Support Tickets

The support ticket system is a fully featured ticket desk that allows you to handle all communication with your clients. Featuring threaded discussions, private notes, ticket flagging, varying priority levels, auto inactive ticket closing and much much more... Admins can be assigned on a per department basis so they have access only to the area they are meant to be dealing with.

Departments

Departments are the categories for tickets. The first step in the user ticket submission process is to choose their department. Different staff can be assigned to different departments so you can have the different areas handled by different people if required. Common departments are Sales, Support, Billing etc...

• To setup departments, go to Setup > Support Departments and click Add New Department.
• When creating a department you can enter a name and description to display to users. The email address will be used to send notifications relating to the ticket to clients.
• The Clients Only option defines if it's a clients only department thereby requiring a login to submit there - for example Sales would be a public department while Support might be set to clients only.
• The Pipe Replies Only option requires clients to login to the client area to open new tickets, attempts to open new tickets via email will not be successful. Tickets can still be responded to via email.
• You can also setup if no auto responder email should be sent when a new ticket is opened and whether it's hidden or visible; hidden departments can only be accessed via a direct link.
• After creating a department, you need to assign yourself and other staff to it as appropriate in Setup > Administrators by editing the staff profile before you will be able to access that department in Support > Support Tickets
• In order to have emails from users automatically import into the ticket system as tickets, you need to configure Email Piping.

Once a department has been created it is possible to create Custom Fields to be asked for during ticket submission. Click the Edit icon next to the department and then the Custom Fields tab.

The Ticket List

When a client submits a support ticket the appropriate members of staff assigned to that department will receive a New Support Ticket Opened email. To view the ticket navigate to Support > Support Tickets and the ticket list is displayed.

• • how tickets are listed - filters, priorities etc.**

The ticket's status will be 'Open', this means that the client has not yet received a reply for a member of staff and once you've replied the status will become 'Answered'. The status can also be changed manually using the dropdown menu next to the ticket subject - it's an ajax field so will not cause the page to reload. Custom statuses can be created, please refer to Support Ticket Statuses.

Replying to a Ticket

To view a ticket's contents and reply to it click the subject link on the ticket list page. You will then be taken to the ticket view page which is described below.

Add Reply tab

By default the Add Reply tab is open, this provides a text area for the reply to be entered. If a Support Ticket Signature is configured on the 'My Account' page it will be ready-populated with your signature.

The Post Reply dropdown menu allows for the selection of the action to be taken upon clicking the Add Response button for example changing the ticket status and remaining in the ticket view or returning to the main ticket list. There are also two productivity-enhancing features; Insert Knowledgebase Link opens a popup listing knowledgebase articles, navigate through the categories and click the title to automatically insert the link to this article into the reply.

Predefined Ticket Replies

Predefined ticket replies are useful if you get asked the same questions repeatedly via support tickets. With a predefined reply, this can be loaded into the reply box when replying to a users ticket and modified as required to answer the users question.

Adding a Predefined Reply

To setup a predefined reply, go to Support > Predefined Replies. You will need to configure categories and predefined replies in the same way as knowledgebase articles

Using a Predefined Reply

To use a predefined ticket reply when replying to a users ticket click the "Insert Predefined Ticket Reply" link located immediately below the text area for entering your reply. A popup window will appear allowing you to select the reply you want to use and it will then be loaded into the reply message box once selected. The search field can also be used to find replies by title to save having to search through each category. You can then edit the reply as required to customise it to the user and then click Reply button as normal.

Finally once the reply has been composed click the Add Response button to record the reply against the ticket. The client will be sent a notification email containing a copy of the message.

Add Note Tab

This tab allows private staff-only messages to be recorded against the ticket. Clicking the tab provides a new text area into which the note can be typed, upon clicking Add Note the message will be displayed prominently on view ticket page alongside the staff member's name and timestamp.

Custom Fields Tab

If custom fields have been configured for this department the client's responses will be recorded beneath this tab.

Options Tab

The options tab allows the attributes of the ticket to be modified. The department, subject, status and priority can all be changed.

Sometimes it may be useful for additional people to receive copies of the email messages in this ticket, to achieve that enter their email addresses in the CC Recepients field. Multiple recipients can be entered in a comma separated list eg. jeff@example.com,bob@example.com

To change the client a ticket is assigned to adjust the Client ID value. If the client's name, company or email address is known start typing this into the field, an ajax list of the search results will appear. Click the appropriate client from the list to automatically fill in their Client ID.

Two tickets can be merged together into one, the messages from both tickets will be arranged chronologically. In the Merge Ticket field enter the Ticket ID of the ticket to be combined into the one currently being viewed. The Ticket ID entered will cease to exist.

Ticket Flagging

Flagging a ticket to another admin is useful if you want to bring the ticket to the attention of another staff member. Flagged tickets appear highlighted and emboldened to the staff member they are flagged to.

Log Tab

The ticket log displays an audit trail of all the actions applied to this ticket such as department changes, tickets flaggings, adding of notes, changes of ownership and status changes.

Automated Knowledgebase Article Suggestions

As a user enters a message for submission as a support ticket, WHMCS can lookup and display relevant articles that match keywords in the submission text and display them to the user in an attempt to answer a clients question without them needing to ever submit the ticket. This is designed to help reduce common support questions. To turn this feature on or off, go to Setup > General Settings > Support tab > Knowledgebase Suggestions

Ticket Rating

Ticket rating allows your customers to rate the responses they get to tickets and this then allows you to monitor how pleased your customers are with the support they receive from your staff. To enable the ticket rating feature, go to Config > General Settings > Support and tick the box for "Support Ticket Rating"

When enabled, each reply in the client area will show a row of stars for the user to choose from in rating the response. They range from 1 Poor to 5 Excellent. Rating a reply is optional so not every reply will get a rating. Those that do will be shown when viewing the ticket in the admin area and there are also 3 reports in the Reporting section that allow you to monitor the ratings, they are:

• Staff Ticket Ratings Graph - Showing the average ticket rating for each staff member
• Ticket Rating Totals Graph - Showing the number of replies rated at each of the 5 statuses
• Ticket Ratings Reviewer - Allowing you to filter and view replies with specific ratings within a given date range

Auto Closing

• This feature allows you to have support tickets automatically closed after a certain time of inactivity has passed.
• To set the length of time of inactivity before closure, go to Setup > Automation Settings > Support Ticket Settings > Close Inactive Tickets and enter the time in hours (for example 48 = 2 days)
• Tickets set to On Hold or In Progress are not closed automatically, only those set to Open or Answered
• When closing the ticket, the email template Support Ticket Auto Close Notification is sent to the user. You can customise that email in Setup > Email Templates as normal

Allowed File Attachments

Support tickets and replies allow a file to be uploaded along with them for if the user needs to send you something or if you need to send the user something.

The list of allowed file types is configured by going to Setup > General Settings > Support tab. By default, the allowed file types are .jpg, .gif, .jpeg, and .png (ie. image files). It is not possible to allow the user to upload PHP files due to the security risks this creates. You can add new allowed file types to the list such as .pdf, .zip, etc... Just add them into the allowed extensions field seperating each allowed ending with a comma.

NOTE: The file upload restrictions do not apply to admin users and an admin user can attach any type of file to a ticket.