Tips & Tricks

From Cerberus Helpdesk Wiki

Contents 1 Ticket Reply Notifications to IM 1.1 Create an RSS Feed in Cerberus 1.1.1 Running a Search 1.1.2 Creating the Feed 1.2 Using the Anothr RSS Bot 2 Keyboard Shortcuts 2.1 Workspaces 3 Getting tickets via mail pipe

Ticket Reply Notifications to IM

Cerberus Helpdesk 4.0 lets you create a private RSS feed from any ticket list or search results. There are hundreds of good tools out there for managing RSS feeds -- something for everyone. Sometimes the best way to make everyone happy is to adhere to standards so people have infinite choices.

This is a mashup of Cerberus Helpdesk, Google Talk and Anothr.

Create an RSS Feed in Cerberus

Running a Search

First we need to build our search. Let's make a list of all open tickets with customer replies to messages we've sent:

• Click mail in the top navigation menu.
• Click search in the mail sub-menu.
• Click reset in the Current Criteria section on the left.
• From Current Criteria add the following:
  • Status: Open
  • Last Action: Customer Reply
  • Last Worker: [yourself]

Creating the Feed

Now that we have our search results we can turn our ticket view into an RSS feed. This feed will follow the same criteria as our search so we can receive updates when the list changes.

• Click the orange RSS button to the right of the search results blue header.
• When the form appears, name your feed: My Replies
• Click the Save Changes button.

You'll now be taken to a page showing your RSS feeds.

Using the Anothr RSS Bot

Now that we have a URL to an RSS feed of customer replies we need something to tell us when the feed changes.

• Open up Google Talk.
• Add a new buddy: anothr@gmail.com
• The Anothr RSS Bot should send you a message. The Anothr service doesn't require you to create an account. They can track you by your IM nickname.
• Paste your new Cerberus RSS feed's URL (from the last step of the above section) into the bot's chat window. It should send a confirmation that it has started watching your feed.

You'll now receive an IM when your feed changes, including links to each updated ticket that will quickly spawn a new web browser. This is really efficient if you've logged into Cerberus Helpdesk previously and have an active session.

That's it!

The Anothr RSS Bot has a useful list of commands so you can control it entirely from the chat window.

So far the process I've been using is creating a couple RSS feeds from Cerberus (new team tickets, my replies, etc.) and adding them all to the bot individually. It has the ability to pause/unpause feeds, so if you find yourself busy and overloaded you can type list and then pause 2. Later on you can type replay all.

You'll probably also want to send the command timer 5 so you're not waiting forever for updates.

NOTE: By default Anothr will share your feed information from your profile. Type 'list' and click the link at the bottom to change this.

Enjoy!

-Jeff@WGM

Keyboard Shortcuts

Workspaces

n - Next Group
r - Refresh

Getting tickets via mail pipe

In Cerberus, downloading tickets and inserting tickets into the system are separate actions. This allows for a great level of flexibility because all you need to do in order to have a mail processed is dump a file named <random-stuff-here>.msg in storage/mail/new and have the cron jobs run.

If you do not like to create an IMAP or POP account for Cerberus, and instead use forwarders. Just configure your mail server of choice (for example through cPanel, just add a forwader and point it to a script) to forward a mail to the following script

#!/usr/local/bin/php

<?php
function secure_tmpname($postfix = '.tmp', $prefix = 'tmp', $dir = null) {
	if (!isset($dir)) {
		$dir = getcwd();
	}

	$sysFileName = tempnam($dir, $prefix);
	
	if ($sysFileName === false) {
		return false;
	}
	
	$newFileName = $sysFileName . $postfix;
	if ($sysFileName == $newFileName) {
		return $sysFileName;
	}
	
	$newFileCreated = (@link($sysFileName, $newFileName));
	unlink ($sysFileName);
	
	if ($newFileCreated) {
		return $newFileName;
	}

	return false;
}

define('CERB_PATH', '/path/to/cerberus');
define('CERB_NEWMAIL_PATH', CERB_PATH.'/storage/mail/new');
$mail = file_get_contents('php://stdin');
$mail_name = secure_tmpname('.msg', '', CERB_NEWMAIL_PATH);
$mail_file = fopen($mail_name, "w");
fwrite($mail_file, $mail);
fclose($mail_file);
chmod($mail_name, 0666);
?>

Make sure to make the script executable and setup the permissions so that it can create files in the storage directory.