1) cck instead of webform

Is it possible to make the support ticket act like a 'booking request' by using cck fields?
So an auth user would fill out their details and some booking options within the node.
Then a staff member would assign themselves to the ticket and deal with the booking request.

Or will cck fields not function properly on the special 'support ticket' content-type?

2) The 'My tickets' and 'CLIENTNAME' menu items don't make sense:

In my case:

authUser = a user of the website (ie. using forums, reading information and blogs, and asking for support)
admins = owners of the website (ie. posting information and blogs, and helping authUsers with billing & support)

I've created a 'client' called 'billing and support'. I want authUsers to be able to open support tickets, and then
the admins assign themselves to these 'billing and support' tickets to offer help to the authUsers of the website.

But for authUsers to be able to access their own tickets after creating them, they need the permission:
· access 'billing and support' tickets

The problem is that when given this permission, they see two new options in the menu:

* My tickets
* billing and support

Neither of these make sense for authUsers. They should never have anything listed under 'mytickets', because they aren't allowed to assign themselves to any tickets. Similarly, they can see their tickets listed under 'billing and support', but all those tabs on that page are redundant and confusing; the authUsers are much better just being able to access 'my account --> View recent tickets'.

I don't understand why the people who are CREATING support tickets, the ones that need help, are being shown these menu items?
Maybe I have it set-up wrongly?
To hide these menu items from authUsers, I suppose I'll have to put the menu items in a new menu block, and set block visibility to 'admin only'?

Thanks.

Comments

jeremy’s picture

jeremy commented
Title: cck instead of webform & menu items » cck instead of webform
Status: Active » Postponed (maintainer needs more info)

You need to open multiple issues if you're reporting multiple unrelated items. I will respond to #1 and will ignore #2 -- please open a new issue.

I've not actually tried adding fields to support tickets with CCK, your best bet is to give it a try and see what happens. You will not be able to remove any of the special support fields with CCK (you can instead hide them for users by not given them permission to view them), but I would expect you to be able to add fields. Once you give it a try, please report your success or any issues you have here.

I don't understand the reference to webform.

-Anti-’s picture

-Anti- commented

> I don't understand the reference to webform

My problem is that our potential customer have to provide the following information before we can give them a quote:

CONTACT INFO
Name:
Email:
Telephone:
Mobile:

TRAVEL ARRANGEMENTS
Number of adults:
Number of children (under 16):
Intended Arrival Date:
Time (if known):
Number of nights:
Airport transfer required: (tick)
Car hire required: (tick)

RACE PARTICIPATION
Marathon Entrants:
Half Marathon Entrants:
10km Entrants:
Non-racing runners:
Number of track passes:

PRE-BOOKED ACTIVITIES: (tick)
Surfing:
Sand-boarding:
Zoo:
Water park:
Sports massage:
Jeep safari:
Mountain biking:
Trail running excursions:

Each 'package' is quite unique with regard to group size and all the possible combinations additional extras. To offer each group the best price, we need to receive that information, go make a few phonecalls, check some diaries, and get some quotes from service providers, and then give the group our quote.

There then needs to be some dialogue about the details of the services and price, to finally come to an agreement. Our three staff need to be able to coordinate this dialogue between them (ie. see what the others have said), and it needs to be private (ie. just between the customer and the three staff).
I intend to use the ticket support module for this dialogue; it does the job perfectly!

Obviously webform is the best choice for the first task of collecting the information. But I don't know how to easily/automatically/transparently link or join a webform submission to its corresponding support ticket? If you have any ideas, I'd be grateful.

Using cck to create the form actually inside the support_ticket node-type would solve this problem to an extent; the ticket itself *also becomes* the booking request. The big disadvantage is that every client created would have these cck fields in. However, at the moment we only intend to have one client, so it isn't a huge problem.

The other alternative that I'm toying with, is to make the booking-form a downloadable pdf file. After filling in the pdf form fields, I could ask website users to save it (apparently this is possible in adobe reader v8 and above), create a ticket and upload the pdf booking-form to the node. This is an attractive solution, because the staff will have to print out the booking form at some point anyway, and this gives them a nicely designed piece of paper to work with, rather than just a copy/pasted piece of plain text. The disadvantage is that they can't see at a glance what is being booked - they'd have to open the pdf file each time. It is also more difficult to edit the booking if the user wants some part of it changed.

The completely different solution I looked at was ubercart. Whilst this would handle the booking-form part OK, it didn't seem to offer any solution regarding dialogue with the customer about the order, and making a quote.

Any ideas or suggestions are welcome.
I'm really stuck with the workflow of this.

jeremy’s picture

jeremy commented

Uploads would certainly work, though at this time I don't know a way to require an upload (ie, to have the ticketing system display an error if no upload is attached to the ticket).

I would expect the CCK fields to work, and would recommend trying this with just one or two test fields. While the support_ticket is a single content type so any fields you add with CCK will apply to all Clients, you could prevent these fields from being displayed to other clients using the CCK permissions module. Another potential issue with using CCK to add fields is that the emails sent out by the support ticket won't include the custom CCK fields (a feature request issue should be opened if this is desired) -- so admins would have to log in to view these fields.

Your best bet is to give this a try and see how it works for you.

-Anti-’s picture

-Anti- commented
Status: Postponed (maintainer needs more info) » Closed (fixed)

Sorry, I don't have time to test this CCK idea at the moment. I may get round to it in the future.

At the moment, I'm sending webform to the support email so that it creates a ticket automatically.
I'm not really satisfied with the workflow, but this website has to go live right now.

Cheers.

GeekyLass’s picture

GeekyLass commented

I was able to add a CCK "category" field. The only thing is it does not appear on the http://mysite/support page.

jeremy’s picture

jeremy commented

A related ticket:
#672008: A way to get a custom field to display on support page.