made any other modifications to the file.

Formatting, Styling, and Adding Links to Replies

The Markdown syntax is supported for ticket replies. Adding links, making text bold, italic and more can be all be done by using Markdown. See https://github.com/adam-p/markdown-here/wiki/Markdown-Cheatsheet to learn more.

Tickets

Tickets may be created by admins, clients, or emailed in to the system depending on the support department settings. As of version 2.5.0 of the Support Plugin, client contact's may also create and reply to tickets on behalf of the client, and will be included in any email correspondence for tickets they are directly involved in.  As of version 2.14.0 tickets can be deleted.  This can be done by changing a ticket to the 'Trash' status, selecting it in the ticket list for that status, and using the delete option in the action window that appears.

Knowledge Base

The Knowledge Base was added in version 2.6.0, and included in Blesta v3.4.0. It allows for the creation of a directory structure and articles to supplement client support. The public-facing knowledge base pages are viewable from your Blesta installation at "/client/plugin/support_manager/knowledgebase/" (e.g. If Blesta is installed under the "billing" directory on your domain, the URL to the knowledge base would be http://yourdomain.com/billing/client/plugin/support_manager/knowledgebase/).

Messengers

To enable messengers for the Support System, you need to go to Support > Staff. Simply tick the boxes that you would like to get a notification when a ticket has been created.

Image Added

Problems & Errors

Issue: Blesta shows a number of tickets for the Status, but the tickets are not displayed.

Solution: Tickets that have no replies are not displayed. It should not be possible to create a ticket without any reply. If you imported from another system, or there was an issue that prevented ticket replies from being created, then you may wish to delete tickets that do not have any replies. To do so, backup your database first and then run the following query in its entirety.

DELETE support_tickets.*
FROM support_tickets
LEFT JOIN (
SELECT `st`.`id`
FROM `support_tickets` `st`
INNER JOIN `support_replies` `sr` ON `sr`.`ticket_id` = `st`.`id`
GROUP BY `st`.`id`
) t ON t.id = support_tickets.id
WHERE t.id IS NULL

Issue: When using POP/IMAP, all emails are imported as tickets including those with a different TO address.

Solution: Departments assume that all emails in a POP/IMAP inbox are intended for the department. If you are using a single mailbox for multiple email addresses and want Blesta to import only emails addressed to the department email, you can make a code modification. In ~/plugins/support_manager/models/ticket_manager.php around line 287 change:

            // Handle creating a new ticket
            $department_found = false;

To:

            // Handle creating a new ticket
            $department_found = false;
            $department = null;

Note that this change will need to be made again if upgrading.

Issue: When I update the date and date time formats under Settings > Company > Localization, they do not take affect in the Support Manager. I see the original date time format in support replies.

Solution: The Support Manager has its own config file under /plugins/support_manager/config/support_manager.php that sets the date and date time formats independently. To resolve, edit this file and look for the following variables, and change the formats as desired.

Configure::set('SupportManager.time_format', 'H:i:s');
Configure::set('SupportManager.reply_date_format', 'M j Y g:i A');