Support Tickets Setup Guide

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Support Tickets Setup Guide

Estimated reading time: 3 min

This guide provides an overview of support tickets setup in MinervaKB.

Initial configuration

First of all, you need to go to MinervaKB – Settings – Tickets and enable the type of tickets you need in your system. Make sure that the “Disable tickets” switch is not checked.

Disable tickets switch — Make sure the tickets are enabled

Then, in Tickets – User Permissions section of Settings enable the type of tickets that you plan to use – guest tickets, user tickets, or both.

Select which user groups can open support tickets

If you choose the user tickets, you’ll also need to configure which user roles are allowed to open tickets (or use the default Minerva Support User role).

Support user roles configuration for tickets

For testing purposes, the admin users are always allowed to create support tickets from the client-side.

Create Ticket page content

Next step is to create a page from which the customers will open new tickets. In the WordPress menu go to Pages – Add New. You can also use the existing page if you wish.

If you only need guest tickets, it’s enough to add one shortcode:

[mkb-create-ticket]

This will display the create ticket form to the end-user.

Example of the Create Ticket form on the client-side

You can configure the fields, labels and other settings for each type of form in MinervaKB – Form Editor and in MinervaKB – Settings – Tickets – Create Ticket Form section.

If you need to allow tickets for registered users, you might also add the following shortcode:

[mkb-login-register-form]

This one will display the login/register form when the user is not logged in. For the logged-in user, this form will be hidden.

You can configure the Login and Register forms separately in MinervaKB – Form Editor and configure the login/register form mode in MinervaKB – Settings – Tickets – Support User Registration section.

After adding the content, you can save a draft or publish the page, if everything is ready.

Create Ticket page setup

At this point, if you have published the page, the Create Ticket Form will appear for the selected user roles and they will be able to submit tickets. You may even skip the following sections unless you need additional setup.

However, you may also select this page in MinervaKB – Settings – Tickets – Create Ticket Page section in order to let our system know which page is used for new tickets.

Select the Create Ticket page in plugin settings

This will provide you with additional options, such as:

Page sidebar configuration with custom sidebar MinervaKB: Create Ticket in Appearance – Widgets. This will allow you to add specific widgets to your Create Ticket page as opposed to using generic page sidebar.
You will be able to use the [mkb-create-ticket-link] shortcode and Create Ticket Widget in Appearance – Widgets, which always point to the selected page and are hidden when the visiting user does not have permissions to open tickets.

Submit a test ticket

Next, let’s create a test ticket from the client-side. For the purpose of this guide, we’ll use the guest ticket form setup.

To create a ticket as a guest you need to open the Create Ticket page in browser Incognito tab or logout from your WordPress admin account. After that, you should be able to see the Create Ticket form.

After you fill and submit the form, you should see the success message with a direct access link for the new ticket.

Since the ticket is created by a guest user with no account, there’s no way to verify the customer on subsequent visits. That’s why the direct access link is necessary.

When you click the ticket link, you’ll be redirected to ticket template.

Single ticket template on the client-side

This is a single ticket template. It can be customized in MinervaKB – Settings – Ticket – Ticket Template. You can choose the page padding and select sidebar position. The ticket template has a dedicated sidebar (MinervaKB: Ticket) so that you can choose a unique set of widgets to display to your support users.

If you log in as admin now, you should see your test ticket in Tickets list in admin.

Linking to the Create Ticket page

Now that you have your ticket pages configured, let’s check how we can direct your customers there.

There are several possible ways:

Add Create Ticket page link directly to site menu. This can be a valid option if your site is dedicated to providing technical support.
Use [mkb-create-ticket-link] shortcode on any page, for example under KB Topics and FAQ sections. You can also use button=”1″ parameter to make it render a button and label=”Your label” to change the text for each page.
Use the Create Ticket widget on any sidebar of your site.
Use “Create ticket block for articles” or “Create ticket block for topics” options in Settings – Tickets to add links to create ticket page under KB Articles and Topics.
Use any preferred page builder module to create a styled button or link to this page.

Note, that when you use the [mkb-create-ticket-link] shortcode or Create Ticket widget, the system additionally tracks from which page the customer was referred to the new ticket form. You can see this information in the ticket info box on ticket edit screen.

Conclusion

This is a basic setup guide for tickets. Before you make it available to your users on live sites, make sure you’ve also checked and configured these important modules:

Email notifications. To select which emails are sent on different ticket events, go to MinervaKB – Settings – Email settings / Email templates.
If you allow tickets for registered users, you should probably create a Support Account page with [mkb-user-tickets-list] in it and add the Support Account Widget to your sidebars. Alternatively, you can add a Support section to WooCommerce account by enabling the appropriate option.
Configure the amount and maximum size of uploaded attachments for users, guests and agents in settings.

You should also check other available options in MinervaKB – Settings – Tickets to tweak the ticketing system to your needs.

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Next: Support Tickets: Feature Overview