Advice on approach to creating new module- service catalogue

[WilcoGG]

Hi

I have been doing some fiddling with OTRS here and there since we installed it and have built up some knowledge- but to be honest I am not sure where best to start on this one so looking for some help!

The Problem

Here is some background on what we are doing and what I want to achieve:

Via the customer portal, I want to be able to display my entire service catalogue in a very user friendly way.

I have already created a detailed service catalogue as an excel spreadsheet which is published to users via our intranet. This catalogue lists the services we offer to our users, further details on the service, how users should request the respective service and the service level targets in place.
I want to publish the service catalogue as a dynamic webpage and we have found some jquery widgets which will output it in the style that we want.

Now... I can work out how to just put a new icon/link in the "customer navigation bar" and have it open as a new window outside of OTRS to display the service catalogue. So this is an option.

My preference however is to have this sit actually in OTRS so you dont leave the system when you open it and can continue to navigate around the customer portal via the navigation bar... Note I am NOT considering linking this static service catalogue page to the actual services I have defined in OTRS. They are the same, but I am happy to manually update when there are any changes.

The Solution/approach?

Some questions from me based on what I am trying to do:
Has anyone done something similar already and if so are you willing to share your code?
Has anyone created a new 'page' to display static content/html like this within OTRS and if so how did you approach it?
Does what am speaking about sound like creating a new module within OTRS and if so what advice or links to resources can you point me in the direction of? (I am happy to share the results if I succeed!)

Any and all comments/suggestions welcome!

[jojo]

Use the FAQ Module for this....

[WilcoGG]

Hi jojo

Can you expand on that comment please? Is this related to modifying the customerfaq.dtl file? (which is currently all hashed out in our installation)

Thanks

Martin

[jojo]

no need to change DTL Files. Just use the FAQ fo displaying your servicecatalogue

[WilcoGG]

Oh I see what you are saying, thanks.

If I use the existing FAQ module for this and have the catalogue as a series of articles it will work, but it will not be a great user experience, indeed having it open as a seperate stand alone webpage would be preferable to that. (and less mouse clicks)

I will have a look in to copying the FAQ module and renaming it so it is the only article at the top level, but does anyone else have any other ideas on approach to what I want to achieve?

[troffasky]

Why does it need to be a standalone web page? You can have almost anything in an FAQ entry that you might have on a standalone webpage. You may even be able to have an iframe? I don't know about what access you allow to your OTRS, but you could publish these as public FAQ entries that don't need a login to view, if that helps.

[WilcoGG]

Thanks for the reply troffasky.

I have been thinking more about using the FAQ pages as people suggested, and to remove the mouse clicks I guess i could create the article then place a direct linke to that article in the navigation bar and call is service catalogue. I am looking at that now.

What complicates things a bit more is I want to offer customers more dynamic page with collapsible/epandable rows on click to show more information about each service. We have 20+ services in the catalogue and in its current format you have to scoll down quite a way to see them all. I am looking to use something like http://jqueryui.com/demos/accordion/ to present the catalogue in an easy to consume and professional manner in OTRS. At the moment I am not clear on where to put the needed header information (so the java scripts run) as I dont think that can go in the body of a FAQ article. I will do some experimenting over the weekend on our test system though...

[maureliosilverio]

Hi,

Any advance with that?

I just want to duplicate the FAQ module, anybody else know how to do that?