Force all support tickets to be opened from website only

[evolvewh]

Is there a way to force all tickets to be opened through the website only and if someone tries to by sending an email, automatically send an email back saying that they have to visit the site to open and reply to tickets?

I know I can not setup piping but I also need to send the message back to them telling them that a ticket hasn't been opened and how to do so.

[Paul]

For the department, select None for Email Handling. The email template "Ticket Bounce" is sent when a ticket cannot be opened, but this assumes the response would be processed by Blesta at all. So, I'd probably suggest a no-reply@ address, and make that clear in your email templates that tickets must be updated via the UI.

[evolvewh]

15 hours ago, Paul said:

For the department, select None for Email Handling. The email template "Ticket Bounce" is sent when a ticket cannot be opened, but this assumes the response would be processed by Blesta at all. So, I'd probably suggest a no-reply@ address, and make that clear in your email templates that tickets must be updated via the UI.

I think this is going to be a great change for us and I appreciate the information on how to make it happen!

[evolvewh]

Unless I've done something wrong when implementing the noreply@ address, the tickets are still piping even when originally sent as an email instead of opening a ticket through the website. I did turn piping off for each department and I used noreply@ for the ticket bounce template. Which address should I be using for each department? I figured I would use the true department email since a client can respond to the email after an admin has made the first reply to a new ticket.

[Paul]

25 minutes ago, evolvewh said:

Unless I've done something wrong when implementing the noreply@ address, the tickets are still piping even when originally sent as an email instead of opening a ticket through the website. I did turn piping off for each department and I used noreply@ for the ticket bounce template. Which address should I be using for each department? I figured I would use the true department email since a client can respond to the email after an admin has made the first reply to a new ticket.

Did you remove the email forwarder on your server that directs output to pipe.php? You can use whatever address you want for each department, it should just be unique. Since you aren't expecting any inbound email from those addresses, they shouldn't be forwarded into the system. If you want to send a bounce-response, you could configure your email server to set an auto responder with a message.

[evolvewh]

2 hours ago, Paul said:

Did you remove the email forwarder on your server that directs output to pipe.php? You can use whatever address you want for each department, it should just be unique. Since you aren't expecting any inbound email from those addresses, they shouldn't be forwarded into the system. If you want to send a bounce-response, you could configure your email server to set an auto responder with a message.

I didn't remove the forwarder because I'm still wondering how someone who doesn't have a registered account would reply after they receive the first reply from us (not the autoresponder message). Wouldn't they need to then respond to the email they get and then that message would get piped into Blesta?

Our main reason for doing this is to force clients to actually open a ticket to the correct support department and to stop forwarding un needed emails and attachments to us. We're also able to remind them on the department page that we need login details and any other specific information when they submit the initial ticket. It has turned into a real mess for us in having to move tickets to other departments, sending additional emails to request information that we should be able to get in the first message, etc. It's become very inefficient for us.

I'm really hoping to make the Blesta support system work better for us because I don't like having multiple logins for clients, additional software for us to maintain, etc but maybe I'll come to find out that we need to look into a different support ticket solution.

 

P.S. This is not a message to complain about the existing system. It's more to learn what is possible in terms of altering the way it works to fit our needs a bit better.

[Paul]

Oh, so you want people to reply to tickets via email but not open them via email? Currently the system doesn't work that way, though I imagine you could have someone modify the support manager for that purpose.

[evolvewh]

31 minutes ago, Paul said:

Oh, so you want people to reply to tickets via email but not open them via email? Currently the system doesn't work that way, though I imagine you could have someone modify the support manager for that purpose.

Right now, I figure they're going to be mad enough that they can't open tickets via email so a compromise is to still allow them to reply via email. Right now, if I were to take away the ability to reply via email, I don't see how a non registered client could track the status of their ticket(s) and reply to them.

[Paul]

The "Ticket Updated" email template contains a tag: https://{update_ticket_url} that I am pretty sure has the full URL to the ticket.

[evolvewh]

1 hour ago, Paul said:

The "Ticket Updated" email template contains a tag: https://{update_ticket_url} that I am pretty sure has the full URL to the ticket.

Thanks for the reminder about that email tag.

I removed the forwarder and set the department to no piping but the system won't send a bounced email to the sender. I appreciate all of your help and I'm going to do some exploring to see if a solution like this even exists or not.

[Paul]

58 minutes ago, evolvewh said:

Thanks for the reminder about that email tag.

I removed the forwarder and set the department to no piping but the system won't send a bounced email to the sender. I appreciate all of your help and I'm going to do some exploring to see if a solution like this even exists or not.

You're welcome. My suggestion for a bounce not being sent is to set up an auto responder for that mailbox on your mail server that sends an automated reply like "Please visit http://.... to open a ticket. If you're trying to respond to an existing ticket, use the link provided in the email for the ticket."

[evolvewh]

On 3/2/2017 at 3:19 PM, Paul said:

You're welcome. My suggestion for a bounce not being sent is to set up an auto responder for that mailbox on your mail server that sends an automated reply like "Please visit http://.... to open a ticket. If you're trying to respond to an existing ticket, use the link provided in the email for the ticket."

Thanks for all of your tips here. I ended up turning off piping, removing the forwarders and creating the auto responder emails. I also updated the Blesta email templates and notified our clients of the changes.

I'm really hoping this stops a lot of our headaches that were being created (not because of Blesta).