Specific Business Requirements

[coolhva]

L.S.

I am looking for a well designed helpdesk application which handles calls made by phone and by e-mail (and maybe in the future by Internet).

The situation is as follows:

We are an IT company which supports different company's as their helpdesk. I have a couple of questions if supportsuite meats our requirements for a helpdesk application.

1. I've noticed that you are able to design different layouts etc. by the means of a template. As I see it, a template is a "customer". But this template only applies when someone is logged in. Is it possible to let anonymous people log in on different url's so the correct template is applied?

2. When a ticket is created, is it possible to (depending on the senders domain) assign it to a template?

3. Can we move a ticket from one template to another template?

Thanks in advance,

Henk van Achterberg

[craigbrass]

1. Yes, this is possible. You just do like http://www.yourdomain.com/helpdesk/index.php?group=Test

2. It is the users that are assigned to template groups rather than the templates.

3. Same as above.

[coolhva]

1. Yes, this is possible. You just do like http://www.yourdomain.com/helpdesk/index.php?group=Test

-- So with some modification it is possible to redirect visitors depending on their ip address to the right front page.

2. It is the users that are assigned to template groups rather than the users.

-- err, you mean "than the tickets", true, but when e-mail comes in, a user is automatically generated. Is it possible to add them to different templates depending on the sender domain?

3. Same as above.

-- Well, if a mail is sent from a home computer than the ticket will get in the general template, because it can't identify the customer. We need to correct the user assigned template if it is in the general box. Is it possible?

[craigbrass]

1. You could set the index for that directory to redirect.php using htaccess and then produce something that checks their IP and redirects them to the correct template group. This would need to be something you create on your own though.

2. Yes, sorry. Initial reply updated. No it isn't really possible to redirect based on sender domain.

3. If the user registers / submits their first ticket on one template group, their account is "locked" to that template group so if they submit further tickets, it will be within that template group.

[coolhva]

Well, I'm thinking. If we have one e-mail box and we let different templates look in that box and they only pick the e-mail's up which are from a particular domain than that problem is solved. Only the need for moving a user from one template to another.

If this is not possible, I don't think it is a good idea to work with departments, is it?

From what I saw, you can add tickets by phone, but you cant select a contact when inserting a ticket.

And how is the staff interface handled with multiple templates, because there is one helpdesk. Is the staff forced to switch between departments every time?

[craigbrass]

Sorry, I was wrong there. If you have them email through rather than submit via the helpdesk, you can use parse rules to do things including what you want to with their domain.

When you do phone tickets, if you put their email address in, it should add the ticket to their account.

[coolhva]

Originally Posted by craigbrass

When you do phone tickets, if you put their email address in, it should add the ticket to their account.

Our customers are employees at the office and employees in the store (retail environment, international). The people in the store donot have a e-mail address, but maybe we should use a "dummy" mail address so it is added in the same group.

But it is still not clear to me if multiple templates/departments is workable with one helpdesk handling all departments at once. Is there some extra information on this or a test case etc.?

[craigbrass]

I recomend you sign up for a free trial (http://www.kayako.com/freetrial.php) so you can test it can do what you are trying to get it to.

[coolhva]

I am testing it right now, still have to setup multiple templates

[Jamie Edwards]

Hello Henk,

Thank you for your interest in Kayako software.

Originally Posted by coolhva

1. I've noticed that you are able to design different layouts etc. by the means of a template. As I see it, a template is a "customer". But this template only applies when someone is logged in. Is it possible to let anonymous people log in on different url's so the correct template is applied?

A template should be considered more of a different interface to your client support interface (a different template group have have a different style, different news articles, knowledgebase categories, departments and so on).

I believe that what you are aiming to do can be achieved simply through different departments. If you do not want people working in OfficeA (for example) to see departments available for OfficeB, you can make people working in OfficeA use a template group A and those in OfficeB use a template group B.

Departments can be restricted to a template group, so it is then possible to have only the departments for OfficeA show for users visiting the support center via template A.

Template groups are not really for the purposes of ticket management, but more of a way to manage to who departments are visible (and create psuedo-support desks) and manage users.

[coolhva]

Thanks for the response, it makes sense now.

About the departments, is there a way to filter incoming e-mail in the e-mail parser to assign departments depending on the senders domain?

If I understand it correctly, to get the software functional for our business setup I should create:

- A Template for every customer
- A Department for every customer (with customer prefix, e.g. "CUS1 GENERAL", "CUS2 GENERAL")

A bit weird way for the departments, but I can't see any other way because if I make a general department, it should be the general department for that customer only.

That is doable, but the mail filter/assign thing is a show stopper if that ain't possible

EDIT: I see the catch all stuff, making extra e-mail que's

[craigbrass]

Yes, you would use the "E-Mail Address Contains" one to do this.

You can do either of the things you stated to achive what you want to, yes.

[Jamie Edwards]

Hi there,

What will you achieve by having a customer for each department, or maybe a question that is easier to answer - what don't you think you'll achieve by having one general department?

[coolhva]

Originally Posted by Jamie Edwards

Hi there,

What will you achieve by having a customer for each department, or maybe a question that is easier to answer - what don't you think you'll achieve by having one general department?

customer separation, customer A is not allowed to look in e.g. the kb articles of customer B

[Jamie Edwards]

Oh I see, I did not realise it was separation of knowledgebase articles you were after. In that case, separate template groups is the way to go.