[Phpgroupware-developers] Usefull addons ?

[M . vanDorp]

 Dear All
 
 I came across phpgroupware a few months ago, and I'm impressed by its
 capabilities. After testing it for a few months, I came up with some
 usefull additions (mainly to TTS). 
 
 1) Submitting TTS-tickets through email

It seems logical to use a special mailbox for this, which is read by a
(modified?) mail client. When opening such a mail, the relevant fields
are copied to the input fields from the add form of TTS. The support
engineer kan make modifications, if neccesary, and finally submit it
into TTS. Ofcourse the original submitter will get an email
notification of this action, knowing the request is being processed.
This is also a reason to add an extra field into the TTS database, such
as 'submitter' or 'customer' or so. In a real TTS environment, there
are three relevant parties:
a) The one with the problem
b) The dispatcher of all problems (mostly a manager)
c) The technician(s) resolving the problem

In the current implementation only b) and c) are supported.

I think this should be done by a member of a special group, say
'Support Managers', so ACLs should be used here.


This is how I think I can fit TTS into our organisation ( a small
company with 4 people resolving Internet- and network-related problems).



2) The ability for the customer to view the status of the submitted tickets
 (only those submitted by customer). I think this is a special view
 option. Perhaps this is already implemented, but I haven't figured out
 yet how to do this.
 


3)  Tracking worktime with each support call

The billing hours field within TTS is not very convenient. The worktime
is only known after completion of a (sub-) tsak. 

As we sell support-hours in advance, which can be consumed in a
specific period of time, I was thinking of the following:

A special table with the the following structure:

ttsplus_call table:
call_id         integer         just an unique identifier
customer_id     integer         a reference to the customer
ticket_id       integer         a reference to the tts ticket number
worktime        integer         Time worked for this call
status          char(1)         status character

This table is filled with an entry for every support call. You can even
fill it out while talking to the customer. It supplies the missing
fields in the TTS app.

ttsplus_support table:
support_id      integer         just an unique identifier
customer_id     integer         a reference to the customer
free_month      integer         # of free support-minutes each month
max_free        integer         max # of free support minutes
bought          integer         additional bought support minutes
expires         integer         expiry date of bought support minutes
total           integer         total available support minutes


Some services includes free support. EG. Mail services includes 15
minutes support each month, but you can only use this support in the
current and the next month, so max_free will be 30 minutes. This
prevents the free support minutes to increase too excessive, and then
be used for a totally different problem.

When you buy support (eg. when not using any product with included free
support), there is an expiry time on those support minutes. We sell
support on a regular basis (minutes per month, same mechanism as the
included free support), but also on a when-needed basis: You buy a
certain amount of minutes, which can be used in the coming next 12
months. The expires-field is used for this.

The support table is really an addon: There is no dependancy on another
app (like a TTS-ticket). This table is only used to keep track of
bought and used support minutes. Ofcourse the customer must be able to
see how many minutes there are available, and on which problems the
minutes are used (the TTS-tickets).


Anyone willing to add this ? I would try myself, but I'm not familiar
with the phpgroupware API or even OOP, so it will take quite some time
if I do this myself... I tried to find additional information, but the
relations between the different tables, and the mechanism of eg. ACLs
are not well documented.  I will write down my experiences in setting
these things up, so others can benfit from this. Are there any
special tools in use for the documentation?

Just my wishlist ( a bit late for christmas, but hey, my birthday is in
March :*), but I think there will be others finding these addons
usefull. I don't say the proposed tables/design is the perfect one, but
it does give you the idea of how I want to use this.

Any questions / feedback is appreciated, and a happy newyear for
everyone.

Regards,

Marcel

-- 
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ing. Marcel van Dorp (CCDP, CCNP+security)   http://www.wiwo.nl
WiWo Support                                 tel. 071-523 77 91
Postbus 1098                                 fax  071-523 77 94
2340 BB Oegstgeest                           gsm  0653-50 77 76
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