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| Member | 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:
Here are some reasons why you might want to create different template groups and associate them with different departments and categories:
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:
You need to create two Departments for your support staff and associate them with the correct template or templates:
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.
Now let's move into the Staff CP. First we modify the settings for anonymous visitors--e.g., our unauthenticated external clients:
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.
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:
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.
Other Options to Explore I am aware of a couple different ways to display a particular template group to your SupportSuite users:
http://support.mydomain.com/?group=NAMEOFGROUPHERETo 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. The Precision Group + Holiday schedules, attachable to work and staff schedules + No more HTML parsing bugs |
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| Senior Member Posts: 4,947 Join Date: Jun 2005 Location: Cumbria, UK SupportSuite Owned License |
13-02-2008, 09:39 AM
Thanks for sharing that Matthew. I am sure many people will find it useful. Icon Headquarters - Its Elixir - Web2Messenger |
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| Senior Member Posts: 3,265 Join Date: Aug 2006 Location: Mumbai, India SupportSuite Owned License |
13-02-2008, 07:52 PM
This is nice! Professional and Affordable Kayako Skins - Specialists in Kayako Skinning & Customization - Professional Paid Support Our Skins and Services - http://www.supportskins.com/store/ SupportSkins.com - http://www.supportskins.com/ |
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