Usa Discourse como un sistema de soporte/entrada de tickets privado

[schungx (Stephen Chung)]

On and off I’ve seen posters asking about how to use Discourse as a support (or ticketing) platform. I’d like to share my setup here for those with similar needs.

Background

You run/work for an organization. You need to provide pre-sales, after-sales, technical and/or one-on-one support to your customers, agents, distributors and/or partners (which organization doesn’t?).

What is Discourse

Discourse is primarily a forums software, geared towards public, open conversations of various topics. It is incredibly modern and performant, runs at lightning speed, and you have a lot of flexibility in how to setup your environment.

You want to see if you can coerce this fabulous piece of software to do what it isn’t originally designed to do.

Prior Art

• Configure incoming email to create new topics or group messages
• Discourse as a private email support portal
• Set up reply by email with POP3 polling
• Private Topics - are they supported?
• Using discourse as a community ticket system
• How to optimize issue/support ticket like workflow?
• Can incoming Discourse email support replace old ticket portals?
• Create/See and Create Permissions (again)

What You Want

Your customers will open issues, or help tickets, on the system. They either open it under their own folder/category, or you can have some systematic/manual way of reclassifying them later on.

There may be sensitive things discussed, so by default you don’t want each customer to be able to see the issues or inquiries raised by other customers. In other words, each customer conversation should be private.

You want your support teams to each work on their allocated areas/categories. In other words, your teams should be able to see a list of all the support requests in their own categories, and be able to easily sort through them, manage them and follow-up on them without a lot of searching and filtering.

Some information may be sensitive, so each team’s area may be separated from another team’s, so they cannot view each other’s data.

Note: This method assumes that you are creating a dedicated ticketing platform, or that at the very least there will be no overlap between the users of your Discourse web interface and those requesting support tickets.
In the event that you might need to support users who are already on the same instance, consider instead using private messages to a group, and configure inbound email for the group inbox.

Your Problem

1. Some core features are geared towards an open community, and may not be relevant to a private support forum, for example the badges.

2. You looked at the security/permissions system and you don’t find what you want: basically pure Create and Create/Reply permissions do not exist.

3. Your customers don’t really want to go through the hassle of creating an account on your forum just to ask a support question. But you also don’t want to open up your forum to the public and have silly posters come in and waste your time.

   You want a way to detail with these one-off inquiries quickly, but leave open the possibility of maintaining a long-term relationship with certain customers.

4. A lot of your customers work with emails, and you want to reply to them via email, but you also want your support teams to be able to manage these requests quickly and easily without digging through piles of email.

How it Will Work

• You have a bunch of email addresses published for customers to send inquiries. For example, you may have an email address called wonderful_product@support.example.com for people to send questions regarding the Wonderful Product product line of your company.

• A customer sends an email to this address.

• The email is automatically turned into a topic in the appropriate Wonderful Product category.

• A staged user (say, MrFoo) with no rights is created on the system to track all the requests sent by that email.

• You internal team support staff, under the group WonderfulProductTeam, which has Reply/See permission on the Wonderful Product category, sees the topic and post replies.

• Each reply turns into a reply email back to the originating customer.

• The customer feels that his/her email is being replied personally.

• The customer has no way to see the emails of any other customer on the system. Meanwhile, the WonderProductTeam sees all the emails sent to wonderful_product@support.example.com all together in a single list.

• You find that user MrFoo has been a great contributor and would actually like to involve him into your support pipeline. Go to his user profile and send him an invitation to become a member. Put him in an appropriate Group with appropriate access rights.

• MrFoo, now an valued member of your support organizatio, logs in and sees all his previous emails neatly under his account.

Setup Instructions

Basic Discourse setup

• Turn off Settings|Basic Setup|enable badges because badges are not awarded for posts in non-Everyone categories, which most of your categories will probably be. They will just confuse your users. Keep it if you have large, open-to-all-users categories.

• Turn on Settings|Basic Setup|enable whispers if you want whispers. This may be useful when you have many moderators.

• Turn on Settings|Login|invite only unless you want to allow customers to self-register themselves. You may not want the hassle.

• Turn on Settings|Login|login required because you are not running a public forum.

• Set Settings|Trust Levels|default trust level to 0 to make sure staged users created via email is level 0.

• Set Settings|Trust Levels|default invitee trust level to 1 to make sure that the users you actually want to be on the system are level 1.

• Turn on Settings|Email|enable staged users

• (Optional) Settings|Login|must approve users may not be necessary if your forum runs on invitation only.

• (Optional) Set Settings|Posting|approve new topics unless trust level to 1 so that your staged users (which will be created as level 0) will have their topics pending staff approval.

  Note: As of 1.9.0beta13 this doesn’t work because topic approvals by-pass all staged users. This may be corrected in the future.

• Turn off SSO because you obviously don’t want any unknown persons to sign into your forum.

Set Up the Appropriate Email Addresses

• On your email system, setup a MASTER mail-in email account, for example: master@support.example.com.

• For each area/team/category, create a new, specific email account, for example: wonderful_product@support.example.com.

• FORWARD all emails to those specific accounts to the MASTER email account. For example, an automatic forwarding should be created to forward all mail received by wonderful_product@support.example.com to master@support.example.com.

Turn on email in

• Turn on Settings|Email|reply by email enabled

• Turn on Settings|Email|email in

• Turn on Settings|Email|pop3 polling enabled

• (Optional) Turn on Settings|Email|pop3 polling ssl if your POP3 email server requires SSL.

• (Optional) Turn on Settings|Email|pop3 polling openssl verify if your POP3 server uses SSL.

• Turn on Settings|Email|reply by email enabled

• Set Settings|Email|reply by email address to the MASTER email account in the section above (for example: master@support.example.com).

• (IMPORTANT) If your email system does NOT support the + feature, then turn off Settings|Email|find related post with key. This will use each email’s In Reply To header to find the correct thread, with certain security considerations.

• Set Settings|Email|pop3 polling host, pop3 polling port, pop3 polling username, pop3 polling password for your POP3 email server. The username and password should be for the MASTER email address.

• Set Settings|Email|email in min trust to 0 because your staged users will be created with trust level 0.

• Set Settings|Email|maximum staged users per email to a small number unless you have a good reason to allow creating large number of staged users from an email.

• Set up suspected SPAM email domains in Settings|Login|blocked email domains. This prevents emails from unwanted domains from creating staged users in your forum and littering them with SPAM topics.

  Notice that regexp expressions work in this, EXCEPT for the dot (.). You do NOT need to escape the dot because it will be automatically escaped. In other words, \d+\d\d\d.\w+ will actually be \d+\d\d\d\.\w+$ and will match any domain that is a string of digits more than 3 long plus a root domain (.com, .org etc.).

• Set up suspected SPAM email subjects in Settings|Email|ignore by title. This prevents emails with suspicious subjects from creating topics.

  Notice that regexp expressions work in this. Wrap your entries with \b if you want to match whole words in English. BEWARE, \b works for English language only!!!

Attachments

• Add allowed attachment formats in Settings|Files|authorized extensions because customers who requires support will typically send in attachments other than photos (maybe a PDF file, an Excel spreadsheet, a CAD drawing, an error log file, or a zip file).

• Set Settings|Files|max attachment size kb large enough so that reasonable attachments do not bounce. Typically 1MB to 2MB is enough.

Set Up Email Info in Categories

• For each category that will receive emails from outside, set Custom incoming email address (in the Settings of the Edit dialog of that particular category) to the appropriate email account.

  For example, in the Wonderful Product category, press Edit and go to the Settings tab. Custom incoming email address should be set to wonderful_product@support.example.com. Then, all emails sent to wonderful_product@support.example.com will be created as topics in this category.

• Turn on the Accept emails from anonymous users with no accounts setting for each category that will receive emails.

Set Up Security in Categories

• Remove the Everyone group from each category’s access list.
• Use Groups to manage access to each category.

If You Have a Multi-Lingual (Worldwide ) Customer Base

• Turn on Settings|Basic Setup|allow user locale

• Turn on Settings|Basic Setup|set locale from accept language header

  Notice that it doesn’t work for redemption from invitations as of 1.9.0beta13.

• Consider the discourse-translator plugin

• If you have Chinese users, please make sure to search meta for the settings required to support Chinese language posts.

[Walker_Blackwell]

@schungx

Turn on the Accept emails from anonymous users with no accounts setting for each category that will receive emails.

I think I’ve found a minor bug with this and am interested in other’s opinions. I’ve set up everything just about exactly like these instructions however I have a email-receiver docker running to receive emails directly at my hosted discourse forum and send to the forum via API. This is better than POP3. Email server forwards emails from help@test.com to help@myforum.test.com which is set up as the category incoming email. All good and fine. When I send an email to help@test.com with a nonregistered email accout it creates a new ticket/topic in the thread and I can handle that.

The problem comes after I’ve invited the user to become a member of the forum. When they are anything OTHER than anonymous or staged they suddenly can’t sent a support request email to help@test.com. The email gets rejected because the category is restricted to admins only for see/replying/posting AND to anon/staged (0-level) users for posting.

There is no way to allow for a level 1,2,3 user to POST/EMAIL to the category without actually seeing the category and all the other topics available correct? At least I don’t see how to fix this.

tldr: the second a user is no longer level-0 (when email-receiver is the way incoming email is handled) they can’t email to create a new support ticket.

It’s almost like this needs to be toggles so Create/Reply can be set but not See.

How to fix?

[Dannii]

I just had this same problem. The conclusion is that you should only use a category if the forum is closed to general registrations and the only users will be staff. Otherwise you should instead have a group set to receive emails. That is detailed here. I’ll edit this howto to warn against what we’ve both tried.

[Stephen]

I don’t think your edit makes much sense. The title is ‘How to use Discourse as a Private Support/Ticket System’ while you’re both trying to use Discourse as a community and a ticketing system. That’s not the same thing by any stretch of the imagination.

[Dannii]

What exactly is wrong with the edit? I’m clarifying that you shouldn’t use a category to receive emails unless the whole forum is private. Handling the contact email address within a community forum must be a common desire, but it won’t work with category email in. I misunderstood the implications of this howto, and so edited it to help others like me and Walker avoid making the same problem in the future.

[codinghorror (Jeff Atwood)]

@Dannii

you shouldn’t use a category to receive emails unless the whole forum is private

I think that’s a fine clarification.

[schungx (Stephen Chung)]

I would think it is very strange for your setting.

Now, why would you:

1. Just anybody ==> email in and start a topic
2. Registered user ==> email in and start a topic
3. Registered user ==> start topic in browser NOT ALLOWED

To me it makes no reasonable sense. You’re allowing anybody on the street to start a topic in that category. Why would you ever want to prevent your registered users to do the same (which is to start a topic)?

The method that they start a topic (via browser vs. via email) should not affect their ability to start a topic.

The behavior in Discourse is absolutely logical and it should be this way. Staged users (i.e. from emails) are created by the system and they cannot login; and since they are created automatically, you don’t really give them specific permissions.

Note: I’m not considering the fact that you can make normal users all trust_level_1 and staged users trust_level_0 then disallow topic creation for trust_level_0. I have not tried it to see what happens…

Now, registered users fall under normal permissions control, and if you disallow a user from starting topics in a category, the system should disallow him/her from starting a topic REGARDLESS of the method (i.e. email or via browser).

[schungx (Stephen Chung)]

However, I do second (strongly) your suggestion to create Create/Reply as a separate permissions tier.

There was a lengthy discussion on this a long time ago:

Create/See and Create Permissions (again)

Continuing the discussion from "Create" Permission: Now that the “whisper” functionality (https://i.imgur.com/orfu6df.png) has been added to Discourse, I feel like this topic should have new life breathed into it again. This proposal is for two new permission sets: Create, and Create/See. Both of these could be used in “fringe” forums where confidentiality or experience is required. These won’t be used on all the Discourse forums in existence, but the ones that could/want to use something li…

As I mentioned in that discussion, Create/Reply will be ideal for a secured support-ticket system where you don’t want everybody to be able to see other people’s tickets.

[Walker_Blackwell]

My original question above was a bit naive as I had not properly understood group message dynamics. The group incoming email/post system works perfectly and essentially is exactly what I/we need simply in a Group instead of Category (there isn’t much difference there really).

New on-boarded support staff with access to the support group(s) have access to the historical ticket archive by simply going to /g/[thegroupname]/messages/inbox which is essentially a category topics list.

As a side note for those interested I set the pre-foward incoming email system (help@test.com) to auto-reply a canned “thank you for your question” type email. Then the email is sent to the email-receiver to create the post. This keeps the customers calm and not posting a second time and gives me a bit of time to work the ticket response.

best,
Walker

[tknospdr (David Muszynski)]

¿Hay algún artículo tan bien escrito como este para aquellos que deseen utilizar su Discourse como una comunidad en línea estándar Y como un sistema de tickets?
¿Hay alguno en el que absolutamente vaya a haber superposición entre los usuarios de tickets de ayuda y los usuarios del foro de la comunidad?
¿Es esto siquiera posible sin un carretilla llena de advertencias?

[merefield (Robert)]

Como opción para este tipo de caso de uso (y muchos más), escribí el siguiente plugin:

Discourse Workflow

Summary A workflow system for Topics that implements a configurable multi-stage process Repository Link https://github.com/merefield/discourse-workflow Install Guide How to install plugins in Discourse Enjoying this plugin? Please it on GitHub ! [A person in a business suit is writing on a piece of paper with a pen at a table, pointing at a graph. (Captioned by AI)] [The image depicts a purchasing workflow t…

El cual puedes configurar en una Categoría (y sus Subcategorías) y darle permisos de tal manera que se mantenga fuera de la vista principal de la Comunidad.

[tknospdr (David Muszynski)]

Agradezco la información. ¿Conoces algún artículo de “Cómo hacerlo” que fusione este artículo con tu plugin para que los novatos como yo puedan ponerlo en marcha?

[nathank (Nathan Kershaw)]

La otra opción es este plugin bien establecido del equipo de Communiteq:

Private Topics Plugin

Summary Private Topics Enables private topics in a regular category Repository Link GitHub - communiteq/discourse-private-topics Install Guide How to install plugins in Discourse Features This plugin allows you to add an extra security setting to categories so that users can only access their own topics. You can also designate one or more groups that can see all topics in the category. This is typically used for providin…

Esto resuelve el problema descrito anteriormente de manera excelente.

[tknospdr (David Muszynski)]

Entiendo, ¿y esto funcionará junto con los usuarios en etapas que crearán principalmente “tickets” en el sistema, como se describe en el cuerpo principal de esta publicación?

[mcwumbly (Dave McClure)]

También compartiré que usamos nuestra meta comunidad aquí de esta manera en Discourse.

Cuando los clientes nos envían un correo electrónico, en lugar de que vaya a una categoría como se describe aquí^[1], crea un mensaje privado aquí en una bandeja de entrada grupal que usamos como nuestro sistema de tickets. Hemos agregado algunos adornos ligeros a la vista de la bandeja de entrada con el tiempo para ayudar con eso, pero en su mayoría estamos utilizando las funciones integradas.

Los elementos esenciales de nuestro flujo de trabajo son 1) usar una bandeja de entrada grupal donde cualquier miembro del equipo de soporte pueda responder 2) archivar los mensajes privados cuando hayamos manejado la respuesta más reciente.

Cuando un cliente responde, el mensaje privado archivado se devuelve automáticamente a la bandeja de entrada para que todo el equipo lo vea nuevamente.

El equipo también puede susurrar en estos mensajes privados para colaborar entre sí, y recientemente hemos comenzado a experimentar también con susurros de IA, donde se comparte investigación inicial con el equipo por adelantado.

---

1. También usamos categorías privadas en ciertos casos, pero eso es ahora más la excepción que la regla; el flujo de trabajo de la bandeja de entrada grupal es lo que se ha convertido en la norma para nosotros. ↩︎

[tknospdr (David Muszynski)]

@schungx

REENVIAR todos los correos electrónicos a esas cuentas específicas a la cuenta de correo electrónico MAESTRA. Por ejemplo, se debe crear un reenvío automático para reenviar todo el correo recibido por wonderful_product@support.example.com a master@support.example.com.

Para aquellos de nosotros que tenemos que pagar por cuenta de correo electrónico, ¿pueden crear una única cuenta maestra de soporte y simplemente crear alias de las direcciones individuales en esa cuenta?

Ahora mismo, mi cuenta principal tiene, creo, 12 alias, algunos incluso de diferentes nombres de dominio. El correo electrónico enviado a cualquiera de esas direcciones va a mi cuenta real.

¿Funcionaría eso para este propósito?

[tknospdr (David Muszynski)]

[quote=“Walker_Blackwell, post:2, topic:72268”]El problema surge después de invitar al usuario a ser miembro del foro. Cuando son cualquier cosa que NO sea anónimo o provisional, de repente no pueden enviar un correo electrónico de solicitud de soporte a help@test.com. El correo electrónico es rechazado porque la categoría está restringida solo a administradores para ver/responder/publicar Y a usuarios anónimos/provisionales (nivel 0) para publicar.

No hay forma de permitir que un usuario de nivel 1, 2 o 3 publique/envíe correos electrónicos a la categoría sin ver realmente la categoría y todos los demás temas disponibles, ¿correcto? Al menos yo no veo cómo solucionarlo.

[/quote]

Sé que es una pregunta muy antigua, pero no vi que nadie más la respondiera y creo que tengo la solución. Al menos a mí me funciona. No sé si hay alguna consecuencia imprevista al hacer esto porque recién estoy empezando, pero aquí tienen.

Me gustaba la idea de categorías frente a grupos, así que seguí esta guía de configuración, pero también quería tener un foro abierto y me encontré con el mismo problema mencionado anteriormente.

Si buscas email settings in en administración, encontrarás la página a continuación. Muestra un nivel de confianza 2 necesario para que los usuarios creen publicaciones por correo electrónico.

Los usuarios provisionales omiten ese requisito, pero una vez que se convierten en usuarios completos, siguen siendo de nivel de confianza 0 y el correo electrónico falla. Así que simplemente elimina TL2 y agrega TL0 y listo.

Hice esto junto con el uso del Plugin de Temas Privados enlazado arriba para que los usuarios también puedan solicitar soporte directamente en el sitio web y ya casi he terminado.

Solo necesito integrar de forma ordenada las etiquetas de prioridad y estado y creo que estaremos listos.

[RGJ (Richard - Communiteq)]

[quote=“Walker_Blackwell, post:2, topic:72268”]El problema surge después de que he invitado al usuario a ser miembro del foro. Cuando son cualquier cosa que NO sea anónimo o staged, de repente no pueden enviar un correo electrónico de solicitud de soporte […] El correo electrónico es rechazado porque la categoría está restringida solo a administradores para ver/responder/publicar Y a usuarios anónimos/staged para publicar.
[/quote]

[quote=“tknospdr, post:17, topic:72268”]Hice esto junto con el uso del Plugin de Temas Privados enlazado arriba.
[/quote]

¡Sí, eso es exactamente para lo que se hizo ese plugin!

[nathank (Nathan Kershaw)]

El plugin de Temas Privados es brillante para esto, pero tiene una debilidad importante: solo puede permitir un usuario por Tema. Esto significa que no puedes añadir otros usuarios al Tema sin revelarles todos los temas de esa categoría.

La solución es convertir ese Tema a un MP (Mensaje Privado), o si es apropiado moverlo a una ubicación más abierta. Pero sería genial poder especificar otros usuarios (y/o grupos) que puedan acceder a ese tema específico. Requeriría una solución bastante compleja, creo.

@mcwumbly

Los elementos esenciales de nuestro flujo de trabajo son 1) usar una bandeja de entrada grupal donde cualquier miembro del equipo de soporte pueda responder 2) archivar los MP cuando hayamos gestionado la respuesta más reciente.

Usar el sistema de MP para este caso de uso es bastante potente y flexible (y permite incorporar a otros usuarios); sin embargo, también tiene una debilidad importante: está aislado del Foro propiamente dicho. Esto es un problema mucho mayor en sitios más pequeños sin personas dedicadas a gestionar el flujo de trabajo de soporte, ya que tiende a notificar en exceso o a quedar enterrado.

[RGJ (Richard - Communiteq)]

@nathank

Usar el sistema de Mensajes Privados (PM) para este caso de uso es bastante potente y flexible (y permite incorporar a otros usuarios); sin embargo, también tiene una debilidad importante: está aislado del foro propiamente dicho.

Sí, ese es, de hecho, mi principal problema. El plugin de Temas Privados está lejos de ser ideal y los mensajes personales ofrecen más flexibilidad con respecto a la capacidad de invitar a otros usuarios a la discusión.

Pero, después de todos estos años, los problemas persistentes con los mensajes personales siguen ahí:

• No hay un filtro de etiquetas global. El filtro de etiquetas en la barra lateral solo muestra temas que no son PM. Podrías crear otro enlace, pero siempre será por buzón.
• Etiquetar mensajes personales no funciona de manera intuitiva y está limitado debido a una implementación inconsistente.
• La experiencia de usuario (UX) me sigue confundiendo.
  • No entiendo cuándo un mensaje está en Enviados y cuándo está en Recientes.
  • La redacción no es clara.
  • Todavía me resulta difícil configurar buzones grupales (por ejemplo, Group inboxes not appearing).
• La búsqueda es engorrosa.
  • Search for messages that involve (both from and to) a user
  • Debes añadir el filtro de búsqueda explícitamente, excepto cuando estás en mensajes, por lo que se siente realmente aislado.