Because of the “toolkit” design of Cerb4, we can have a heck of a time creating solid documentation for the software. As it stands very little is as simple as click this button and it works, and instead a lot of the cool features require you to combine several building blocks into one workflow. For example, to create a priority system for your preferred clients, more than likely you’ll need to use mail routing to filter tickets into corresponding “tiers”, apply custom fields to organize the high-end ones separately, and then use workspaces so your workers can find these tickets and answer them first.

This open-ended structure, which has the benefit of catering to very personalized workflows, has forced 99% of our documentation to follow that philosophy: “How to do A, B, and C with X, Y, and Z”. Don’t get me wrong, that’s a good thing since most new users would be lost if we didn’t explain anything in context. But it’s not ideal for everybody! This is especially true for those who want to look up information on a specific button in the interface (e.g. ticket custom fields), versus figuring out how that button fits into the bigger picture and searching for that topic (e.g. priority response targets). I personally like to write the latter style of tutorial because in my opinion it is the best, and perhaps only, way to really showcase the benefits of Cerb4.

But given we have an expansive (and still growing) catalog of these types, I think it’s finally a good time to focus on the other style of documentation. The lead developer has mentioned to me several times in the past that it would be a good idea to do a screen-by-screen walkthrough of Cerb4. Before I didn’t think it was as practical given that nothing would make sense unless we had gigantic “asides” explaining how you use a toggle to construct a particular workflow. What should be a simple screenshot with a bullet point list, would explode into a cluttered mess of tutorials, disclaimers, and detailed explanations.

With the progress we’ve made in our docs, now for the most part, I can safely skim over each function on a page and then just give you a link to more details. Finally, we can get the best of both worlds!

So this new series of “Screen-by-Screen” blog posts are going to be a numbered set — that way I can link the posts together as sort of a slideshow you can page through: 1 -> 2 -> (…) . Each will have a screenshot at the top to indicate where to click to find the page, followed by a group of smaller, focused clips breaking down each noteworthy button, field, or description. If we have a more in-depth article I’ll include a link out.

Hopefully when all is said and done, this will keep things nice and lean!

Mail Setup

• Click ‘helpdesk setup’, the ‘Mail Setup’ tab.

This section is for configuring almost all of the e-mail functionality related to downloading and sending new mail. If you need to specify what company mailbox is to be polled for new messages, it’s here. If you need to clarify what SMTP server to send mail out of, it’s here. And then there’s a couple of smaller things too like disabling attachments or changing the default outgoing signature.

Incoming Mail Server

Probably the most important configuration you need to put Cerb4 into production is the incoming mail server(s). This is where you can add, modify or delete the POP3/IMAP accounts you use to pull new mail into the Helpdesk.

• add new mail server: Refreshes the “edit” page on the right, so you can create a new mailbox. Click the ‘Nickname’ of one of your existing accounts to modify or delete it.
• Enabled: If this is unchecked, Cerb4 will not try to download mail from this account.
• Nickname: Arbitrary name to to identify this mailbox. Click the name on the left sidebar (e.g. “Helpdesk QA WGM”) to make changes.
• Protocol: POP3, POP3-SSL, IMAP, or IMAP-SSL
• Test Mailbox: After you’ve entered all the POP3 or IMAP login details, click this button to check if the mailbox is working.

Because you do not add a mail server during Cerb4 installation, you must configure one in conjunction with the ‘Scheduler’ tab to actually fetch new mail. For more information on the entire process and a few recommendations on using IMAP properly and a “one mailbox setup”, see Downloading real mail into your Helpdesk for the first time.

Incoming Mail Preferences

• Reply to All and Always Exclude These Recipients: When this option is turned OFF, the Helpdesk will only send replies back to the original sender. When turned ON everyone in the ‘to’ and ‘cc’ list will get your responses — although you can be a little selective by entering addresses you don’t want to respond to in the exclude box. This particular feature really requires a halfway decent explanation to understand why we’ve restricted replies to “one way or the other”. But there’s just not enough room here to go over it, so please read Where’s my “reply to all” button? for more information.
• Maximum Attachment Size: Note that size limitations can also be dictated by your php.ini settings, which Cerb4 cannot override unfortunately. This means you may need to take the “techie” route and make changes to the php.ini file as well. The Helpdesk has a built-in phpinfo page [http://example.com/cerb4/(index.php)/debug/phpinfo] you can load to verify the configs that influence attachment sizes. The most obvious place to start is the upload_max_filesize but there are additional settings such as max_post_size, max_execution_time, max_input_time, and memory_limit that can play a part. So increase the 10 MB limit in the Helpdesk and then increase some of the other options gradually through the php.ini file.

Outgoing Mail Server

Mostly just the technical details you should be familiar with regarding SMTP. Hopefully your knowledgeable enough to decide what’s best for you environment, although I imagine the defaults can work for most people. Unlike the incoming mail server, the basic configuration should have been completed during the Cerb4 install.

• SMTP Authentication: If your server requires a username and password, turn ON this checkbox.
• SMTP Timeout and Maximum Deliveries Per SMTP Connection: If you need to change the “advanced” settings which were not part of the install process.
• Test SMTP: Like the ‘Test Mailbox’ button above, this checks if the SMTP settings are correct.
• Save Changes: If you make any changes be sure to save them (the button is at the bottom of the page off-screen).

Default Outgoing Mail Preferences

This information is the global “from/reply to” data and the signature for all your outbound e-mail. All three can be overridden on a group-basis in ‘group setup’, ‘Mail Preferences’, but make sure you have something usable filled in just in case a group does not have its own settings.

• By default, reply to mail as: (E-mail Address): MAKE SURE NO MATTER WHAT that you have a legit address here corresponding to one of your incoming mailboxes. During installation you should have added this, but you might assume you’re covered by your group overrides and attempt to remove it — don’t chance it! If you have no leftover address, just use one of the addresses you associated with another group. There’s two problems you risk running into if a message somehow goes out without a reply-to address…
  1. Customer replies may not make it back to the Helpdesk.
  2. You see an influx of “ghost” tickets. What we mean by “ghost”, is that Cerb4 visually cannot display the ticket because it fails to associate it with an internal Helpdesk address. The first evidence you’ll find is the group totals are higher than the actual tickets you see, e.g. ‘Overview’ shows there are 5 tickets in Dispatch, however you can only see 3 tickets in your list. If you’ve already been bitten by this oversight, post in our forums and a developer should be able to help you recover those lost tickets.
• By default, reply to mail as: (Personal Name): The “friendly” name you see in your inbox, usually the company name would go here.
• Default E-mail Signature: The tagline in your outgoing e-mails. The free (non-community) version of Cerb4 will also append OUR company’s tagline to the bottom of your replies.

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• E-mail Signature Variables: To personalize the name and job title in the signature of the worker replying, choose the right #tokens# and they will be replaced with the proper values upon sending.
• Insert E-mail Signatures: This controls whether the signature is inserted above or below the (> quoted) text in your replies. Since you can always delete or re-position the signature manually with the ‘Insert Signature’ button or a simple copy & paste, this is just the default preference for convenience. Note this setting applies to everyone, it cannot be changed per worker or per group.

Next up is Screen-by-Screen #2 the ‘Scheduler’ tab.

-joegeck@wgm