Awesome! So glad to see this ticket plugin become a reality. Angus has done some terrific work here, and has been very patient with my feature requests and feedback. He deserves a medal.
I hope more communities decide to use this plugin, and help to make it even better by contributing use cases, feedback and code. I am also hoping to see some improvements to other discourse features to make tickets even more awesome.
We’ve been using it on our site for a few weeks already and it works well, though I have yet to properly roll it out to my team. As that happens I’ll be able to give more feedback on what’s working and what needs improvements from our point of view.
For right now, here’s my wish list:
improved functionality on topic and message lists for selecting and bulk updating, to e.g. change category, add/remove tags, create ticket, mark solved, open/close, reassign, change priority, change status, etc. (discussed elsewhere)
solved plugin: Allow staff to select OP to be solution, if no replies.
solved plugin: Prevent staff from selecting whispered replies as solution, as risks exposing private conversation. (discussed elsewhere)
“ticket system heath” statistics, e.g. number of tickets by status, time to completion, ratio of tickets by status, charts showing above over time. Not sure where this should live - is the dashboard extendable through plugins?
automatic ticket updates when reply is sent (e.g. change status tag to waiting/underway, add reminder for assignee with interval based on priority, etc)
automatic assignee based on ticket reason
automatic tickets based on group or group email
automatic solved/unsolved based on ticket status
default filters and options on dashboard to more quickly see only tickets assigned to me, or only open tickets etc.
not directly related but a common ticket task for our helpdesk: UI method for merging users, with ability to choose which email address is primary and which is secondary. (discussed elsewhere)
In case you’re wondering, here are some notes on the api method we use for creating tickets. We use it to create a new ticket for each new member as they join, for the purposes of onboarding and welcoming them, and when reaching out to members for feedback when they download resources from our resource library. We also use it when inviting lists of people (e.g. event attendees) to join the network, instead of email.
is_ticket = 1
tags[] = tag1 each on a separate line, use ticket tags and any additional tags to help find messages later (note square brackets - required!)
target_usernames = should always contain helpdesk group accessible to the staff in charge of ticket follow-up. Can contain an email address instead of username to create staged users (handy for sending bulk invites and making them tickets for follow-up)
Agreed I should have started with that This looks very promising, and your wish list contains several things that I’d probably get to if we get to use this properly here
I am super excited to see this. I currently have my own custom made (mock) ticketing system. It basically converts any PM into a ticket upon user request, adds a ticket number, organizes all tickets under a custom appointed user (@TICKETS) for easier tracking, and notifies admins. We do tagging/assign via discourse options. But this is more elaborate, if you keep developing this I will jump in and try it out
Interesting! It sounds like you’ve got a “support” use case there, letting a user create a ticket. This system was designed more for internal use for managing tasks and assignments. @tobiaseigen What do you think about allowing users to create tickets?
Our site is a marketplace. Tickets are used between users for managing transactions. Basically, user A strikes a deal with user B via PM. When ready, they click a button converting the PM into a ticket. The PM is assigned a ticket number, and admins are notified. The first one to assign it to him self gets it and manages the transaction.
Do you mean allow users to see and use the tickets interface and see ticket tags on tickets? And see the tickets dashboard?
I can see a use case for it, and also can see it maybe being useful in our community. Assigned and solved is already visible to users. Letting them see the ticket details about their tickets is potentially interesting. But I don’t see the need to let them change ticket tags.
If you just mean letting users create tickets but then not see the ticket interface, ticket tags and ticket dashboard, maybe there is a use case for this too. The API can already make tickets while adding messages, so an external form could do it. Maybe a new group setting could enable auto tickets with default ticket status, priority and reason. E.g. include @tickets and the message is made into a ticket.
Interesting. Can you share a screenshot of what your tickets look like? Generally, if you have screenshots that illustrate what you are doing I think that would help us to understand your need better and if/how it fits in with this plugin.
Ticket number: I guess the ticket number could just be the topic ID. Displaying that would be easy, I suspect. I also agree displaying a ticket number would be helpful, as well as in any email notifications about the ticket in the subject line etc. The ability to search by ticket number on the tickets dashboard might also be helpful. But again this is for a different use case than yours… more of a helpdesk need for quickly finding a ticket, for example when talking on the phone with someone about their ticket.
This already works - messages that are tickets appear in user inboxes. They are identifiable with tags in the message list. So if users had access to tickets, they’d be able to see the ticket tags. They could also click through to the tickets dashboard, to see only their tickets, which I think would also be handy for them.
@angus I remember when we made a strategic decision to put tickets in the /admin/tickets route instead of /tickets. I guess if giving users access to tickets were to become a thing, we’d want to move it.
Much of what you are describing is available through this plugin or could be. I think @angus would welcome your contributions to this plugin. I know one area we want to prioritize next is performance reports (I was calling it ticket system health) which is described above somewhere.
Another is functionality for bulk updating tickets from filtered lists. This is still fairly nascent in discourse. But as the number of tickets grows it will be needed.
I mainly need this feature to award admins for their work, vs. using it to measure actual response times/etc. (although that is useful info, also). Our site pools all the income and splits the profit among admins. Obviously, who works more gets a bigger share.
Thanks to the great work of @mbcahyono we’ve upgraded our (mock) ticket plugin. It now features site-wide notifications for open tickets, and a dedicated ticket area for ticket holders.
Nice! I like the use of a notification about open tickets. Seems to me this should be a proper discourse notification though. Also, it would be handy to have a quick link to display only open tickets on the dashboard.
We also have it as a notification, but we’ve encountered “oh I must of missed it” and “it got lost with other notifications” responses from users, who neglected open tickets because of those reasons. So, that’s why we have a site-wide banner. We do three way tickets, so to keep the other party waiting to a minimum, we remind users about their tickets in a bold way
I’m not sure if I’m missing something, but this doesn’t seem to be working for me, I’ll list what isn’t working right for me.
The redirect to the ticket dashboard doesn’t seem to follow caps cases; it takes me to admin/tickets?filters=assigned%3Akankuro instead of admin/tickets?filters=assigned%3AKankuro which results in no tickets being shown.
The tags don’t stick for any of the fields after refreshing or changing pages.
I’m not getting any sort of PM or notification to tell when there is a new ticket, not sure if this is intentional or if there is supposed to be some sort of alert to let people know when they have a new ticket.
All I’ve done is installed the plugin, enabled it, added tags to the tag groups, and created a new group with all mods called “helpdesk” and added that to tickets include group.
検索をフックして、キーワードでチケットを検索できるようにする。
This looks very promising, and your wish list contains several things that I’d probably get to if we get to use this properly here
