What is Customer Company ?

[nima0102]

Hi
After some days work with OTRS, I am confused a little
I do not know yet, what is "Customer Company"? and what does provide for users or customers?

Thanks for any help or guidance

[SLESSARD]

It is a way to allow a Customer to see more than just his submitted tickets.
Exemple: team lead wanting to see request from all of his team members. Very nice feature but still new to me and trying to set it up.

If anyone could provide easy step to configure it that would be appreciated. I know that some tweak to the database is required

Thanks,
I will post my solution once found

[crythias]

http://forums.otrs.org/viewtopic.php?f=60&t=7531

[SLESSARD]

I need some guidance / expertise on how to go about editing the config.pm file
I followed the instructions, altered the database ok but when editing the config.pm file it crashes my otrs installation.

I get stuck at script 11.5 of the docs provided by crythias
http://doc.otrs.org/3.0/en/html/x2282.h ... mer-ids-db
# var, frontend, storage, shown (1=always,2=lite), required, storage-type, http-link, readonly
[...]
[ 'UserCustomerIDs', 'CustomerIDs', 'customer_ids', 1, 0, 'var', '', 0 ],

I'm guessing I am not putting the extra lines at the correct place in the config.pm file ...
HELP!

[crythias]

You don't actually insert "[...]"

If you're using DB, you'll need to copy the entire CustomerUser section from Defaults.pm to Config.pm. But if you want to take a chance that you'll remember the following step when you upgrade, you can simply remove the # in this line (1271?) of Defaults.pm:

Code: Select all

#            [ 'UserCustomerIDs', 'CustomerIDs', 'customer_ids', 1, 0, 'var', '', 0 ],

But, of course, the disclaimer is don't do that, because you won't remember and it will be overwritten on upgrade.

IMO, after learning about group level access to the "Company Tickets" tab, it's easier to have all the same company have the same CustomerID than to deal with customer_ids, unless Supervisor handles multiple companies.

Please also adjust your signature.

[nima0102]

Thanks for your attention "crythias".
In this post I have explained my scenario in detail.
I could not implement my needs in OTRS.

Thanks for any help or guidance

[SLESSARD]

Crythias, thanks for the added info. Will both config.pm and default.pm will be overwritten ??
I definitely don't want to edit files that will be overwritten on upgrade but I was convinced that config.pm was not impacted by upgrades.

Please confirm, thanks

Note: I will update my signature

[crythias]

No, Config.pm will not be overwritten on upgrade. That would be very very bad if it would.

[nima0102]

Hi again.

I am evaluating OTRS-3.0.5 for our needs, and I found it, justifies almost all our needs. But I am some confused and some trouble with OTRS,So I explain our scenario.
In my implementation, we have one "company" as named "Company A" that we provide support task them.
In our firm, I created 3 agents to support to "Company A".
In "Company A" there are 5 employee, that I created 5 customers in OTRS as named "Customer 1" to "Customer 5".
Also I have created one "queue" as named "Support" and created one group "Support-group" and assigned 3 agents and all customers to this group.In order to access agents and customers to "support" queue, I assigned group of queue to "Support-group".
Everything is OK.
Today I wanted to give access "read" to one customer as name "Customer 1" so that this customer can read all tickets from other Customers.
I have run "ALTER TABLE customer_user ADD customer_ids VARCHAR (250);" to database.and in "Kernel/Config/Defaults.pm" uncomment line [ 'UserCustomerIDs', 'CustomerIDs', 'customer_ids', 1, 0, 'var', '', 0 ]," .Customer IDs are as follow :

Company A : 10000
Customer 1 : 10001
Customer 2 : 10002
Customer 3 : 10003
Customer 4 : 10004
Customer 5 : 10005

Now In order to give access "read" to "Customer 1",which CustomerID should I set for "Customer 1" ?
Another question, is about "Company",where can I assign Customers to "Company A" ??

Thanks in advance

[SLESSARD]

I am a bit in the same situation ... trying to figure our the relationship between:
- Customers;
- Customer ID
- Customer IDs (with the db / .pm tweak);
- and Customer Company;

I will post my results once I succeed - If I ever

[crythias]

The HowTo does explain this. What part is confusing? I don't want to appear defensive, and I won't be offended, but I don't know what I was unable to explain clearly.
(there are additional security, queue, etc. implications that aren't reflected here. This is a simplistic view).

A ticket gets stored with a userid and a customer_id.
in customer.pl, a customer's My Tickets are based on userid.
in customer.pl, a customer's "Company Tickets" are based upon customer_id and the list of customer_id stored in the customer's customer_ids field, if it's enabled/exists.

in the index.pl (agent interface)
a customer gets a userid and a customer_id.
If it's enabled, there is a Company interface.
This allows you to store additional (demographic) information for the Company. The CustomerID in company is the same that should be in each customer's CustomerID field.
If you do this, by default, all customers with the same customerID can see the company's tickets in "Company Tickets".
To mitigate this, there are two options:
1) change the group that applies to the "My Tickets" entry in SysConfig (easiest). Only have managers in that group.
2) don't share customerID (default with ldap config as given, because each user has customer_id=email address in the ldap config example). Managers will need a customer_ids field with each customer_id whom they would like to see (in "Company Tickets").

[SLESSARD]

Ok implemented and working for me
Thanks Crythias for your patience.

All it was is a mis-interpretation of the Customer Company Link under Admin in the Agent interface. I thought it had some key role in implementing Company Tickets under the customer page and turns out, as far as I understood and tested, it doesnt have any role at all other than providing some extra field which I dont really need. In fact all Customers Companies are now Inactive (under admin, agent interface) and My Company Tickets (on customer side) is working.

Here's what I have implemented
- Altered the database as described in the docs;
- Uncommented line 1271 in the defaults.pm file ([ 'UserCustomerIDs', 'CustomerIDs', 'customer_ids', 1, 0, 'var', '', 0 ],)
- Now the CustomedIDs field appear under My Customer Users page
- Therefore:

Customer_A, Customer_B, Customer_C and Customer_LEAD exist in my Customer Users list
I want Customer_LEAD to see all of ticket from Customer_A, Customer_B and Customer_C
I also want Customer_C to see Customer_A, Customer_B and Customer_LEAD since he's the backup supervisor

All is needed is to add:

Under Customer_LEAD CustomerIDs field: Customer_A;Customer_B;Customer_C
Under Customer_C CustomerIDs field: Customer_A;Customer_B;Customer_LEAD
***** ;;semi-colon very important;;

Hopefully that will work for nima0102

Now the only thing I have to fix is to make this work with the [ 'UserCustomerIDs', 'CustomerIDs', 'customer_ids', 1, 0, 'var', '', 0 ], in config.pm. All works in defaults.pm but when I try to put it in config.pm for some reason everything crashes.

Again, Thanks Crythias for your patience. I have ask a few questions on this forum and my OTRS implementation is moving forward greatly because of everyone's help ... and yes patience

CORRECTION: I tried putting the entire CustomerUser section from Defaults.pm to Config.pm and OTRS crashed, couldn't even access the login page so I reverted my config.pm file. Then I only added the line to config.pm and OTRS works but the CustomerIDs field won't show. For now I am testing with the edit to defaults.pm file and will figure out what's going on later