Notifications Mails

[cstrock]

How do I set Cerb4 to send Notification Mails upon new tickets arriving in my Team's Queue. I don't see the option.

Corey

[Hildy]

While Cerb4 doesn't have notification emails right now (since it seems a little silly to send an email about... an email), you can create an RSS feed for any search and display that in your favorite feed reader. Several of us here use http://anothr.com to have new ticket notifications pop up in our instant message clients, and it works great.

[jstanden]

Yeah, I'd definitely recommend our RSS functionality if you're just looking for notifications on new tickets or replies. You can also use RSS as a manager to monitor conversations across the entire helpdesk.

Dan mentions the point we came to in our development discussion: Sending e-mail notifications about receiving e-mail is backwards. That leads to more e-mail not less.

I use FeedDemon (http://www.newsgator.com/Individuals/FeedDemon/Default.aspx) which sits in my systray. I'm pulling RSS from the helpdesk (all incoming/outgoing messages), from the wiki (all new changes), from the forums, and so on.

Clicking a notification through RSS will open up the helpdesk in the browser. If you aren't logged in yet you'll be given a chance to and then you'll be automatically forwarded to the proper ticket. You can close the browser when you're done because Cerberus Helpdesk will maintain your session for several hours unless you log out.

We did put together an example of RSS/IM integration here:
http://wiki.cerberusdemo.com/index.php/Tips_%26_Tricks

The process is much the same for RSS and anything. But I highly recommend FeedDemon.

[joeberg]

While Cerb4 doesn't have notification emails right now (since it seems a little silly to send an email about... an email)

I wouldn't say notification emails are silly. Cerberus is used by many types of people in many different situations and just because you don't need email for yours doesn't mean the 17,000+ other people using Cerberus don't rely on it heavily.

For my purpose, notification email is absolutely essential. Our teams have to provide 24 hour support for some of our clients and we rely on email for mobile on the go notification on our PDA phones and Blackberries after hours and when we are away from the office. One could argue that we could run IM on those devices, but it is more memory, battery, and connection intensive than emails and requires you to be connected when the message is sent (no caching).

I have been researching 4.0 in preparation for an eventual upgrade, but this is a brick wall for me. I didn't realize email notification was not a part of 4.0 until I came across this thread. I guess I must have missed that point in the features. To me, email notification is an integral part of Cerberus and to not have it was not even conceivable.

I really hope this is something that gets implemented soon.

Joe

[ep1p]

While Cerb4 doesn't have notification emails right now (since it seems a little silly to send an email about... an email), you can create an RSS feed for any search and display that in your favorite feed reader.

Hm. This may be a show stopper for us as well. I need to be able to find out if there is a new ticket quickly and easily where ever I am. Anything that I need to deal with comes to me via e-mail. That gives me one place to check for stuff etc. Yeah sure, I can setup rss2email but this really should be built in to Cerberus, and could also do with further extensions.

If I'm not in the office I could be out on GPRS with my nokia communicator. I can check my e-mail fine (I use pine running on a server, so its all low bandwidth text based stuff over ssh, and pretty easy to do anything). And yes I can get notified that there is a new ticket using something like rss2email, but that means I then have to check my e-mail, and then load up a web browser, load cerberus, log in, find the ticket, and then set about replying to it. This is time consuming and very inefficient on a handheld (low bandwidth) device.

If I've received an e-mail from Cerberus that there is a new ticket, why can't I just respond to it via e-mail? Cerberus knows my e-mail address so can easily tell its me responding rather than the customer and it can already track the existing e-mail thread, so hence an obvious feature would be to let me just respond via e-mail and it get updated on the ticket and sent to the customer? Easier and more efficient for me, and means the customer gets a response quicker.

Yes, it may seem silly to send an e-mail about an e-mail, but this is e-mail communication we are dealing with, and dealing with it as e-mail is often the most efficient way. A ticketer is great for being able to track the conversation, assign it to people, and create a usable log of previous tickets that everyone can see, but there are times where dealing with e-mail as e-mail is still the best way to do it.

john

[cbtrussell]

Completely agree.

Showstopper!

We use email notifications on certain queues to trigger notifications to pagers/cell phones for support staff.

I guess this answers a question I had about the status on watcher functionality in v4. We use the watcher feature to enable two critical capabilities:
- support staff can answer tickets from their pda mail programs
- i can force all agents in a queue to view ticket conversations, which is excellent for ongoing training

I agree with the poster above, it's somewhat inconceivable to me that such integral features are quietly yanked from new versions of Cerberus.

Jeff - if I'm being direct - I think there are times when you Cerberus guys would be well served to get actual customers involved in some of these 'internal' discussions that decide the future of the product. Recall the debacle that was Cerberus v3? That was so poorly executed you guys didn't get it right until 3.2 (which, I must admit, was much better than 2.x... but 3.0 was terrible!) I can't help but think your customers could have saved you a lot of that pain. Same in this situation... why yank features & capabilities like e-mail notifications that many of your customers DEPEND ON?

That said, I'm sure you guys will see the light on this issue and do the right thing, and for what it's worth v4 looks like it's going to evolve into a great upgrade!

Brandon

edit: could notifications be handled by a plugin?

[IreneF]

Yes, currently a lot of our agents are completely dependent on mail notification and I don't think that RSS will be a complete substitution for it (although it's a good idea!).

It would be REALLY great if mail notification could be somehow re-implemented.

Thanks!
Irene

[jstanden]

Hey guys,

I'll reply to the specific points on my next batch of replies, since it's already 2AM here in Pacific time.

But I can see the overall concern here is really just a confusion between two concepts:

Notifications: Knowing when somebody replies or a new ticket comes in.
Watchers: Being able to reply through an e-mail client or PDA/mobile device.In that context, you can see why Dan and I are saying it's silly to get notifications about e-mail. Because we're talking about pinging you when it's time to come back to the helpdesk -- and RSS is perfect for that. Again, I highly recommend FeedDemon (it'll do the tray popups just like an e-mail client, and organizes items from different feeds very well).

On watchers is where some people are having concerns. Dan nor I are disputing how useful it is to be able to reply to a ticket through your e-mail client. But let's just be clear that's not what we consider notifications. We don't think watchers are silly to deal with in e-mail.

If you want to cross-wires and use watchers as a notification, then nobody on our side is going to stop you. ;) After years and years of using forums, I'm just now switching over to monitoring posts by RSS rather than notices to my inbox. But I'm watching the whole forums, and you guys are generally just interested in your specific topics -- where e-mail works fine.

Context is what really matters in notifications here. It doesn't even matter what we think is silly, officially, because we'll do what you guys need to get your work done.

[asgard]

Jeff, RSS is a great addition, but not a be all and end all. My telco provides an email to SMS system, so I simply get cerberus to send an email to that address and I get it as an SMS, no matter where I am. Very few folk have RSS enabled telephones! And way more expensive than getting a free SMS.

I'm handling this now at the mail server level and using a non-cerberus email account for "urgent" issues.

This may have been covered elsewhere, but clients not getting an automated ticket response is also proving a hassle, as now they're sending separate emails as follow-ups and the system isn't automatically putting them in the same thread, meaning more work.

I love the new layout and logic (buckets are great!) but some of the old "features" need back in.

[jstanden]

Jeff, RSS is a great addition, but not a be all and end all.

My post above was a long-hand way of saying "agreed". ;)

This may have been covered elsewhere, but clients not getting an automated ticket response is also proving a hassle, as now they're sending separate emails as follow-ups and the system isn't automatically putting them in the same thread, meaning more work.

Group auto-replies are already back in 4.0 -- make sure you've updated to the latest SVN:
http://wiki.cerberusdemo.com/index.php/Upgrading_to_Newer_Versions_of_Cerberus_Helpdesk_4 .0

Thanks!

[jstanden]

The E-mail Notifications plugin is committed!
http://www.cerb4.com/forums/showthread.php?p=673#post673

[trafalger]

I downloaded it via the SVN and enabled the plugin but when I goto Config and try to select a bucket to add a watcher too the drop down list will not allow me to pick one.

I have 2 buckets defined under "Inbox"

Also I hope the watcher will allow us to pick Inbox as a bucket as well...

Any ideas?

[trafalger]

Correction if I used the arrow keys I can select the different choices in the drop down list..but I cannot click on the box to select the choice.

I am using firefox on osx leopard fyi.

[jstanden]

Correction if I used the arrow keys I can select the different choices in the drop down list..but I cannot click on the box to select the choice.
I am using firefox on osx leopard fyi.

Strange! I'll see if we can get a Leopard Q/A box set up sometime soon.

I'll have someone take a look in Firefox on Tiger in the meantime. I can't think of anything unconventional in that <SELECT> element.