Using Template Groups - A Tutorial

[Matthew]

This is a quick tutorial that will explain how Template Groups can be used to provide separate facilities for unregistered users, registered users, and special VIP groups. I did this because (let's face it), Kayako's documentation is currently lacking in real-world examples. I made mistakes that could have been avoided, costing me way too much time and consequently, too much of my company's money. You shouldn't have to make the same mistakes.

Basic Principles

A Template Group defines the visual content and style of your SupportSuite site. Template Groups are set up in the Admin CP>Templates. SupportSuite is installed with a default template group, but you can copy this to a new group, and customize the look and feel of the new group, the default group, or both groups.

Departments, Categories (for Knowledgebase, Downloads, and Troubleshooter sections), and Priorities can be 'attached to' or 'associated with' one or more template groups, so that clients see them only when viewing your help desk through the 'window' of a particular template group. Departments and Priorities are set up in the Admin CP, while Categories for Knowledgebase, etc., are found in the Staff CP.

Attaching one of these items to a particular template group is simple. For example:

1. In the Admin CP, go Tickets>Manage Priorities
2. Select a Priority and click Edit
3. Drill down to the bottom and click Customize...
4. Note the checkbox--or checkboxes if you already have more than a single default template group
5. Tick the box corresponding to the template you want the Priority to be attached to; untick the boxes where you don't want it to appear

Why Use Template Groups?

Here are some reasons why you might want to create different template groups and associate them with different departments and categories:

1. You may want your users to see different departments and categories depending on who they are. For example, you may want to support external clients and internal staff through the same SupportSuite installation.
2. You may own a company that sells two or more different products or services. You naturally want to keep things simple, and run all your support off of a single help desk. However, you also want to present a product-specific face to your customers, and route tickets to help desk departments that support a particular product group.

The first scenario is easily accomplished with one SupportSuite installation. The second scenario is a bit more complex, involving the creation of multiple 'satellite' installations--typically in subdirectories of the same parent domain, and all using the same database.

In this tutorial, we'll walk through the first scenario. The setup of satellite installations is an advanced topic. (And I did say this would be a 'simple' tutorial.)

Tutorial

Imagine that the help desk in your company supports both external clients and internal staff members through two support departments named Client Services and Staff Support.
Unauthenticated visitors should not need to log in to submit tickets to the Client Services department, or to access the Knowledgebase and Troubleshooters; however, they do need to log in to access the Downloads section and (of course) to view their previously-submitted tickets.

Staff members must log in before they can submit tickets to the Staff Support department. They'll also be able to submit tickets to Client Services, since they must sometimes make inquiries to that department on behalf of clients. After login, they will also have access to a special category in the Downloads section, called Staff. These special departments and categories should not be accessible to non-staff.

Now the steps.

Configure Template Groups (part A)

You will need two template groups. Start by configuring the pre-created default group:

1. In the Admin CP, go Templates>Manage Groups
2. Click the Settings icon of the default template
3. Change the Template Group Title to 'external', just to make it clear what you are using this template group for.
4. Change Company Name to whatever you want your clients to see in their browser title bar (and browser tab, and saved bookmark).
5. Leave all the other settings as is, and click the Update button. (Be sure to clear the two password update fields just above this button, or you'll get an error and your settings won't update. This is a known Kayako Annoyance.)

Now add a new template group.

1. Click Templates>Insert Group
2. Template Group Title will be 'internal'
3. Company Name should be set to whatever you want staff to see in their browser title bar.
4. Copy Templates From should say 'external'
5. Leave everything else as is for the moment and Submit your changes (and watch out for the password field annoyance mentioned above!)

Create Departments

You need to create two Departments for your support staff and associate them with the correct template or templates:

1. Still in the Admin CP, go Departments>Insert New
2. Name this first Department 'Client Services'
3. Click Customize... at the bottom of the page, and make sure boxes are ticked for both the external and internal template groups. (Recall that your staff also need to be able to submit tickets to this department.)
4. Click Submit
5. Again, go Departments>Insert New
6. Name this second Department 'Staff Support'
7. Click Customize... and make sure that only the box for the internal template group is ticked.
8. Click Submit

You'll probably want to assign some staff to these new departments. I'm going to assume you already know how to do that, or can figure it out.

Configure Priorities

For the purposes of this tutorial, we're not going to customize Priorities for different template groups; we just want to make sure the default priorities are available in both groups.

1. Click Tickets>Manage Priorities
2. For each priority, click Edit, then Customize... Make sure boxes are ticked for both template groups.

Configure User Groups

Now let's move into the Staff CP. First we modify the settings for anonymous visitors--e.g., our unauthenticated external clients:

1. Go to Users>Manage Groups
2. Click Guest
3. Set Can View Downloads Widget to 'No'. Because we don't want anonymous visitors doing any downloading.
4. Click Update Group

Now we to create a special ‘dummy’ user group for unauthenticated users who attempt to access our internal template group by means of URL parameters. (I’ll explain later how to do this as an optional way to access a template group.)

1. Click Insert Group.
2. Set the Group Title to 'Restricted'
3. Set Group Type to 'Guest'
4. Set all the options to 'No', with the exception of Can View Register Widget and Can View News Widget. This effectively locks the sneaky anonymous user out of the internal template group.
5. Click Insert Group

Now we create a user group for internal (registered) staff members:

1. Click Insert Group.
2. Set the Group Title to 'Staff'
3. Set Group Type to 'Registered'
4. Set Can View Register Widget to 'No'. Users in this group will already have been registered, so there's not much sense in seeing the register widget, is there?
5. Click Insert Group

Now you should create a test user and assign it to this new user group. I'll assume you can handle that part without direction.

Create Downloads Categories

Recall that we want to make a special folder to hold staff downloads. This will be visible only to logged in staff.

1. Click the Downloads tab and click Insert Category
2. Name the category 'Staff'
3. Click Customize... at the bottom of the page, and tick only the box for the internal template group.
4. Click Insert Category

You may want to go ahead and add a few more download categories now. For example, you could create the category 'White Papers' and assign it to both template groups. Then you could create a category 'Forms & Templates' and assign it only to the internal (staff) template group.

Follow the same logic to create categories for Knowledgebase articles and Troubleshooters.

Configure Template Groups (part B)

We need to make a few more changes to our template groups, now that we have created some departments and a special user group for our staff members. So return to the Admin CP.

Start by editing the settings of the external template group:

1. Set the Default Department to 'Client Services'. Even though external clients only have one department to choose from, we can make sure it is pre-selected to save them a mouse click!
2. Make sure Restrict Users Group is set to 'No'
3. Click Update

Now edit the settings of the internal template group:

1. Set the Default Department to 'Staff Support'. Even though viewers of this template will see both the Client Services department and the Staff Support department, the latter will be pre-selected.
2. Set Registered User Group to 'Staff'. This will insure that users in that group will be redirected to the internal template after they are successfully authenticated.
3. Set Restrict Users Group to 'Yes'. This prevents other people from viewing the template group by using a special URL that includes the template group ID number as a parameter.
4. Click Update

In step 2, above, it is very important to set Registered User Group to 'Staff', as this is what creates the association between user group and template group.

Final Settings

We need to do one more thing, to make sure that when users log off, they are returned to the external template group.

1. Still in the Admin CP, go Settings>General
2. Set After Logout Return To Default Template Group to 'Yes'

That’s it, you are done! Try browsing to your site as an anonymous ‘guest’. You should be able to submit tickets only to Client Services. Then log in as your test user; you should now additionally be able to access Staff Support.

Other Options to Explore

I am aware of a couple different ways to display a particular template group to your SupportSuite users:

1. By assigning it default status, so that it appears whenever someone types in www.yoursupportdomain.com. We did this above with the external template group.
2. By associating the template with a registered User Group, so that when a person from that group logs in, s/he is transparently redirected to the associated template group. Again, this was part of our tutorial.
3. By adding the template group name as a parameter passed in a URL. Earlier I said I would explain how to do this.

It is possible to configure the settings for a non-default template group so that it can be reached by specifying a parameter in the URL:

http://support.mydomain.com/?group=NAMEOFGROUPHERE

To make this happen, you need to set Restrict Users Group to 'No' for the template group in question.

Conclusion

I hope this tutorial will have saved time for people struggling to get their minds around how to use SupportSuite’s template groups to display different departments (and categories, etc.) to different user groups.

As always, corrections and clarifications are welcome.

[craigbrass]

Thanks for sharing that Matthew. I am sure many people will find it useful.

[supportskins]

This is nice!

[ronniead]

Brilliant, wish I would have read this before I started doing it. One of the most annoying things was the priorities...took me a while to figure that out.

Nice to have all this in one nice place. I've marked this as a favourite.

Well done.

[MACscr]

What about links in email ticket replies with links to the helpdesk? How can I make sure they get the right url with for the right template?

[nibb]

Originally Posted by MACscr

What about links in email ticket replies with links to the helpdesk? How can I make sure they get the right url with for the right template?

Thats a very good question. I always had that problem. It just sends them for the default group i suppose. So the links are usually not valid for the registered users templates.

[benjo01]

Thanks for putting that information out there.

[chatocean]

Thanks,

This is very usefull for me

[saiff]

You referenced 2 scenarios to use satellites and gave instructions for scenario 1. For scenario 2, do you have to purchase an additional license or can it be achieved legally with one SupportSuite installation license and some code modification (or modification to settings)? If you do need purchase something, then exactly what needs to be purchased, what is the price, and then how do the domains work?

Thanks in advance,
Saif



1. You may want your users to see different departments and categories depending on who they are. For example, you may want to support external clients and internal staff through the same SupportSuite installation.

2. You may own a company that sells two or more different products or services. You naturally want to keep things simple, and run all your support off of a single help desk. However, you also want to present a product-specific face to your customers, and route tickets to help desk departments that support a particular product group.


The first scenario is easily accomplished with one SupportSuite installation. The second scenario is a bit more complex, involving the creation of multiple 'satellite' installations--typically in subdirectories of the same parent domain, and all using the same database.

[sbattisti]

I'm also anxious to learn more about scenario 2, as that's precisely where I am right now!