<![CDATA[Cerberus Helpdesk 4.0 Knowledgebase]]>

<![CDATA[Cerberus Helpdesk 4.0 Knowledgebase]]> http://www.cerberusweb.com/kb/ Fri, 09 May 2008 23:48:30 +0000 Zend_Feed http://blogs.law.harvard.edu/tech/rss <![CDATA[Where can I find the official documentation?]]> http://www.cerberusweb.com/kb/article/12 de938d1d7777d77a673d8b5d365c4744 http://wiki.cerberusdemo.com/index.php/Main_Page
]]> Wed, 23 Apr 2008 06:02:59 +0000 <![CDATA[What are the server/system requirements for Cerberus Helpdesk 4.0?]]> http://www.cerberusweb.com/kb/article/1 1761c0050469ec5b02bc6ed6e5ab93c4
Minimum:

Windows or Unix-derivative (e.g., Linux, Solaris, BSD, MacOSX)
PHP 5.1.4 or newer

With extensions:
Session, PCRE, IMAP, MailParse, mbstring, SimpleXML, GD

With php.ini settings:
File_Uploads = On
Memory_Limit = 16M
MySQL 3.23 or newer

Recommend:

Linux (Debian)
PHP 5.2.2 or newer

With extensions:

Session, PCRE, IMAP, MailParse, mbstring, SimpleXML, GD

With php.ini settings:

File_Uploads = On
Memory_Limit = 32M
MySQL 5.0 or newer

]]> Wed, 23 Apr 2008 05:59:08 +0000 <![CDATA[How do I set up a cronjob to ping the /cron page automatically?]]> http://www.cerberusweb.com/kb/article/29 9893f6bb57aa1ab292725a682189216a

lynx --source "http://localhost/cerb4/cron"
wget -O - --quiet "http://localhost/cerb4/cron"

In Windows:

You can download a binary version of wget here.
Set up a scheduled task to run:c:\wget\wget.exe --spider "http://localhost/cerb4/cron"

NOTE: if you are not using the mod_rewrite plugin for friendly URLs, then the above examples all change "cerb4/cron" to "cerb4/index.php/cron".

Keywords: cron, scheduled tasks, job]]> Wed, 23 Apr 2008 05:57:37 +0000 <![CDATA[How can I change the ticket masks to a different format?]]> http://www.cerberusweb.com/kb/article/15 e4456fe1e9ebbffb5d4fbd5d6a38efc5

Market competitors can measure your helpdesk e-mail volume by sending you e-mail every couple days and plotting how many other messages have been generated.
Your community tools are more secure if your internal IDs aren't provided. It's a lot harder to guess a random mask (with ~1.38 trillion combinations by default) than to simply add or subtract from a known valid ID.
Masks are portable. Ticket masks allow so many combinations to reference a ticket that you have a fair assurance of uniqueness when you combine multiple helpdesks into one or perform imports. A good example of this is moving tickets from Cerberus Helpdesk 3.x to 4.0. If you did any evaluation testing in 4.0 then your internal ticket IDs will likely have consumed some IDs that were used by your original data. This means any original tickets that you import will end up with a different internal ID than they used to have. This shouldn't matter unless you're giving that ID to customers as a reference (which by now we hope you understand is a bad idea!).

As long as your preferred ticket mask format can guarantee a fair amount of uniqueness on generation, meaning multiple masks can be tried until a unique one is found, then you can change the ticket mask format to anything you like.

In the file cerb4/api/Application.class.php, near line 247, you will find:
static function generateTicketMask($pattern = "CCC-CCCCC") {

$pattern is the format of the ticket mask. You can use the following tokens:

L - Random letter
N - Random number
C - Random letter or number
Y - Current year (4-digit)
M - Current month (01-12)
D - Current Day (01-31)

It's important to re-state that your ticket mask pattern should have an amount of randomness to it. Your helpdesk may receive a lot of mail in a very short time period, so purely date-driven masks won't be sufficient.

There's also another caveat: Make sure your ticket mask doesn't produce an entirely numeric number (i.e., without dashes, etc). The helpdesk can use internal IDs and masks interchangeably on most functionality, so if your mask looks like an ID you will run into trouble.

It's possible for support for more pattern tokens to be added, you can make suggestions from the project portal.

Forward-compatibility notice: This process may become a configuration setting from the GUI in a future update. It will depend on how often people seek to change the default mask pattern.]]> Wed, 23 Apr 2008 05:58:34 +0000 <![CDATA[How can I add back the ticket id/mask to the subject line on my e-mail replies?]]> http://www.cerberusweb.com/kb/article/13 0a1f6dfbdd7c4bea9099cd9f2ab34748
However, it's really easy to customize the subject line on outgoing e-mail since you have access to the full Cerb4 source code.

In the file /cerb4/api/app/Mail.php, around line 139 you will see the following code:
// Subject
if(!empty($properties['to'])) { // forward
$mail->setSubject((!empty($subject) ? $subject : $ticket->subject));
} else { // reply
$mail->setSubject('Re: ' . (!empty($subject) ? $subject : $ticket->subject));
}

Since you probably only want to prefix the subject with the ticket mask on replies (and not forwards), simply change the fifth line from:
$mail->setSubject('Re: ' . (!empty($subject) ? $subject : $ticket->subject));
to
$mail->setSubject('Re: [#' . $ticket->mask . ']: ' . (!empty($subject) ? $subject : $ticket->subject));

Want to prefix the ticket's group name as well?
$group = DAO_Group::getTeam($ticket->team_id);
$mail->setSubject(sprintf("Re: [%s #%s]: %s",
$group->name,
$ticket->mask,
(!empty($subject) ? $subject : $ticket->subject)
));

In Cerb4, the parser will no longer look for any distinguishing characteristic from the subject line. You're free to change this to any format you want.

It's important to keep in mind that if you customize Cerberus Helpdesk you should be using Subversion to update to new releases. Updating from a zip/tarball snapshot will overwrite your changes.]]> Wed, 23 Apr 2008 05:55:13 +0000 <![CDATA[Can I use Cerb4 to check a Gmail account through POP3?]]> http://www.cerberusweb.com/kb/article/28 a1e86328aff602c0b27a41b12408fc54 Forwarding & POP3). If you want to import your entire Gmail history, use the '...]]>
Server: pop.gmail.com
Port: 995
Protocol: POP3-SSL
User: you@gmail.com
Pass: (your gmail password)

Make sure POP3 is enabled for your Gmail account (Settings->Forwarding & POP3). If you want to import your entire Gmail history, use the 'Enable POP for all mail (even mail that's already been downloaded)' option. Otherwise to just download new e-mail use the 'Enable POP only for mail that arrives from now on' option.

You can set up Cerb4 POP3 accounts in Configuration->Scheduler->POP3.]]> Wed, 23 Apr 2008 05:56:31 +0000 <![CDATA[How much does Cerberus Helpdesk cost?]]> http://www.cerberusweb.com/kb/article/2 59ae7aa0f4e6cbc2d514141175793ccb
The product will operate in a free, non-expiring mode by default which has the following limitations:

Limited to 3 users.
A Cerberus Helpdesk tagline will be appended to all outgoing mail.

An owned license doesn't have these restrictions.

Discounts are available for small companies, educational institutions, non-profits and open-source projects.

The latest price sheet can be found here:
http://www.cerberusweb.com/purchase.php

Keywords: pricing, price, purchase
]]> Wed, 23 Apr 2008 05:59:16 +0000 <![CDATA[How do I make my ticket lists auto-refresh every couple minutes?]]> http://www.cerberusweb.com/kb/article/19 f15a11fd83b1a396b7e2d29223ce309c
The best way to automatically refresh a web page at a specific interval is by using a browser plug-in.

Here's a good one for Firefox:
https://addons.mozilla.org/en-US/firefox/addon/115

]]> Wed, 23 Apr 2008 06:04:40 +0000 <![CDATA[After updating, I see "Parse error: syntax error, unexpected T_SL in ... framework.config.php"]]> http://www.cerberusweb.com/kb/article/14 a7b4c37699405300ec1c338b4d8ba6f9 Parse error: syntax error, unexpected T_SL in ... framework.config.php

Conflicts are a situation where both your local copy of a file and the official version of the same file have changes on the same lines.

The best way to resolve a conflict is to edit the affected file and manually merge the changes. Generally this involves choosing the changes to keep, which requires an understanding of the code.

A quick way to resolve a conflict, assuming you don't want to keep your local changes, is to revert the file. You can do this by issuing the following command:
svn revert framework.config.php

This will remove any local changes. It's important to note when doing this to your framework.config.php file that means it will remove your configuration settings. Be sure to make a copy of the file before reverting so you can replace your database connection info.

Once you've resolved the conflict you need to tell Subversion with:
svn resolved framework.config.php

]]> Wed, 23 Apr 2008 06:03:30 +0000 <![CDATA[How do I stop getting a copy of all /cron output to my e-mail address?]]> http://www.cerberusweb.com/kb/article/33 d0445a2e3b72a57a846e93133b9ea60e /dev/null 2>&1Those new bold parts mean: >/dev/null (redirect any screen output to null -- silently ignore/des...]]>
You do that like this:

*/1 * * * * command >/dev/null 2>&1

Those new bold parts mean:

>/dev/null (redirect any screen output to null -- silently ignore/destroy it)
2>&1 (combine STDERR and STDOUT for the redirect so you get no screen output from either pipe. In some situations you'd want to only suppress output and still be emailed explicit errors from a shell script, so you'd leave this part off).

]]> Wed, 23 Apr 2008 05:55:57 +0000 <![CDATA[Is my helpdesk restricted to a specific domain or URL?]]> http://www.cerberusweb.com/kb/article/8 c5f84278726611d56b6a37d6c05313a3
You may install the helpdesk on as many domains and servers as you desire as long as its for the use of the licensed company.

That means if your company supports 5 products, you can install multiple helpdesk copies. But you cannot install multiple copies for use by other companies (such as unauthorized reselling).
]]> Wed, 23 Apr 2008 06:03:15 +0000 <![CDATA[How can I automate the update process from the command line?]]> http://www.cerberusweb.com/kb/article/22 35235295c481f8399f0327b29d1c0815 wget or lynx --source.

From your Cerb4 directory:
svn update
wget -O - --quiet "http://localhost/cerb4/update"
rm -Rf install/

To grant /update access to your script simply add your local IP to the Configuration->General->IP Security section.

Alternatively you can do an override from the AUTHORIZED_IPS_DEFAULTS setting at the bottom of the framework.config.php file. This approach works best when you're hosting several helpdesks since you can just add your local IP to the framework.config.php file from your provisioning (auto-install) script for each client.

Keywords: shell, terminal, CLI, bash, script, automation
]]> Wed, 23 Apr 2008 05:59:23 +0000 <![CDATA[How do I reset my administrator password if I've lost it?]]> http://www.cerberusweb.com/kb/article/27 cf339779ec5ff86bac18c4357f071442
To display all your users, type:
SELECT * FROM worker;

If you want to reset a password, you can do a query like:
UPDATE worker SET pass = MD5('new_password') WHERE email = 'your@email.com';

Keywords: forgot, recover, recovery]]> Wed, 23 Apr 2008 05:59:00 +0000 <![CDATA[What happened to ticket flagging in Cerb4?]]> http://www.cerberusweb.com/kb/article/26 3f8d81d2884b3ba1126b12176bacbc2f
Last Action: New Ticket, Customer Reply, Worker Reply
Next Action: What needs to happen to advance it?
Last Worker: Who acted last on the worker side?
Next Worker: Who should act next?

If you set a Next Worker on the ticket (which you can do from Preview, Display->Properties or the Reply page) then other workers should be sufficiently protected from double replies.

This also lets you assign work to other people, and filter to-do work by a specific person or just anything unassigned.

We'll probably still add some functionality for more proactive warning when two or more workers are on the same ticket and one of them is already replying.]]> Wed, 23 Apr 2008 05:57:44 +0000 <![CDATA[How do I add my company logo to the top of the helpdesk?]]> http://www.cerberusweb.com/kb/article/4 de2765d4364d765c931bc65fc0c79418 http://wiki.cerberusdemo.com/index.php/Getting_Started#Personalizing_.28Logo.2FTitle.29
]]> Wed, 23 Apr 2008 06:00:14 +0000 <![CDATA[Do my customers need to create an account to send in new tickets?]]> http://www.cerberusweb.com/kb/article/6 a11039487590d649e219a857d0e0becb
If you're worried about spam, the Contact Form Builder will not expose your e-mail address and you have the option of enabling a CAPTCHA (having users type a few letters from an image) to help reduce automated abuse of the form.
]]> Wed, 23 Apr 2008 06:01:54 +0000 <![CDATA[Does Cerberus Workstation exist in 4.0?]]> http://www.cerberusweb.com/kb/article/20 f96f710272d040d676b764ca52b7abaa
The major purpose of Workstation was to give us a place where we could try alternate interfaces and concepts without drastically changing Cerb 3.x.

With Cerb 4.0 we were able to give 9 months of thought to cleaning up all our concepts in the main interface, which deprecated the primary purpose of Workstation.

That's not to say we'll never have another alternative desktop interface for 4.x -- but it would have been a big time-waster developing it in tandem with the 4.0 web interface which was conceptually changing and improving very rapidly. The more dependencies we build in, the earlier, the fewer massive improvements/innovations we can make.

Workstation in 4.0 will really depend on customer demand more than anything.

We start by asking what the 4.x interface doesn't do well enough that leaves the door open for Workstation still? That kind of feedback is very helpful.]]> Wed, 23 Apr 2008 06:04:20 +0000