We get questions all the time about how to use Cerb4, and whether x workflow can be done, or y configured in a certain way. The truth is, it’s very difficult to build a piece of software that meets everyone’s needs ‘out of the box’. To combat this, we’ve built the software with a ‘Toolkit’ mentality. We talk a lot about this toolkit mentality, and while it is a great feature it leaves a single pitfall – documentation! It’s difficult to apply the ‘regular’ type of documentation to a piece of software that can be used in so many different ways. That being said, ‘Cookbook’ is our attempt at such a feat! Instead of explaining each and every little thing (we like to leave that to our excellent Screen-by-Screen articles), we instead explain a way to accomplish specific workflows and patterns. These Cookbook recipes are not our attempt at the be-all-end-all style of documentation, instead we want to enable you to understand the software on your own to the point that you will be able to create your own workflows without needing our guidance at every step. Without further ado, I present to you our existing Cookbook recipes. We have several recipes currently, and we are working hard to add more. Our latest cookbook recipe covers setting up a worklist for Sent Mail. Keep checking back on the blog for more Cookbook news!

Saving a worklist’s “sort by column” preference is an interesting feature because while the concept has been around forever, technically it just came out officially with the 4.3 release. What do I mean exactly? Well the “sort by” preference has always been available in Cerb4 for those who were lucky enough to figure it out; often in the forums I would explain how it works for anyone asking. However there was a catch, I always had to preface my tutorial with it doesn’t work everywhere. Not only could you expect to see things like the Helpdesk reverting your Overview preferences between sessions (logins), other times Cerb4 wouldn’t even remember your setting when you clicked away from a tab.

Well the good news is the developers fixed the entire system in 4.3 and now this Hidden Gem! should work as advertised. And even though we simply fixed a bad “bug”, I like to think of it as a brand new feature that we can actively promote now for the first time… maybe ever!

Customize and Save

So here’s the deal. To save your “sort by” preference for THAT worklist, start by changing the sort order of one of your available columns. Just like traditional software, click the column name to change the up and down arrow to set either chronological or reverse chronological order.

The important part people forget, and why this is such a good “tip”, is the change is only temporary until you click ‘customize’ and save changes. Note you don’t have to make any other modifications, just save.

The next time you log in, the sort order should stay the same.

Multiple Steps: Adding a new column AND sorting by it

For the record, “sort by” is one of three preferences that now successfully hold in 4.3, the other two are Columns and Rows Per Page, which you can tweak in the ‘customize’ menu you passed through earlier. As you know already, only a default subset of columns are used for each worklist. So what happens if you want to expose a new column and then sort by it instead? Unfortunately there is no shortcut and you’ll have to make “customize” a two-step process.

Let’s pretend I want to add the ‘Due’ column to the “Waiting” list and sort those “reopen” dates in chronological order.

Click ‘customize’, add your new column to the active list, and save changes.

Then apply the correct “sort order” to the new column by clicking the ‘Due’ column. To show the tickets ready to reopen first, the arrow points up.

Finally click ‘customize’ again, and save changes once more.

Not the most intuitive solution, as I’ll admit I often forget to “customize” twice too. Just remember you always need to save after you set your sort order!

P.S. As you can tell by my introduction, we have obviously had a bad track record with this bug. So please post any new “dead spots” you may find in the comments, and we will check them out immediately. Thanks!

-joegeck@wgm

If you’ve been to the old Knowledgebase tutorials lately, either on the blog (part 1 and part 2), or the carbon copy placed on the wiki, then you’ll realize how your Helpdesk looks nothing like the images.

Despite all the confusion and questions we were getting about the old documentation and how to set up the Knowledgebase in versions 4.2+, I wanted to wait until 4.3 was released before updating the guide. The Support Center configuration page had a couple new module options (Everyone/Logged In/Disabled) that I wanted to account for. If I had tackled this project a couple of weeks ago I would have had to replace the screenshots yet again, as things were going to look differently in the near future.

So today I just wanted to post that I’ve updated the wiki to be current with 4.3 and should be much more helpful for those new to Cerb4. Here’s the new permanent URL. Please refer to this for all your Knowledgebase questions and ignore the old blog posts.

http://wiki.cerb4.com/wiki/Using_the_Knowledgebase_to_share_resources_the_way_you_want

Thanks everyone for your patience and I hope the new guide serves you even better than before!

-joegeck@wgm