Import tickets to Cerb4

[connexeon]

We are testing Cerb4. One of the major concerns is having our old ticket history available, so we imported the Cerb3 tickets. Some stuff seems to be missing (in order of importance);

Real issues;
1/ Cerb3 comments are just not imported. We use it to log important information about a ticket.
2/ Reporting doesn't show worker replies for Cerb3 tickets (incoming tickets do show)

Less important;
3/ Cerb3 audit history is missing
4/ Cerb3 tickets always show 'New from <customer email>' as Last action, even if a worker replied in Cerb3

Off-topic; create new ticket is also missing and a much used feature here to log calls / move personal e-mail to a ticket / ... I've read some threads on this topic which I'll read into further detail, so I'll hope to find another way of accomplishing this.

BTW; I love the light-weight and modular approach.

Regards,
Hannes.

[neenach2002]

Actually, you can create tickets through "Compose."

[jstanden]

#1) It's possible on a second pass to pull these comments into ticket notes. When we first started the migration script the 'notes' feature wasn't complete in 4.0. http://www.wgmdev.com/jira/browse/CHD-347

#2) I added a new knowledgebase article for this:
http://www.cerberusweb.com/kb/article/000037

#3) You can enable the audit log in Cerb4 from Configuration->Plugins.

#4) This has to do with #2.

BTW; I love the light-weight and modular approach.

Thanks! :)

[connexeon]

Thanks so far.

#1

#1) It's possible on a second pass to pull these comments into ticket notes. When we first started the migration script the 'notes' feature wasn't complete in 4.0. http://www.wgmdev.com/jira/browse/CHD-347


You mean it's not finished yet, but we'll be able to pull them out later?

#3

I found the plugin but what I meant is that it doesn't show any history on the ticket of what happened with it in Cerb3. It only shows some information on the date of import, for example;

Fri, 11/30/07 01:38:55 Hannes Van de Vel Bucket Quote requests
Fri, 11/30/07 00:42:24 Hannes Van de Vel Subject Co-locatie Antwerpen
Fri, 11/30/07 00:42:24 Hannes Van de Vel Created 1147804346
Fri, 11/30/07 00:42:24 Hannes Van de Vel Group Connexeon Sales
Fri, 11/30/07 00:42:24 Hannes Van de Vel Spam Score 0.0001
Fri, 11/30/07 00:42:24 Hannes Van de Vel Spam Training Not Spam

While last few entries on Cerb3 are like this;
Fri Nov 30 2007 07:52PM: Released by tvandenberg.
Fri Nov 30 2007 07:52PM: tvandenberg changed custom status id to .
Fri Nov 30 2007 07:52PM: tvandenberg changed status to closed.
Fri Nov 30 2007 07:52PM: tvandenberg replied to requester(s).
Fri Nov 30 2007 07:51PM: Flagged by tvandenberg.

It would certainly be interesting to have some history, even not as detailed as in Cerb3 (for example when and who replied)

Regards,
Hannes Van de Vel

[jstanden]

Hi Hannes!

You mean it's not finished yet, but we'll be able to pull them out later?

Yeah, we've made it easy to do extra passes on the Cerb3 data as Cerb4 evolves. Importing comments as notes will probably work with script like the KB export/import.

We have plenty of comments in our old database I can use for a test.

Added to the roadmap: http://www.wgmdev.com/jira/browse/CHD-347

I found the [audit log] plugin but what I meant is that it doesn't show any history on the ticket of what happened with it in Cerb3.

Yeah, older audit log information wasn't migrated either. In Cerb4 the audit log has been improved to automatically track any property changes to the ticket table. This means future functionality will also be tracked without us having to be vigilantly proactive about it.

By contrast, the Cerb3 audit log had hard-coded events, and many of them were incredibly redundant ("Ticket created", for example). We cut out some of that redundancy in 4.0 to help improve performance.

As you continue to work on tickets in 4.0 you'll see the audit log track changes by worker.

I went ahead and unblocked the "Last Worker" property in the audit log so it will be tracked (as of the next update). That field is updated when a worker replies to a ticket. It will fill the same purpose as the timestamped "replied" event in Cerb3.

Thanks for the feedback!

[connexeon]

Actually, you can create tickets through "Compose."

Yeah, I've overlooked that at first.

Though 'Compose' suits some of our needs and opens new possibilities (actually, sending out mail in Cerb3 could only be done with a dirty work-around, creating an empty ticket for example and then replying), it misses the functionality of 'simulating' a customer initiated 'request' (for example call logging, inserting a mail that comes from somewhere else), without by definition sending something back to the requestor.

Regards,
Hannes Van de Vel

[jstanden]

...it misses the functionality of 'simulating' a customer initiated 'request'Yeah, we need to do both outgoing email AND simple ticket creation. The code for creating tickets is still in the system from the beta, it's just not linked in the interface.

It would be pretty simple to just put a "don't send to customer" option on Compose, but I think for clarity it makes more sense to split them both up.

[peter_mcc]

Hi

Yeah, we've made it easy to do extra passes on the Cerb3 data as Cerb4 evolves. Importing comments as notes will probably work with script like the KB export/import.

We have plenty of comments in our old database I can use for a test.

Added to the roadmap: http://www.wgmdev.com/jira/browse/CHD-347

I've *finally* got Cerb4 installed on our server to have a play with - so the next step is to import all the Cerb3 tickets. But, like connexeon, we have important comments stored with each ticket (ie notes from a phone call, office meeting, etc).

Any idea when the comment importer will be ready?

regards
Peter

[peter_mcc]

Bump!
Has anything happened with this?
peter

[jstanden]

Hey Peter,

This is something I'm working on for Brenan.

It doesn't make sense to import comments along with the RFC-822 e-mails (message sources) and send them through the parser.

There is likely too much content to export them as a big XML dump (like KB).

I likely just need to provide a more universal import point somewhere like /cerb4/storage/import/, which would be able to associate all the comments with their parent tickets by mask.

I've bumped up the priority on my dev list.

[peter_mcc]

Bump again!
I want to upgrade from 3.6 but can't afford to lose all our comments...

peter

[bbillings]

Yes, this is one of the last things holding us back from the 4.0 update

[fcspaul]

This is holding us back from upgrading. I have remained silent since others have brought up the issue and I did not feel the need to parrot what others have said.

http://cerb4.com/forums/showthread.php?t=440&highlight=notes+comments
Workers can now add comments at the ticket-level in addition to notes at the message-level.
Would imported comments get imported as notes or comments?


http://cerb4.com/forums/showthread.php?t=457&highlight=notes+comments
We've added back comments to tickets, but they don't display inline. They're in a tab with a count of the number of comments.

This is a problem. We use comments to keep track of work done on a ticket that our non-IT employees that we support do not need to see. For example if we replied to an email saying we changed the ACE or ACL of a users permission they would be confused (which often leads to further questions). Instead we just reply back that the issue has been resolved and if necessary what caused the problem. In keeping with the example above we may reply that the problem was a configuration error on file/folder permissions or even less detail than that, not the detail of how we addressed the incorrect permissions. Sometimes a ticket can get really long and flipping back and forth between tabs can make it very difficult to keep track of when and how work was done. This brings up the next point.

I do not see where notes or comments in the new system keep track of the time they are created. They seem to only show date. Perhaps this is just not displayed and is tracked in the database however whatever mechanism that 3.x comments get imported as would need to also display the time. This is especially needed since, to my knowledge, ticket comments and notes are not searchable in 4.0. (BTW I would think that this would be an easy fix to allow comments and/or notes to be searchable ... this would be a very big help and in my opinion absolutely needed. I hate knowing I have done something before and not being able to find out where I made the comment. I then have to look up how to do that task again which takes more time.). Time stamping comments is needed for us ... especially since the current setup would require us to flip back and forth between tabs in 4.0

I like having the non-permanent status of the notes however chronological comments are a must-have. Notes are a good bonus feature however they don't accomplish the same thing since they are tied to the message and not the ticket as indicated in the quote above.

[fcspaul]

Bump again.

[peter_mcc]

Bump from me too!
peter

[connexeon]

Despite we already moved to Cerb4, it was only under the assumption we would be able to extract the comments later on. It's almost 4 months later now and indeed, still no way to extract the comments.

[bbillings]

There's a new JIRA ticket for the in-line comments:

http://www.wgmdev.com/jira/browse/CHD-591

I guess we need to vote for that one too.

[gglynn]

There's a new JIRA ticket for the in-line comments:

http://www.wgmdev.com/jira/browse/CHD-591

I guess we need to vote for that one too.

That's the wrong one (that one is to allow you to submit a comment via an e-mail).

This is the one to put the comments back into the ticket thread:

http://www.wgmdev.com/jira/browse/CHD-592

[bbillings]

Sorry, you're right.

[peter_mcc]

Bump again.

[peter_mcc]

Bump again...
I'm away next week but it would be nice to come back from a holiday and find this had been fixed :-)

[fcspaul]

Bump again...
I'm away next week but it would be nice to come back from a holiday and find this had been fixed :-)

At this point it would be nice to have a reply from the Cerberus staff. Aside from the fact that my questions have been ignored, this post has not even been commented on by Cerberus staff in over a month. It would be nice to know that their company is paying attention and cares about this issue.

[fcspaul]

Bump ......

[bbillings]

At this point it would be nice to have a reply from the Cerberus staff. Aside from the fact that my questions have been ignored, this post has not even been commented on by Cerberus staff in over a month. It would be nice to know that their company is paying attention and cares about this issue.

I don't hold high hopes that comment importing and in-line listings will be implemented soon. At this point, the feature gaps between 3.x and 4 preventing an update and the bugs in 3.x which are effecting our workflow, are urging us to look at other support packages.

[fcspaul]

I don't hold high hopes that comment importing and in-line listings will be implemented soon. At this point, the feature gaps between 3.x and 4 preventing an update and the bugs in 3.x which are effecting our workflow, are urging us to look at other support packages.

The feature gaps are also preventing us from updating. I was even going to recommend purchasing the program to the powers-that-be however with the lack of ability for us to upgrade I see no reason for us to spend money at this time. I understand dropping features between versions when those features are used by only a small percentage of customers and those features are time consuming or difficult to maintain. I agree with their reasons behind their new release cycle however I feel they released a new version that was not as feature complete as the old version and changed to this new release cycle without having a feature complete product. They also seem to be promoting it as a full replacement for their 3.x product. With the 4.x branch still missing essential features that are in the 3.x product I do not see how it can be considered as a viable solution for new customers. I guess it is usable for certain situations however for what we need it for it is not complete. Comments are a big deal for us. A showstopper. Unfortunately for my personal business time-tracking is a showstopper. This means at this time I can not upgrade either my present employer nor my personal business.

I am also starting to wonder about the long term growth of this company. They have a lot of customers (a good number of large customers too) but I do not see a potential for growth ... possibly even losing some customers. That is just my opinion. Perhaps our business strategy does not line up with theirs. That is fine. IF we go elsewhere I will still wish them the best of luck.

We had wanted to integrate this into our MS Sharepoint site along with a SSO (single sign on) option however based on things as it stands we do not feel comfortable making this integration and functionality with the software. We do like the features, the fact that you can communicate with the developers, and access to the source code but that is not enough to make us stay. We need to know the company stands behind its product and listens to its customers. If we are going to integrate this into our company then it needs to be a long term investment (not just financially). At this time we have not made any plans to switch products however we will be evaluating our options should we need to look elsewhere.

[mfogg]

Hi guys,

We apologize for taking awhile to get back to you on this thread, but let me assure you that we're not ignoring you. We had a discussion about comments today, and I can tell you guys where we're at with it right now.

At this point we don't have any objection to turning the ticket level comments into inline comments. So we plan to change the comments in the comments tab into comments that are sequentially placed like normal messages. Notes would of course continue to exist as well for the more disposable comments, and to call attention to certain messages (messages with notes are auto expanded when viewing a ticket).

As far as importing comments, our current stance is that it is something that has to be done. It's a more complicated task than it may seem at first glance though so it's been postponed in favor of some other needs. And because I mentioned that we're going to convert comments to inline comments, we would import 3.x comments as inline comments as well (not as notes).

Also, as for your question about showing the times for comments, we do indeed store the time. It's just not displayed, as you suspected. This is an easy tweak in the code to resolve. We should be able to have it out this week.

Ticket searchability is also a relatively simple task at this point due to some recent changes. The comments are basically no different from message content for the purposes of searching.

So the rough conclusion/estimate is time display this week, searchability and inline comments in the coming weeks, and comments import a bit of an unknown for now, but an unknown we recognize needs to be done.

[gglynn]

At this point we don't have any objection to turning the ticket level comments into inline comments. So we plan to change the comments in the comments tab into comments that are sequentially placed like normal messages. Notes would of course continue to exist as well for the more disposable comments, and to call attention to certain messages (messages with notes are auto expanded when viewing a ticket).

This is great! Could someone bump the priority of CHD-592 (http://www.wgmdev.com/jira/browse/CHD-592) higher than "Trivial," then?

As far as importing comments, our current stance is that it is something that has to be done. It's a more complicated task than it may seem at first glance though so it's been postponed in favor of some other needs. And because I mentioned that we're going to convert comments to inline comments, we would import 3.x comments as inline comments as well (not as notes).

You should change the title and description of CHD-347 (http://www.wgmdev.com/jira/browse/CHD-347) to reflect this decision (a good decision, IMO).

So the rough conclusion/estimate is time display this week, searchability and inline comments in the coming weeks, and comments import a bit of an unknown for now, but an unknown we recognize needs to be done.

Do you have updated timeframes for any of these at this point?

[bcavish]

"This is great! Could someone bump the priority of CHD-592 higher than "Trivial," then?"

The priority there is really arbitrary and does not actually affect when a specific feature is or is not going to be worked on. Generally votes and user feedback are the best indicators of whether or not a feature will be worked on.


"You should change the title and description of CHD-347 to reflect this decision (a good decision, IMO)."

For now I'd personally prefer to leave it as it is. We have a lot of users familiar with that specific issue and changing the title might make it harder to navigate and find the issue in question.

"Do you have updated timeframes for any of these at this point?"

Unfortunately we generally do not have time frames on any of our development. We are currently working on some backend/usability tweaks that were affecting helpdesk performance. After these tweaks are finished we will be working on some more of most requested features from our community polls. Comments and time tracking are very high on this list.

[peter_mcc]

Unfortunately we generally do not have time frames on any of our development. We are currently working on some backend/usability tweaks that were affecting helpdesk performance. After these tweaks are finished we will be working on some more of most requested features from our community polls. Comments and time tracking are very high on this list.

So... one month on... are we any closer to importing comments? We're still stuck with 3.6 because without the comments I don't want to migrate to 4.

peter

[netwrkr]

We're still stuck with 3.6 because without the comments I don't want to migrate to 4.

peter


Same here.

[DBowsky]

Inline comments in 3.x were annoying to scroll through. Comments tab is vastly superior.

[gglynn]

Inline comments in 3.x were annoying to scroll through. Comments tab is vastly superior.

Personally, I disagree, as I find it useful to see the entire series of events--internal only and those that involve communications with the customers--all on the same page, but I can see why some people might like the separate comments tab. A good case can be made to make the display configurable on a per user basis (i.e. Worker A wants to see the comments inline, Worker B wants to see them on their own tab), and I'd be perfectly fine with that. However, it completely screws up our own workflow to have them on the separate tab.

[jstanden]

Yeah, we can do it per-worker or as a global helpdesk option. Either way you'll get the option.

I'm trying to keep our trivial preferences to a minimum, but I agree that this is one of those minor things that truly affects people's workflow.

Thanks!