Drupal is very useful for many people in the sense that is reliable, easy to use. This makes Drupal a very good choice for organisations who are looking for a web presence. As of today the use of internet by small businesses(SME) is limited to giving information about their company to the outside world, which acts as a advertising tool.
I would like to take this further by enabling them to give support to their customers which will be of real value to the organisaions, saving their valuable time.
My idea is to develop a support system module, which is simple and easy to use. The module should enable organisations to give support to their cusomers and solve problems using internet
These are the features that I have thought of
- ticket system - customers must be able to mail their query and the query to be logged into the system (will need additional setup)
- different categories of support should be possible - sales, billing, technical etc..
- Tickets to have different status like
(1) Open - ticket not yet viewed by support team
(2) Assigned - ticket assigned to support person
(3) Under Progress - under progress
(4) Closed - problem was addressed and ticket is closed
- mail the customer when his query is answered
- should be able to upload files along with the query
- assigning of support tickets to a specific department
and was thinking if the queries can be tagged by the support team based on subject, it will help them, say, a newbie to give support.. as in, he can go through the tickets which have similar problem and get the help to arrive at a solution from there...
Eg: say in a web hosting company,the support team has already answered the query "How to change password of mysql user using cpanel?" then answer to "how to change password of pgsql?" can be answered by looking at the former ticket.
-Prashanth
Comments
This is already covered by
This is already covered by the project* and casetracker modules. Casetracker especially is supposed to do exactly this.
If you're interested in improving either for these modules, then there may well be projects which would be in scope for SoC. I'm going to mark this as "Student proposal - needs work" since at the moment it would duplicate functionality which we already have.
Project module is very
Project module is very specific to software development. Case tracker is a more general module, but still it has its limitation. It cant be directly used for giving support. take one example... when creating a case, it asks for the name of the person,the case is to be assigned to, which really is not required, as the customer is more bothered about the solution to the problem than from where it is coming from( can be anyone from the support team). and also it asks for status of the case - open, closed, resolve-staging etc... which just confuses the customer. there are other features like this which makes it unusable for support purpose.
We need to hack this module if we intend to use it for giving support.
The support system must be as simple as possible and must be functional out of the box. Shouldn't require someone to hack the module each and everytime it is used for this purpose.
What I feel is, giving support is a general requirement and has a wide userbase. Hence requires a module specialised for this purpose. Unlike now.
Well, no.
Well, this is Summer of Code. Proper solutions in open source don't include inventing everything from scratch when requirements differ in minor details. There's already three different solutions for issue tracking in Drupal (Project*, Case Tracker, pure CCK/Views) and really, the last thing we need is yet another take on that with yet another specialization and yet another set of shortcomings. If we want to get somewhere, those solutions need to merge, not split up code and user base further.
Proper solutions in open source require that you come up with something that covers more than just your specific needs, because only then the additional value of combined effort can unfold. In this case, this would mean hacking Project* or Case Tracker so that it covers both existing needs and your additional requirements. If it isn't feasible to combine all those requirements into the same user interface, make it an API with two different user interfaces on top. But don't throw up something completely new unless the code itself is broken. That's pointless, harder to maintain, and I can guarantee you that such a proposal will be smashed by the Drupal mentors.
Remember, open source is not only about software, it's also about coming together and creating something that's bigger than what a single person or company could have achieved. Code is necessary for a module to be successful, but in order to unfold that potential, you also need communication and collaboration.
thats a better way of
thats a better way of looking at things... reusing and combing the existing code.... im having a look at this.
thank you for the suggestion.
It cant be directly used
To remove those fields you need to use hook_form_alter() in a module that would take a few minutes to write. I'd suggest doing some more research both about this specific area, and about drupal's APIs in general.
i'm working on this.. Am
i'm working on this.. Am exploring the possibility of writing a plugin which help us get the desired result
A big +1 to the general idea
A big +1 to the general idea of updating casetracker (it's something that's relatively high on my long personal wishlist), but I agree with catch - this proposal needs work, both via a more thorough investigation of casetracker, and (I'd argue) a considerably more specific proposal regarding what the final product would look like. I think the latter item is important because help systems are more or less the 'usability option of last resort' - meaning, when all else fails, people HAVE to be able to immediately grok and use the help system. I'd be willing to mentor a project like this, but I'd need a proposal that lived up to these criteria.
Also one note - IMO, Casetracker needs a LOT of work to be done on it. First and foremost, I can imagine few better candidates than casetracker for a rewrite into OOP. Whether that's the right direction or not, though, a look at casetracker_cases_overview() should be a pretty clear indication of just why casetracker is in such serious need of revisiting. Sorry if that's harsh.
updating casetracker
... is a much better idea. There's plenty of scope for a D6 upgrade and rewrite of that module, however again I'd want to see a much more clearly defined proposal for doing so.
Thank you for the
Thank you for the suggestions.
The take aways were...
- to focus on reusability of code... build apis to get desired results...
- rewrite of casetracker
- upgrade to drupal 6
- make the module more general
Shortcomings of my proposal
- was very specific
- was a complete redoing of existing code... reinventing the wheel
I would like to focus on reusing the existing code as much as possible and write a more general module for drupal 6. Upgrade case tracker module to drupal 6, and add features which makes it useable for support system as well(ease of use).
I am working on this and will upload the new praposal soon.(as my exams are going on,might not be able to do so, please expect upto 2 days delay)
yo
Sounds a lot better imho :)
Note that Google's submission deadline for applications is Monday, April 7, 24:00 UTC - in other words, tomorrow midnight plusminus a few hours, depending on your timezone. So if you submit this in two days, you won't get it into the Google web app, and thus the application probably won't be accepted. Hard to tell you to hurry up (I know exams might be hard), but make sure to submit your application (update) to Google in time.
New proposal
thanks jpetso..
was able to upload the new proposal....
More and more businesses are coming online everyday. As of now most of these limit the use of interent to web presence. They can capitalise interent even more by giving support to their customers throught their websites. This enables them to save time(and hence money), at the same time helping the customers by giving them an additional channel for getting help.
Having a module which can enable the same in drupal is a huge plus. This means they can give support to their customers through their website itself, without having to buy a support system software and also removes them the head ache of integrating that with their website.
Instead of just developing a module which can give support,the Project is to more general purpose module which is ease to use and easy to customise for different requirement.
The casetracker module has the required basic functionality to achieve the same. Hence by making it a more general purpose module and adding functionality and at the same time upgrading it to drupal 6 will help address the problem.
The present case tracker module is a more generalised version of project module, but still it has its limitations. It cant be directly used for different purpose other than bug tracking, say, support system.
The idea is to make it more general purpose and also enable us to easily customise it for specific purpose, by just choosing different options from the admin panel.