Sales and support monitoring tool for WHMCS
A growing sales and support requirement inevitably leads to more hands on keyboards which is also the most expensive side of technology, so anything that can help better utilise the human resources already available can be a godsend.
WHMCS support module has matured to something very usable, with two caveats. First it seems a shame the authors have not heeded the calls for the ability to send rich media replies and thus incorporate videos and images in predefined replies. Their excuse that you can send a link to those if you wish is nothing short of lame, even worse they site “security issues” as the reason when the real reason is surely they just cannot be bothered (after all, if they have customers that agree with them, how difficult would it be to supply the solution as an option).
But I’m not here to rip them a new one, their latest release is truly fantastic and better than any other host billing system I have used, it makes Modern Billing look tedious and infezible (which indeed it is). Utilising their API and the includes/hooks folder enables unlimited customisation, indeed I have bent it to supplying electronic products and license management with great results.
The second caveat is the lack of an alert system. Up until recently I used a very old Kayako support system but the balance of power is back in WHMCS court except that Kayako had a simple “flashing beeping” thingy that would notify you when a new ticket or customer reply had been received. It was a basic product and rather featureless yet it did an important job and as I missed it so much decided to write one for WHMCS.
Ticket Review (setup.msi) Windows Setup MSI, download and double click.
Ticket Review (manual) Zip file contains program EXE, a php file and readme.txt with instructions for manual installation.
Installation Instructions
Ticket Review monitors up to two support departments in WHMCS and alerts you of a new ticket by changing the color of the system tray icon and optionally playing a wav file too. Ticket Review can be used by an unlimited number of sales and support staff.
1. Unzip and place files in a directory.
2. Upload ticketreview.php to your WHMCS install direcory on your host webserver.
Configuration
To configure your application double click the Ticket Review.exe When you first run the application you need to complete some of the fields. The Tickets Link is the URL to your WHMCS and will look something like this:-
http://yourdomain.com/client/ticketreview.php
If you only have one support ticket department you need only complete the Red Department Id. We operate two departments and allocate the Red to Sales and the Green to Support.
How to find the Department Id
Login to WHMCS as admin, the select Support Departments from the Setup dropdown. Hover your mouse over the edit icon and a link is displayed in the status bar, at the end of the link there is &id= the number following this is your department id.
How to add sound
Sometimes it is useful to add sound, if you don’t want it just leave the WAV fields blank. Google for fancy wavs to produce bings or bongs or whatever takes your fancy, I prefer to hear a voice telling me whether a sales or support ticket is in and use ATT’s Text to Speech demo tool to create a WAV which can be found here:-
http://www2.research.att.com/~ttsweb/tts/demo.php
What next?
After setup you should create a couple of test tickets to make sure it all works. If it doesn’t check the link to the PHP file is correct and try running it directly in your browser to make sure there are no errors.
What is supposed to happen?
When a new sales or support ticket arrives the icon will begin to flash. If you have added a wav that will be played each time the application checks and finds a ticket that needs your attention. This will probably get a little annoying after a while so you can delay the check by 5 minutes by double clicking the system tray icon (which will also stop flashing). The idea is this application will bug you until you answer your ticket! But you can delay that nuisance for 5 minutes as often as you like!
Support
This is a simple application and shouldn’t really need support. You can probably think of hundreds of ways in which to improve the application and while I do not wish to steal your thunder I have probably thought of them too, this application is intended to just alert you of new tickets, stats and integrating with facetwitter are all cool ideas but they don’t really improve it. However if you need a contractor to write additional features then please contact me at mwdev@ventrino.com or call UK +447850018933 and ask for Martyn
