Extension page: http://ecommerce.aheadworks.com/magento-extensions/help-desk-ultimate.html

As many as 78% of customers cite "Customer Support" as the # 1 factor when choosing a merchant or a provider on the internet. That's what we found out in our recent study on factors influencing consumers' online buying behaviour. An efficient customer support, case tracking and resolution system is indispensable for a successful e-commerce business.

The Help Desk Ultimate Magento extension, developed after taking on board the lessons we've learned on online shopper behavior, is the perfect customer care and support solution for your Magento-based e-commerce site.

Installation

Set up cron

The Help Desk Ultimate extension uses cron for message processing. Read the following instructions on setting cron job for your Magento store: Magento user guide. If you have already configured cron jobs for your Magento installation then you can skip this step.

Generally it would be enough to run in SSH console of your server: 

crontab -e

And add the following line: 

REPLACE_MAILBOX_LIMIT 
REPLACE_TICKET_LIMIT 
REPLACE_MESSAGE_LIMIT 

Configuration

General Settings

The extension's general parameters can be configured in System -> Configuration -> aheadWorks Extensions -> Help Desk (or, Help Desk -> Settings) backend page.

Managing Departments

The extension allows creating unlimited number of Departments. You can view the existent ones and create new through Help Desk -> Departments backend grid.

Here's how the department setup looks like.

Managing Tickets

The tickets can be viewed and managed through Help Desk - > View Tickets backend grid. Here is how this grid looks like:

This grid can be sorted / filtered by any of the columns. Pay attention to the following options available from the grid.

• • Export - the extension allows exporting the grid in its current state (i.e., with filtering and sorting applied) to a .csv or .xml file.
    
    

  • Search - the extension can search the Subject of the ticket and its full content for the query words. 

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    Note: the search "stacks" with the currently applied filtering. E.g., if you filter the grid by an Agent and run search, the latter will be conducted among the tickets currently assinged to the selected agent only.

    
    
    

  • Actions - mass actions are supported. Here's the list of Actions you can apply from this grid:
    
    • Assign to Department
    • Assign to Agent (Note: if the new assignee belongs to a different department, the dept assignation will be automatically updated as well)
    • Change Status
    • Change Priority
    • Delete

• • Action - manage ticket in the popup window

Ticket Attributes

A ticket has a number of basic properties and parameters:

• • Ticket ID - is assigned to a ticket automatically on submission. Has a format like "ABC-12345". The ID serves a number of crucial purposes, the main one is properly associating email ticket updates with the ticket thread. Ticket ID MUST be kept in the subject line if a ticket is replied to directly via email.
    
    

  • Status - the parameter introduced to ease managing the workflow. Technically, all statuses except "Closed" (including the Custom Statuses you might have created) are identical, and can be used for filtering the View Tickets grid. Status "Closed" prohibits further updates from the customer side - the ticket thread can still be viewed, but submitting any new messages to that particular ticket is disabled. NOTE: a "Closed" ticket can still be re-opened by the store admin.

     

  • Priority - the parameter introduced to ease managing the workflow. Has 4 default values, can be used for filtering the View Tickets grid.

     

    Customization

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    Custom values are supported for both Status and Priority. Custom Status(es) and Priority (-ies) can be created and managed through Help Desk -> Customization backend menu entry (Statuses and Priorities shortcuts respectively.)

     How do I customize them?

    While setting up a Status and a Priority values, the identical set of options is available:

    • Status - enabled / disabled
    • Font and Background Color - these options allow adjusting the entry appearance

    The Manage Titles section below allows specifying text labels for each of the storeviews.

    

    NOTE: Both Status and Priority attributes have 4 default values. These values can be customized, but CANNOT BE deleted or inactivated.

    
    
    

  • Department and Agent assignation - one of the key ticket parameters. All the notifications and replies will be sent to / from the department the ticket is currently assigned to. If frontend department selector is enabled, a customer will have an option to choose the desired department during the ticket submission. After the ticket is created, department assignation can be changed by admin users ONLY. 
    
    
  • Ticket Lock (yes / no) - this function restricts updating a ticket to the current Agent. If Ticket Lock is on, only the current Agent can respond to, and change other parameters (Priority, Status, etc) of a given ticket.
    
    
  • Customer Assignation - one of the key ticket parameters. Defined automatically for logged in users, must be manually specified by guests. NOTE: if a registered user submits a ticket as a guest, but specifies their account email address, it is possible to link the ticket to their account.
    
    
  • Order Assignation (optional) - links a ticket to an order; using this function allows opening the order screen directly from the Edit Ticket screen, and, lists the ticket in the Help Desk tab in the View Order page. 

Replying to a ticket 

From the backend

Once you open a ticket from the Help Desk - > View Tickets grid, you will get to the Ticket Details screen. It is divided into 3 sections.

Via email

Both the customer and the store admin has a possibility to reply to a ticket via email bypassing the module's webform. This functionality is only available if the email parsing is enabled and the email gateways are setup.

To reply to a ticket via email it is enough to respond to any ticket-related notification. Such response will be parsed into the Help Desk and attached to the ticket thread given the following conditions are met:

• • The response is sent to the gateway email address. If an email is send directly to customer's / admin's address or to any other destination, the ticket will not get updated.
  • The ticket ID ( ABC-1234 ) is kept in the subject of the email. If the message subject gets altered and the ID is removed, the response will not get attached to the existent thread; a new ticket will be open instead.

E-mail variables and templates

The extension comes with a number of pre-defined templates for all the module's notifications tab. Beside these default ones, you can use any template created via System-> Transactional Emails. 

The default templates can also be amended via the Transactional Emails grid, they all have "AW Help Desk 3 * " prefix:

The Help Desk Ultimate extension allows using a number of variables in outgoing emails (see the list below).

These variable can be used both in department notifications templates and in actual messages.

Variables:

{{var ticket_uid}} 

ticket ID

{{var ticket_subject}} 

ticket subject

{{var ticket_priority}} 

ticket current priority

{{var ticket_status}} 

ticket status

{{var ticket_created_at}}

ticket creation date

{{var ticket_first_message}}

content of the 1st ticket message

{{var message}}

content of the latest relevant message

{{var customer_name}}

customer's full name

{{var customer_first_name}}

customer's first name

{{var customer_email}}

customer's email address

{{var department_title}}

the title of the current department 

{{var agent_name}}

the name of the current agent

Additional facilities

Statistics

The 3.0+ version of the extension features reporting system that allows estimating the effectiveness and the quality of the service. There are 3 types of reports, available through the Help Desk -> Statistics backend menu entry.

Workload Report

This report is meant to give the instant idea of the current load level of the support team. The report lists total number of ticket per-department and per-agent. The tickets are summarized by status and by priority.

E.g., an Open ticket of Urgent status will add +1 in 3 columns: New and Open Tickets, Open Tickets and Urgent Tickets.

Agent Statistics

This report is aimed at estimating the effectiveness of support Agents. It calculates the Average First Response Time and Average Ticket Closing Time parameters per-agent. The Graph can be switched to represent either First Response or Closing times.

Ticket Status Statistics

This report shows the dynamics of ticket status changes. It represents the number of ticket that obtained any of the selected Statuses within the reporting period. The graph is built per-department.

E-mail Rejecting

You can also view all the rejected emails in Help Desk -> Email Rejecting -> Rejected Emails grid.

Uninstallation 

If you just need to temporary disable the extension, you can just do the steps 1-5, without deleting the files of the extension.

1. 1. Disable compilation, in case it is enabled.
   2. Login to your FTP, navigate to app/etc/modules/

   3. Open the file AW_Helpdesk3.xml and change the following line:   

       

      <active>true</active>

      to   

       

      <active>false</active>

      Now your Magento is unaware of the existence of this module.

   4. Clear the cache under var/cache
   5. Make sure that the site is working properly, otherwise roll back the changes and apply to our technical support.

   6. If everything works fine, it is safe to delete the files of the extension.
      In case you need to clean the database, make a backup and then run the following query in MySQL: 

       

      DROP TABLE IF EXISTS 'aw_hdu3_customer_note' DROP TABLE IF EXISTS 'aw_hdu3_template' DROP TABLE IF EXISTS 'aw_hdu3_department_agent_link' DROP TABLE IF EXISTS 'aw_hdu3_department_notification' DROP TABLE IF EXISTS 'aw_hdu3_department_permission' DROP TABLE IF EXISTS 'aw_hdu3_gateway_mail_attachment' DROP TABLE IF EXISTS 'aw_hdu3_gateway_mail_reject_pattern' DROP TABLE IF EXISTS 'aw_hdu3_gateway_mail' DROP TABLE IF EXISTS 'aw_hdu3_gateway' DROP TABLE IF EXISTS 'aw_hdu3_migration_temp_data' DROP TABLE IF EXISTS 'aw_hdu3_ticket_status_label' DROP TABLE IF EXISTS 'aw_hdu3_ticket_priority_label' DROP TABLE IF EXISTS 'aw_hdu3_ticket_message' DROP TABLE IF EXISTS 'aw_hdu3_ticket_history_additional' DROP TABLE IF EXISTS 'aw_hdu3_ticket_history_attachment' DROP TABLE IF EXISTS 'aw_hdu3_ticket_history' DROP TABLE IF EXISTS 'aw_hdu3_ticket' DROP TABLE IF EXISTS 'aw_hdu3_ticket_status' DROP TABLE IF EXISTS 'aw_hdu3_ticket_priority' DROP TABLE IF EXISTS 'aw_hdu3_department' DROP TABLE IF EXISTS 'aw_hdu3_department_agent' DELETE FROM core_resource WHERE code = 'aw_hdu3_setup'

       

      Note, if you are using the table with prefixes, you must specify them in all table names. 
      If you are not sure how to do that or expect any troubles with it, please contact your server administrator regarding the matter.
      If you remove the tables as it is described above, you will need to reconfigure the extension completely again after the extension is reinstalled (department/gateway details, etc). All conversations history will be lost as well.

Troubleshooting

After the extension installation the store gives an error, or blank page, or suggests to start Magento installation procedure.

Change the owner of the extracted extension files to the web server user and set 775 permissions on them. Clear the store cache and try again.

After the extension installation I receive a 404 error in System->Configuration->Help Desk Ultimate.

Logout from backend and login back. 

There is no aheadWorks extensions under my configuration section, or having the extension tab clicked I get a blank page, or Access Denied error.

Clear the store cache, browser cookies, logout and login again.

I've set up everything correctly, inserted the HTML code but there is nothing on that page.

Clear the store cache, clear your browser cache and domain cookies and refresh the page.

My configuration changes do not appear on the store.

 Clear the store cache, clear your browser cache and domain cookies and refresh the page.

You can always find the latest version of the software, full documentation, demos, screenshots and reviews at http://ecommerce.aheadworks.com
License agreement: http://ecommerce.aheadworks.com/LICENSE-M1.txt
Contact us: http://ecommerce.aheadworks.com/contacts/
Copyright © 2015 aheadWorks  http://www.aheadworks.com