Helpdesk improvements

[devil9394]

I wanted to suggest, at the moment, four helpdesk improvements; will add more if I think at any potential useful ones.

1. A search engine for the helpdesk, to search through the helpdesk tickets for any words which match the entered; also, if it'd be possible, to be able to change the search options, like searching only through a chosen department, mainly having the search options from the forum (example can be found on this forum too, here, instead of "Choose a board to search in, or search all", having "Choose a department to search in, or search all".

2. You should be able to assign a ticket to a specified member group, as some type of tickets could be assigned to more than one staff member.

Example for #2: Somebody created a ticket reporting a player, which got punished for the respective action(s). But if the punished account appeals after who knows how much time, then the proof, which has been posted in the old ticket, can't be found, without searching through all the tickets, or, searching through all the tickets from the respective department (report a user).

3. At "Tickets Awaiting User Response", you should also have, between all those menus, the "Assigned to" one, as in the ticket.

4. You should be able to enable the spell check engine for helpdesk, as the helpdesk is a separated thing to the forums, and the spell check can't be enabled, just like it can be enabled for the forums.

@4: If there is any way doing it, then I will just remove the point, but please tell me how it can be done.

[Arantor]

So someone asked me to take a look at this post.

The helpdesk is not part of SMF, it is a separate project, called SimpleDesk and has no formal affiliation other than that it was written by former SMF team members, and that it's written for SMF and in use here.

1. A mostly functional search engine was added to the repository months and months ago but after getting incredibly pissed off, the original SD lead dev who wrote it left the project.

2. There is absolutely no functionality for supporting that without redesigning almost every aspect of SimpleDesk, it was just never designed for 'assign to multiple members'. You don't have to explicitly assign it to someone to work on it.

3. There is an 'Assigned to' block that's visible when there's tickets assigned to, and when you're viewing it as staff.

4. It's a code change to make to several parts of SD's editing code, but doable if someone can be bothered to do it.


(By the way, I am that lead developer and wrote probably 85% of SD. I do not do support for it, nor do I do any coding for it, except for porting it away from SMF to Wedge.)

[devil9394]

So someone asked me to take a look at this post.

The helpdesk is not part of SMF, it is a separate project, called SimpleDesk and has no formal affiliation other than that it was written by former SMF team members, and that it's written for SMF and in use here.

1. A mostly functional search engine was added to the repository months and months ago but after getting incredibly pissed off, the original SD lead dev who wrote it left the project.

2. There is absolutely no functionality for supporting that without redesigning almost every aspect of SimpleDesk, it was just never designed for 'assign to multiple members'. You don't have to explicitly assign it to someone to work on it.

3. There is an 'Assigned to' block that's visible when there's tickets assigned to, and when you're viewing it as staff.

4. It's a code change to make to several parts of SD's editing code, but doable if someone can be bothered to do it.


(By the way, I am that lead developer and wrote probably 85% of SD. I do not do support for it, nor do I do any coding for it, except for porting it away from SMF to Wedge.)

Well, SimpleDesk was created by a request of someone on this forum, I suppose, so the place where improvements related to it could be suggested, would be this forum, I think.

@1. Well, this thing is something that really misses from this product, and you gotta admit it, reason why I suggested it in this topic, on this forum, now.

@2. Well, SimpleDesk wasn't, or shouldn't have been created only to have the assign to a simple account a ticket, the most important thing related to it being the privacy it offers, the options it offers for the staff team, to post private information about a case, like IP scans, or such as. Therefore, I don't see why this point has no functionality for SD.

#4. Well, it has all the other topic/reply options, so I thought that adding it wouldn't be that difficult, as the only different thing would be that it'd check the words from the ticket when you reply, or when you even create a new one.

#3. You obviously didn't understand this point, I will just show you an example of what I meant.

I attached an image to this reply; if you will look at "Tickets Awaiting User Response", then you will see that you don't see the "Assign to" there, along with the others, so that's what I suggested, at this point.



Except for all these, if you are the one who created it, let me tell you, that you did an awesome job with it, and that it is also very good as it is now.

[Arantor]

Well, SimpleDesk was created by a request of someone on this forum, I suppose, so the place where improvements related to it could be suggested, would be this forum, I think.

No, it wasn't. It was created by three members of the Customization Team sitting down one night in the then IRC channel of SMF and deciding to write it, knowing that the helpdesk on this site needed some love.

Any support or problems probably should be reported to simpledesk.net rather than here, though.

@1. Well, this thing is something that really misses from this product, and you gotta admit it, reason why I suggested it in this topic, on this forum, now.

I know. I wrote one for it last year but it wasn't finished and didn't get released. You can probably get it from the Github repository for SD however, wherever that is (I can't remember offhand)

@2. Well, SimpleDesk wasn't, or shouldn't have been created only to have the assign to a simple account a ticket, the most important thing related to it being the privacy it offers, the options it offers for the staff team, to post private information about a case, like IP scans, or such as. Therefore, I don't see why this point has no functionality for SD.

I designed it to replace the helpdesk on this forum, where a single assignee was all that was needed. Two years later I know that wasn't the best thing, but at the time it made sense. Though I've never had a problem using it on professional environments dealing with customers but it's certainly something to be investigated in the future.

In any case, you could create a ticket, not assign it to staff and that way all staff can deal with it as and when (which is the use case originally designed for). I'm not saying that it shouldn't be done, I'm saying that SD currently cannot support it without completely rewriting it, and I also note that there's a number of helpdesk solutions out there that took exactly the same view.

#4. Well, it has all the other topic/reply options, so I thought that adding it wouldn't be that difficult, as the only different thing would be that it'd check the words from the ticket when you reply, or when you even create a new one.

Which are all implemented from scratch and as such would need to be extended individually in multiple places rather than the methodology used in SMF. What I've found is that it's often actually better not to use the spell check in SMF which on modern servers may not work properly (as pspell is discouraged in PHP 5.3 in favour of using enchant)

#3. You obviously didn't understand this point, I will just show you an example of what I meant.

I attached an image to this reply; if you will look at "Tickets Awaiting User Response", then you will see that you don't see the "Assign to" there, along with the others, so that's what I suggested, at this point.

Oh, my bad for misinterpreting what you said.

Why would the 'tickets awaiting user response' block need the person it is assigned to? The point of that block is that any tickets in it are waiting for an update from the user who opened it, not any staff members, so you're not really in need of staff to do anything. That, at least, was the logic behind it, and the fact that there's not really enough room to add any more columns.

It's not a huge matter to extend it, however, knowing how I implemented the block columns system.

Sources/sd_source/SimpleDesk.php

Code (find) Select Expand

case 'user_staff':
return array(
'ticket_id',
'ticket_name',
'starting_user',
'last_reply',
'replies',
'urgency',
'updated',
'actions',
);

Code (replace) Select Expand

case 'user_staff':
return array(
'ticket_id',
'ticket_name',
'starting_user',
'assigned',
'last_reply',
'replies',
'urgency',
'updated',
'actions',
);

I bet you that you will find it very cluttered, which is why I seem to recall actually removing it when I first implemented it since I figured it wasn't information that was really necessary at the time.

Except for all these, if you are the one who created it, let me tell you, that you did an awesome job with it, and that it is also very good as it is now.

http://www.simpledesk.net/development/stats/ would certainly explain a fair amount (I later used the pseudonym Gruffen as well as Arantor)

It was a massive amount of work and were I to do it again I'd probably do a great deal of it very differently, but I have an unpleasant feeling that SD itself won't get most of these things unless someone is really willing to put in a very large amount of time to make them happen.

[devil9394]

I designed it to replace the helpdesk on this forum, where a single assignee was all that was needed. Two years later I know that wasn't the best thing, but at the time it made sense. Though I've never had a problem using it on professional environments dealing with customers but it's certainly something to be investigated in the future.

In any case, you could create a ticket, not assign it to staff and that way all staff can deal with it as and when (which is the use case originally designed for). I'm not saying that it shouldn't be done, I'm saying that SD currently cannot support it without completely rewriting it, and I also note that there's a number of helpdesk solutions out there that took exactly the same view.

Hmm, then, instead of totally editing the way you assign a ticket, couldn't it be made so you can assign more than 1 member? I mean being able to break the limit of 1 member, that is at the moment; just a suggestion for how it could be done, not sure if this would also require a complete rewrite of it.

Oh, my bad for misinterpreting what you said.

Why would the 'tickets awaiting user response' block need the person it is assigned to? The point of that block is that any tickets in it are waiting for an update from the user who opened it, not any staff members, so you're not really in need of staff to do anything. That, at least, was the logic behind it, and the fact that there's not really enough room to add any more columns.

It's not a huge matter to extend it, however, knowing how I implemented the block columns system.

Sources/sd_source/SimpleDesk.php

Code (find) Select Expand

case 'user_staff':
return array(
'ticket_id',
'ticket_name',
'starting_user',
'last_reply',
'replies',
'urgency',
'updated',
'actions',
);

Code (replace) Select Expand

case 'user_staff':
return array(
'ticket_id',
'ticket_name',
'starting_user',
'assigned',
'last_reply',
'replies',
'urgency',
'updated',
'actions',
);

I bet you that you will find it very cluttered, which is why I seem to recall actually removing it when I first implemented it since I figured it wasn't information that was really necessary at the time.

I will check this.


Could you also tell me something else? Would it be better and more useful for me to ask for these on simpledesk.net ? If so, then what are the answers to these?
What is the software we offer here? (lowercase, all one word):
What is the 3 letter abbreviation name of the forum we use?:

[Arantor]

Hmm, then, instead of totally editing the way you assign a ticket, couldn't it be made so you can assign more than 1 member? I mean being able to break the limit of 1 member, that is at the moment; just a suggestion for how it could be done, not sure if this would also require a complete rewrite of it.

You'd still have to rewrite it. The assignee is held as a single value in the ticket table, and it can't hold multiple values, so it would require breaking that into a new table, and then rewriting all the queries that touch it. It would also require altering the AJAX assignment system as well (though I don't remember if that made it into SD, it certainly made it into the Wedge version)

Could you also tell me something else? Would it be better and more useful for me to ask for these on simpledesk.net ? If so, then what are the answers to these?
What is the software we offer here? (lowercase, all one word):
What is the 3 letter abbreviation name of the forum we use?:

Well, what software does simpledesk.net offer? Answer: it's the same as the domain without the .net
What forum software does simpledesk.net run? That one's in the footer, and seeing that it's a mod for SMF, it's a fair bet as to what software is being used...

(These questions are put in place as an anti-spam measure and while not necessarily the best worded in the world, they were written to be fairly obvious to someone actually using SimpleDesk as a site owner...)

That said, if you were to go on simpledesk.net and post, the odds are that you wouldn't get any movement to happen because the development of SD itself has been at a standstill for months, the last changes were pulled into the repository 4-6 months ago, and more than one of those was actually submitted by me originally as https://github.com/SimpleDesk/SimpleDesk shows, so even if you raised it in the proper place the odds of it getting implemented are sadly very low.

[devil9394]

Hmm, then, instead of totally editing the way you assign a ticket, couldn't it be made so you can assign more than 1 member? I mean being able to break the limit of 1 member, that is at the moment; just a suggestion for how it could be done, not sure if this would also require a complete rewrite of it.

You'd still have to rewrite it. The assignee is held as a single value in the ticket table, and it can't hold multiple values, so it would require breaking that into a new table, and then rewriting all the queries that touch it. It would also require altering the AJAX assignment system as well (though I don't remember if that made it into SD, it certainly made it into the Wedge version)

Could you also tell me something else? Would it be better and more useful for me to ask for these on simpledesk.net ? If so, then what are the answers to these?
What is the software we offer here? (lowercase, all one word):
What is the 3 letter abbreviation name of the forum we use?:

Well, what software does simpledesk.net offer? Answer: it's the same as the domain without the .net
What forum software does simpledesk.net run? That one's in the footer, and seeing that it's a mod for SMF, it's a fair bet as to what software is being used...

(These questions are put in place as an anti-spam measure and while not necessarily the best worded in the world, they were written to be fairly obvious to someone actually using SimpleDesk as a site owner...)

That said, if you were to go on simpledesk.net and post, the odds are that you wouldn't get any movement to happen because the development of SD itself has been at a standstill for months, the last changes were pulled into the repository 4-6 months ago, and more than one of those was actually submitted by me originally as https://github.com/SimpleDesk/SimpleDesk shows, so even if you raised it in the proper place the odds of it getting implemented are sadly very low.

I see, then I think I will summarize to the 3rd point, trying to do what you suggested.

Thank you for your time and for your answers.
You may lock this topic as I don't think something will be changed, I understand the lack of interest and of time, too.

[Matthew K.]

There's no reason to lock the topic...but you could mark it as solved or move it to the appropriate board.