1. Admin Manual for Wordpress Help Desk

http://www.wordpresshelpdesk.netTo purchase WordPress Help Desk click here

This document is for blog/site owners and/or admins who are using Wordpress Help Desk. This document covers following:

1. Introduction

2. System Requirements

3. Configuration

1. Replacement Keys

4. Features

1. Manage Tickets

2. Manage Staff

3. Manage Categories

4. Manage Canned Response

5. FAQ

1. 1. IntroductionWordpress Help Desk is first complete help desk solutions for all size of sites and blogs powered by Wordpress.

2. 2. System RequirementsBelow are system requirements for this plugin:

1. PHP 4.3 or greater2. MySQL 4.0 or greater3. PHP mcrypt extension

3. 3. ConfigurationOnce you install this plugin you will see Help Desk menu and settings submenu on left side among other wordpress menu. (see screenshot below)

(Note: If you don't see other menus apart form “settings” then you need to enter valid activation key which is mailed to you after successfully purchasing this plugin.)

Click on “Settings” to jump to configuration options. Below are screenshots and explanation of various options.

1. General settingsThese group of settings controls complete behavior of help desk system and some options affects wordpress installation it is running on.

Help Desk TitleThis is title of help desk system which can be displayed in email notifications sent to users and/or customers on various system events.

Number of Tickets Per Page It controls number of tickets to be displayed on a page. Default is 5.

This number is used to control how ticket listing is displayed for "Manage Tickets" option for admin/staff. It also controls ticket listing on “View Existing Tickets” page displayed to customers.

Reopen TicketsYou can enable/disable ticket reopening using this option. This affects ticket reopening abilities of both, staff & customer. Default is set to No.

If you set this to Yes, and a ticket is reopened again, its status is automatically updated and it appears automatically in “Manage Tickets” area for staff.

Register as CustomerBy default wordpress registers a new user as a subscriber (role), Wordpress Help Desk can change new user's default role to customer.

If your blogs main purpose is to allow user registration for help desk purpose, we recommend keeping this settings as it is.

2. Email Notifications for CustomersThese group of settings control email notifications sent to customers on various system events.

Notify CustomerIf set to Yes, a copy of staff reply will be emailed to customer. All other settings in this group will become ineffective if you set this to No.

Subject

Default subject of the mail notifications. You can customize this using replacement keys. More about replacement keys is explained later in this document.

From EmailEmail address to show in FROM email address field of email notifications sent to customers.

Message FormatThis field can have html tags inside it. You can use replacement keys to format this as per your requirement.

You can control message content by using various replacement keys. More about replacement keys is explained later in this document.

3. Email Notifications for StaffSettings in this group are quite similar to settings in group for Email Notifications for Customers. As its name suggests this group settings control email notifications sent to staff members.

Notify StaffIf set to Yes, staff will receive email notifications whenever a customer opens a new ticket or reply to an existing ticket in a category to which he/she has assigned. All other settings in this group will become ineffective if you set this to No.

SubjectDefault subject of the mail notifications. You can customize this using replacement keys. More about replacement keys is explained later in this document.

From EmailEmail address to show in FROM email address field of email notifications sent to staff.

Message FormatThis field can have html tags inside it. You can use replacement keys to format this as per your requirement.

You can control message content by using various replacement keys. More about replacement keys is explained later in this document.

4. AttachmentsThis group settings control attachment related options. Attachment option gives your users ability to attach screenshots and other documents relevant to the ticket they open.

Allow AttachmentsEnable or Disable of uploading files as attachment(s). Default is enabled.

Number of FilesThis control number of attachments a user can upload. Default is 2.

There is no upper limit. You can use a number as big as your webhost supports!

4. 3.1 Replacement KeysFollowing are replcement keys you can use to format subject and message part in email

notifications sent to customers and/or staff.

(Note: some keys are not avaible for subject fields.)

1. %customer_name% - Replace by name of the customer2. %customer_email% - Replaced by email address of the customer3. %date% - Repalces by date of reply.4. %attachments% - Replaced by list of attachments with links to download them.5. %subject% - Replaced by subject of ticket issue.6. %message% - Repalced by actual body of ticket/reply message.7. %category% - Replaced by category is which ticket is filed.8. %priority% - Replaced by priority of ticket.9. %trackid% - Replaced by unique tracking ID of the ticket.

10. %blogname% - Replaced by name of the blog/site.11. %user_ip% - Repalced by IP address of person who generated ticket/reply.12. %link_to_current_ticket% - Replaced by direct link to curent ticket.13. %attach_signature% - Repalced by signature of the staff.14. %help_desk_title% - Replaced by title of helpdesk.

1.

5. 4. FeaturesWordpress Help Desk offers many features as explained below.

6. 4.1 Manage TicketsManage Tickets” is the main interface where you spend most of your time. All tickets related functions are here. Below is welcome screen that you will see when you go to Manage Tickets area.

First you will see a list of tickets filtered by “open” status. This default “open” filter shows only “new” and tickets awaiting reply from either end i.e. customer or staff.

Below that you will Filter Tickets menu and Search Tickets.

1. Filter Tickets:You can filter tickets by their status (i.e open, closed, new, replied and all) or by a particular category. You can combine these two filters as well.

Apart form this you can customize display of selected tickets by various sorting keys like names of user, subject, dates etc.

2. Search Tickets:Like filtering, searching also gives you many tickets. Most useful is - “Tracking ID”. You can directly search for a particular ticket using that tickets’ unique tracking id.

3. View Ticket Details:To view details of any ticket click on its hyperlinked Tracking ID. Check screenshot for details.

After clicking on link, you will be taken to a page where all ticket information alongwith its conversation will be displayed.

4.

5. Replying to a ticketNext thing you probably want to do is replying to a ticket. If you scroll down ticket details page further you will see a reply form along-with some more options as shown in screenshot below.

Some options may be unavailable or will look different depending on your configuration. [refer section 3 of this document]

7. 4.2 Manage Staff

Wordpress Help Desk create a new user role called staff in addition to existing wordpress roles. Manage staff will show list of all staff members and provide options like register, edit and delete a staff member.

1. Changing “Subscribers” to “Staff”If you want to select some existing member say subscribers and make them staff, here is the way.

1. Go to Wordpress' Authors & Users menu.

2. Select a tab or group for example Subscribers.

3. Select oe or more or all members from list of users displayed on screen.

4. Go to “Change role to” drop-down menu. Select Staff role.

5. Click on change.

8. 4.3 Manage CategoriesThere is separate menu which presents you all functions needed to manage categories.

As you can see there are following options available to you:

1. Add CategoriesYou can add as many categories as you want. Only thing is that their names should be unique. Category name can have multiple words separated by space.

2. Rename categoryTo rename a category, first select a current category from the drop down menu and then enter the new category name into text box and then submit, the results will be displayed below the form in Reorder Categories list.

3. Reorder CategoriesTo reorder a category, just hover your mouse cursor on it. You will notice change in cursor. Once you are on right category, use drag-n-drop to change that category reorder.

4. Deleting a categoryCategory reorder list also contains a delete link.

When you click on delete link, system will check whether there are any tickets assigned to the selected category. If yes, the user will be shown two options:

1. Move tickets to a different category.

2. Delete both category and all tickets in that category.

If there are no tickets dependent on the category then category will be deleted directly.

You can also delete multiple categories at once. Just select checkbox next to each category you want to delete and then select “Delete” form Bulk Actions drop-down menu..

9. 4.4 Manage Canned ResponseCanned response is a pre-formatted text which can be used as template while replying to a customer ticket.

1. Add canned responseCanned response has a title and message part.

2. Edit canned responseBoth title and message can be updated by selecting a canned response from drop down menu. Changes will be reflected immediately.

3. Reorder Canned Response ListCanned response list is shown in tabular format, reordering can be achieved by drag-n-drop on any row. Changes will be saved automatically.

4. Delete a Canned ResponseCanned response list also have a delete link next to each response.

10. 5. FAQ

Here are answers to some frequently answered questions!

Q. Error Message: “You are yet to be assigned any category to manage, please contact administrator.”Ans: This error comes when no category has been assigned to the staff member (staff or admin). To solve this, assign one or more categories to the staff member who saw this error.

Also, wordpress pre-register users need to assign categories manually.

Q. Attachments are not working.Ans: Some webhosts run apache under different system user i.e. different than FTP user. A quick and reliable solution is to:

1. Connect to your webhost via FTP.

2. Go to your websites root/home directory. Usually it has names like httpdocs, www, html, mysite.com or something similar.

3. Change current directory to wp-content/plugins/wp-helpdesk.

4. Under wp-helpdesk directory, create a new directory with name upload5. Set permissions on upload directory to 0777. i.e. writable by all.