Testing issues

[Vroukolakas]

I am sure we are not unique in this situation but I have yet been able to find a product that will perform the functions we require and I have been testing your product and apparently I am doing something wrong or it simply cannot do what we need.

First, we are a small business computer support company. Our client base consists of small business clients who typically have a network with a "true" server and numerous networked workstations/printers/etc.

We are attempting to use your product to perform all of our support ticketing and client knowledge base. Since the product does not support "clients/companies" we were using the departments as the client. We need the system to allow us (staff) to enter a ticket for a client, make changes/modifications/etc and we need the client to be able to sign in to the "user" interface and see only the tickets for them or be able to submit a ticket for their company only.

I set the client up as a department, created a SLA plan for the client, a template for client and tied everything together and I have just about everything working well (including restricting them to certain areas of the knowledgebase) except when a staff member (our staff) creates a ticket for the client they (the client) cannot see the ticket. The client (dept) can only see the ticket if they originate it (yes, they are set to manager). I know the issue has to do with the default template and the fact that the client (dept) is not permitted access to this template, however, if I give them access they can create tickets for other clients (dept).

I am aware that departments were not designed to be used in this fashion but it does seem to work (with the above exception).

Is there anyone who is using this product in a similar fashion (clients, client access with restrictions to their dept only) and has it working? If so, how did they go about setting up their configuration? Is there something I am missing in my configuration? Or, should I be looking for another product? If so, does anyone have any recommendations?

Any assistance would be greatly appreciated.

Thanks

[ecornet]

This is how we set up ours:

We provide support for our clients and our resellers use our software to support their clients (all clients use our system)

We use templates to control who can access what, and we further limit access by assigning Departments, SLA and Escalation objects, User Groups and Users to each of the templates.
We also filter Knowledgebase, Troubleshooter and Downloads sections by template.

That way all of the tickets are monitored by one system and the resellers/clients do not step on each other's toes

[Vroukolakas]

Thanks for your reply.

I presume then you set your clients up as a department?

Can your "Staff" create a ticket for a client (department) and the client can access the user interface and see that ticket? This is where I have run into an issue. Because our "Staff" uses the "default template" and I cannot seem to find where I can change staff or administrators to another template.

I find using the templates as restrictions to be a bit on the wierd side and either I am not doing it quite right or it seems to work in reverse. For example, I wanted to create a "Client KnowledgeBase" section in the KB and I created a template called "ClientKB". If I give people rights to the ClientKB they still do not see the Client KB section. It seems that if you have more than one template set to a client, unless both match a conditional criteria it will not permit them access? I hope this makes sense?

[ecornet]

Originally Posted by Vroukolakas

Thanks for your reply.

I presume then you set your clients up as a department?

We only have departments that exist within our company and our resellers companies. Clients (or customers) are simply users that belong to user groups

Originally Posted by Vroukolakas

Can your "Staff" create a ticket for a client (department) and the client can access the user interface and see that ticket? This is where I have run into an issue. Because our "Staff" uses the "default template" and I cannot seem to find where I can change staff or administrators to another template.

Our staff (or reseller staff) can create a ticket using the Staff CP. Customers would be notified of the ticket (or ticket update) and directed to the Customer CP. After they login, they can view all of the tickets that they have created or our staff has created for them

The use of templates simply allows for the customers to see different sections of the content created on the Customer CP

For example
Business users see Knowledgebase categories that are oriented towards their more complicated system
Residential DO NOT see the same categories.

This can be applied to Troubleshooter, Download and even News

This is all have their basis in templates

Originally Posted by Vroukolakas

I find using the templates as restrictions to be a bit on the wierd side and either I am not doing it quite right or it seems to work in reverse. For example, I wanted to create a "Client KnowledgeBase" section in the KB and I created a template called "ClientKB". If I give people rights to the ClientKB they still do not see the Client KB section. It seems that if you have more than one template set to a client, unless both match a conditional criteria it will not permit them access? I hope this makes sense?

Working with templates can be really strange to start. I first started working with them because I needed a way to separate the customers by reseller ownership. It took a while to work out the kinks, but now I have a very functional system in place. There is lots of great content about templates on this forum

[Vroukolakas]

If templates dictate everything, how did you change "Staff" people to a different template. Templates are tied to a department and since internal Staff are not in a department (nor can I put them in one), they automatically go to the defaul template, thus no one can see the tickets created by Staff people.

I am sure there is a way to make this work but I am very close to throwing up my arms and looking for something else. There has to be a product that computer consulting companies use that supports external clients, kb, ticketing and invoicing.

Even if the ticket is created from the User CP, any billing information, note, etc entered by staff (staff CP) cannot be seen through the User CP.

My intent is to invoice clients on a very basic level referencing a ticket or ticket numbers and if they want to know more, they can go look it up through the user CP.

[ecornet]

Staff members on my system are all on the same level (essentially) They can all create tickets to a department that is associated with specific templates.

So a staff member from Reseller A cannot make a ticket in a department that is assigned to Reseller B

That also goes for Users. Users are assigned a specific User Group that are linked to specific templates. They can only send tickets to departments with the same template

Now the billing, note, and other information that is not a Post or Post Reply will not be visible to the user.

I don't know how you will be able to display this information other than to modify the code (which I cannot help with)

[Vroukolakas]

Sounds like we have it configured very similiar (I am not too far off track).

I was aware that users cannot see the billing information (which is a real issue for me), that is why we would have to do billing via the Reply posting and put the billing information in the body of the reply as well as the billing fields (more double entry).

I really appreciate your help but I think at this point I have spend over a day or day and a half on this and it is not going to cut the mustard

Maybe it is time to move on to another option. However, over the weekend I will check back and see if anyone has any more feed back.

Once again, your time and efforts are much appreciated