Integration Modernbill 5

[tepuynet]

Version 4 can be integrated with Modernbill 5?

[jstanden]

Hey there,

What would you like to see, specifically?

Thanks!

[ispguru]

I for one would like to see the following:

* Tickets opened in Modernbill show up in Cerb.
* Tickets opened in Cerb show up in Modernbill.
* Kayako did News/FAQ integration. That's a nicety, but not critical.
* What is critical, in Kayako's implementation, is that in the ModernBill customer view you do not see a ticket history. Absolutely essential. If my support techs cannot see a customer's ticket history they are lost. They do not work ticket-to-ticket, they need to be able to see "patterns" of tickets.
* Time and billing entered in Cerb (or its new plugin) transfers into Modernbill somehow.
* It is also essential that my techs, when in the support center dashboard-style view, see more than just the customer's name and address. So more needs to be pulled out of ModernBill or linked back to ModernBill for a customer view.

Please feel free to contact me for more input.

[AHDOnline]

Is there a working version of CB4 with MB5 yet?

[jstanden]

Hey guys!

We haven't made any progress on Modernbill5 integration yet.

This is falling into the "listless" category. Not at all because we're ignoring you, but because if we don't feel the genuine need (and we don't use MB) it's a lot tougher to get the inspiration going (or other things bumped off the roadmap to make time).

@ispguru: For our part, that's all possible.

However, I wouldn't let ModernBill retain control over any ticket functionality. It's best if you just have tickets in MB physically open tickets in Cerb4 (through our API, or even low-tech mail() sending). When viewing tickets in either, they should all come from Cerb4 (again, easiest from our API).

I can't really speculate on the time-tracking functionality yet (as it pertains to integration with MB), since it's not something we use for our billing. I'd sit down with a few customers (virtually or otherwise) and learn how they do things, instead of just making something up.

As for pulling data from MB to show on the SC (or inside Cerb4), that's easy on our part if we're simply connecting to the MB database using Cerb4 plugins. We can grab anything by e-mail address or a MB client ID linked to local customer records in C4.

Currently custom fields, translations and LiveHelp have priority over MB integration from our official development. BUT, we're working to get our plugin/API docs out there (code-wise they already are) so we're not the major bottleneck here. Other coding-inclined members of the community, with pressing personal needs for this, should also be able to get started on something.

[darren]

If anyone is still interested, I'm working on integrating Cerb4 into ModernBill 5.3 using the Cerb Web-API.

It's only at a "proof of concept" stage at the moment, but will easily do a basic client-side integration.

[netwrkr]

MB version 5 is an example of a software experiment gone horribly wrong. Possibly now that its been procured by SW Soft they will bring in a team of developers to again overhaul all that broken and terribly bloated code. Until such time I wouldn't go near it.

Tom

[darren]

MB version 5 is an example of a software experiment gone horribly wrong. Possibly now that its been procured by SW Soft they will bring in a team of developers to again overhaul all that broken and terribly bloated code. Until such time I wouldn't go near it.

Tom

Which system would you recommend instead? At the moment, there are no Cerberus integrations using the API for any of the current billing systems, as far as I know.

[netwrkr]

Which system would you recommend instead? At the moment, there are no Cerberus integrations using the API for any of the current billing systems, as far as I know.

Well, I don't know that any one billing system is great - they all pretty much suck to varying degrees. We've used Ubersmith for a couple of years now - the code base is quite stable though updates and new features are far and few between. We've developed programs in house to further compliment what Ubersmith doesn't do (domains, SSL certs etc).

I've heard good things about WHCMS and we've been looking at the possibility of switching to it, though I'm not sold as of yet.

I have a MB5 license but there isn't a chance in the world we will be rolling out MB5 with all the issues we've seen.

Tom

[darren]

I've heard good things about WHCMS and we've been looking at the possibility of switching to it, though I'm not sold as of yet.

WHMCS seems to be the popular choice whenever these types of discussions arise.

For now, we're continuing with MB5 as it's been suitable for our needs to date. I do have my eye on WHMCS though and we may switch once they implement a few new features (multi-currency and license management system in particular).