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Helpdesk Integration

** WORK IN PROGRESS - DEVELOPMENT NOTES **

As an IXP scales, it will eventually have to replace email support via a simple alias / shared IMAP mailbox with a proper ticketing system. After extensive (and painful!) research, we at INEX chose Zendesk as the system that most matched our budget and required features (1).

While your mileage may vary on this - or you may already have something else - please note that the reference implementation for helpdesk integration on IXP Manager is Zendesk. So, if you haven't already chosen one, Zendesk will provide maximum integration with minimal pain.

Please do not open a feature request for other helpdesk implementations as the authors cannot undertake such additional work. If you wish to have integration with another helpdesk implemented, please consider commercial support

Features Supported

IXP Manager currently supports:

  • creation and update of customers / organisations in Zendesk
  • creation and update of contacts / users in Zendesk
  • finding tickets by customer / organisation

Work that is in progress includes:

  • allow users to create, update and close tickets in IXP Manager
  • list all tickets per organisation (for admins and users)

Configuration

As Zendesk is the only implementation currently, this refers only to Zendesk.

Zendesk

You need to enable API access to Zendesk as follows:

  1. Log into your Zendesk account
  2. On the bottom left, click the Admin icon
  3. Under Channels select API
  4. Enable the Token Access and add a token

With your Zendesk login and the token from above, edit the .env file in the base directory of IXP Manager and set:

HELPDESK_BACKEND=zendesk
HELPDESK_ZENDESK_SUBDOMAIN=ixp
HELPDESK_ZENDESK_TOKEN=yyy
HELPDESK_ZENDESK_EMAIL=john.doe@example.com

You can now test that your settings are correct with: FIXME

Implementation Development

The helpdesk implementation in IXP Manager is designed using contracts and service providers. I.e. it is done The Right Way (tm).

The reference implementation is for Zendesk but it's coded to a contract (interface) at app/Contracts/Helpdesk.php.

The actual Zendesk implementation can be found at: app/Services/Helpdesk/Zendesk.php.

The good news here is if you want another helpdesk supported, you just need to:

  • create an implementation like the Zendesk one above
  • update the switch() statement in app/Providers/HelpdeskServiceProvider.php
  • open a pull request for IXP Manager and this documentation

(1) Actually, Zendesk wasn't our first ticketing system. For a number of years we used Cerb but it didn't stay current in terms of modern HTML UI/UX and it suffered from feature bloat. One requirement for our replacement was a decent API and with Zendesk's API we were able to migrate all our old tickets using this script.