Multiple customers logging tickets for multiple companies

[KPS]

I'm new to OTRS so bear with me. I've setup a new install with 8 agents to handle our companies support calls from customers. Customers have no access to the system. I'm not sure how to set up the following scenario:

We have direct customers who may have multiple users contacting us with support issues. I'm guessing a create companies and customers for this and assign them to each other. I'm guessing that customerid is really companyid and that's how to link them. I'm not sure what the customerid should be or why it's not autogenerated as a unique id.

The other type of customer we have is through partners. We have partners who have multiple customers. One way I thought of setting this up is by adding the partner name before the customer name. As an example, say our Partner is microsoft and our customers through Microsoft are LA local government, New York and London. Support calls for LA, New York and London will all come from Microsoft and the same person may log calls for any of the customers.

If I set up the companies as Microsoft - LA, Microsoft - London and Microsoft - New York. Then set up the customers as dave.smith@microsoft.com, jo.davies@microsoft.com and support@microsoft.com. How can assign these three users to each of the three companies or is there any easier way of doing it and I'm going the wrong way about it.

Hope it all makes sense. As it only just makes sense to me

[crythias]

First, this: viewtopic.php?f=60&t=7531

We have direct customers who may have multiple users contacting us with support issues. I'm guessing a create companies and customers for this and assign them to each other. I'm guessing that customerid is really companyid and that's how to link them. I'm not sure what the customerid should be or why it's not autogenerated as a unique id.

When creating a user by hand, the CustomerID is free text. When sync with LDAP it can be anything (Department?) but default is email (unique).

The rest of your question I'm not sure I follow, and it makes a difference in the answer.

"the same person may log calls for any of the customers."
If the partner is an agent, this reduces complexity as the partner can have limited access to simply create tickets in his queue (login at index.pl) for the customer(s) he represents. You'd probably manage creating customers if these are repeat customers, or just let partner create email or phone tickets for non-customers. (Tickets can be created without any connection to the Customer database backends.)

In fact, you can create a web form specifically for the partner that submits the ticket as an email as if the partner's customer sent it directly to you. I'd give that webform an email address that goes to a queue that DOES NOT have an autoresponse.

If I set up the companies as Microsoft - LA, Microsoft - London and Microsoft - New York. Then set up the customers as dave.smith@microsoft.com, jo.davies@microsoft.com and support@microsoft.com. How can assign these three users to each of the three companies or is there any easier way of doing it and I'm going the wrong way about it.

Do you even care? I mean this in a practical sense. If *you* are needing to store demographic information on the (repeat?) customers from the partners and the partners are managing the customer tickets as agents, then yes. If you collect, for instance, ticket-specific customer demographics (phone, time zone, OS) in Dynamic/FreeText fields, you may not need to store that in a *customer* database.

[KPS]

I'm sorry for the complexity of how I asked the question. I'm struggling with it myself.

To try and clear things up, our partners do not have access to our OTRS. If one of our mutual customers has an issue then the partner (acting as a first line) will send an email to our support address that is then pulled into OTRS. I need away of assigning that ticket to a customer. If dave.smith@microsoft.com sends the email, it could be on behalf of LA, New York or London but as for as I can see I can only set a customer up as Dave Smith and assign him to one company, in this case Microsoft.

I hope that makes it a little clearer. One of the reasons I care about it is, my boss will come to me every so often and say how many calls have microsoft logged on behalf of LA or any of the other customers.

I presume if you add dynamic/free text files these appear on the ticket and can be selected when one of our agents first deals with the call.

[crythias]

our partners do not have access to our OTRS.

What you can do is set up the web form (any webform, not even OTRS, just one that sends an email) specifically for the partner. A hidden field or an explicit field will show up as, for instance, "cc: partneremail" but created "from" the customer.

or, you can have the partner include #customer:customer@domain.com in a forward or new email address and postmasterfilter can be used to assign From to the partner referral field and Customer to whatever is after #customer. (That's been explained here before).