A help desk does exactly what its name suggests:
it’s there to help your visitors when problems arrive.
If you want to add a help desk solution to
your WordPress website, in this video I am
going to show how to do that step by step
with the Awesome Support plugin.
Awesome Support is the only helpdesk & support
ticketing plugin that can match the feature
set of a SAAS solution such as Zendesk or
Helpscout.
So, let's add this feature rich support plugin
to your WordPress website.
To get started, install and activate the Awesome
Support plugin.
This plugin offers many free features without
having to upgrade.
However, I recommend checking out the premium
version if you’re trying to integrate with
WooCommerce, for example.
Once you activate the plugin, it will prompt
you to Click here to start the setup process.
The first part of the quickstart guide asks
whether or not you’d like to turn on support
for multiple products.
If you’re only selling one product, or if
you’d like all of your tickets to go to
one person, you should select No.
However, companies with multiple products
are better off if they give customers the
chance to specify.
If anything, it helps you narrow down what
the problem is.
You’ll also have to create a menu to show
the Submit My Ticket tab.
If you don’t already have a menu, the tutorial
provides a link to create a menu.
You can skip this step or any other step in
this process by clicking on "Not right now".
I recommend a complete tutorial on how to
create a menu.
You can check the recommended video above
or the links in the description box below, later.
If you want to know how to add these beautiful
icons to your menu, be sure you check out
that video.
Let's continue with the helpdesk implementation.
Once you have a menu, you can specify which
menu you want to add the submit ticket page to.
The same goes for the My Tickets page, which
is where your customers see open tickets.
If you don’t want to place this option on
your main menu, other good places include
your footer, sidebar, or a drop-down under
a parent support option.
The next step asks if you’d like to specify
priorities on your tickets.
Priorities help you see which tickets need
to be dealt with first.
Finally, if you have multiple support departments,
make sure you create all of those departments
in the dashboard.
I’ll show you how to do that, but for now,
you can mark the Yes button and click Continue.
Proceed through the last windows to land back
on the WordPress dashboard.
Just like that, your website has a helpdesk!
To test it out, log out and then go to the
frontend.
Select the Submit Ticket option on your menu.
Register as a test user and create an account...
You can then view what your customers will
see every time they submit their own ticket.
For instance, they have a Subject field, Description,
Department, Product, and Attachments.
Upon submitting a ticket, the users can then
navigate to the My Ticket page to check on statuses.
Head back to your normal WordPress dashboard
an then click on the "All Tickets" tab, where
you’ll see which tickets are open, in progress,
and closed.
To reply, click on the ticket title of your
choice, or you can click on the edit link
as well.
Don't worry if you accidentally click on the
trash or close, because both actions can be reverted.
For example, if you accidentally click on
the trash link, you can restore that ticket
back by clicking on the restore link here...
If you click on close by mistake and want
to re-open that ticket again, filter out closed
tickets like so and set that ticket back in
its open state again.
Moving back to tickets management, you can
update a ticket, reply, or you can reply & close
that ticket as well by clicking this button.
If you just want to close a ticket, then click
on the close link here.
If we go back to all tickets, we can see that
there’s also information involving the agent,
current status, and open tickets on the same
page.
Finally, if you’d like to add additional
tags, departments, priorities or channels,
those tabs are available right on the dashboard.
If you are a big business with multiple departments,
you can add them one by one here just like
creating a category for your posts.
Add a name for your department then click
on Add New Department below.
Once you finish adding all of your departments,
clients can choose one of them in this drop-down
list before submitting a ticket.
If you have only one department or you have
no departments at all, you can completely
disable the "departments management" by unchecking
this option in the general settings tab.
Once you click on the Save Changes below,
you'll notice that the department's tab is
no longer active in the tickets management
menu.
If you have multiple users with administrative
rights, you can change the "Default Assignee"
in this dropdown.
Further down, you can choose the number of
tickets and replies per page, on the front
end.
Let's say we want to have 7 instead of 5.
Change this number and that's it!
Moving down, you can select the number of replies per page on a ticket details screen,
and you can choose to hide closed tickets
for admins and for clients on the front page too.
If you want to see how many tickets you have
in the admin menu, check this box or leave
it as it is by default.
Departments management is something you already
know how it works, so move down and choose
your Priority Management options and Multiple
Agents ticketing.
You can check the boxes as needed or you can
simply let them as they are by default.
I want to keep this video as simple as possible
so I won't go deep into these options.
Moving down, the options in this section control
which dates show up in the activity column
in the ticket list.
The more fields you turn on the taller the
row.
Tall rows mean you can view fewer tickets
on one screen.
Sometimes, though, seeing all these dates
can help with troubleshooting issues especially
those related to reporting.
Further down, you can control whether certain
tabs are visible at the top of the admin ticket
list.
Let me show you what's happening exactly.
If you uncheck that boxes, you will deactivate
these tabs, and if you check them back and
save the changes, they will become active
again.
It's your choice which tab is important to
you and which not.
The ticket details tabs and meta boxes fields
are more advanced options which you can choose.
If you want to control who can view certain
ticket tabs on the ticket detail screen in
wp-admin, then you should enter a comma-separated
list of roles in these fields like so...
Further down, you can configure where the
user should be redirected after certain actions.
Enter the full URL starting with HTTP or HTTPS
in this field to set a Logout Redirect page,
the home page for example, and if you want
to have a custom page where the user will
be redirected after opening a new ticket,
this is the field where you should enter a link.
The plugin creates "Ticket Submission" and
"Ticket List" pages automatically once installed,
but if you want to replace them with custom pages, you can use these shortcodes to display
the "ticket-submit" form and the "tickets"
list anywhere you want.
Just copy those shortcodes and thpaste them into the editor of your page, like so...
We can click on Save Changes before moving to the next tab.
If you'd like to customize the style of the
tickets, for example, you can change the theme
and colors in the style tab like so...
I do prefer to leave these settings as they
are by default, but you are free to play around
then remember to click on save changes before moving on.
Actually, we should move back to the "Registration" tab, which has a lot of important features.
For example, if you want to allow user registration, even though your "anyone can register" WordPress
setting is off if you check "allow registrations" here you will allow users to register on the
support page...
Want to be the only one who receives the standard WordPress notifications when a new user registers
on the site?
Check "only the site admin" box then.
And if you want both, the customer and the
admin to be notified, check this box.
If no one should receive notifications, check
this box and then save the settings.
Further down, if you want to customize how
should usernames be determined, check your
preferred option here.
I will leave this how it comes by default
but you are free to use whatever you want.
Moving down, you can add a description to
each of the registration fields which will
appear beneath the field.
You can use this to add GDPR related information
indicating what each field is used for.
If you work with clients within the European
Union you need to comply with the new GDPR
regulations so these are three of the GDPR
compliant checkboxes you will have to enable
on your registration form.
If you add notice terms in any of these boxes,
a mandatory checkbox will be added in the
registration form.
Users won't be able to register if they don't
accept those terms.
You can customize how an email sent out to
your clients and users will look like in this
tab.
Logo, header, footer, sender name, sender
email and so on...
Then, if you want to change any of these tags
or you want to add more content and more tags
in the email templates, you can use the "ticket
email template tags" here.
Save your changes and then go to the next
tab.
If you sell more than one product then you
need to provide support for multiple products.
If so, enable this option...
You will then be able to add your products
here, just like adding categories.
Would you like to show the basic time tracking
fields?
Then you should check this box.
Further down, feel free to enable or disable
any of these options, as needed.
If you want to allow your users and agents
to upload attachments to tickets and replies,
you should leave this box checked and then
you can set the number of files and the file
size allowed.
As a security measure, I suggest you to only
allow jpg, jpeg, png, gif, pdf, and doc files.
This way you'll avoid the archived or other
file types that can come with unwanted content
like viruses, for example.
Because I want to keep this video as simple
as possible, I will leave the options in the
advanced tab as they are by default.
I won't go into the integrations tab either,
because there are premium add-ons involved
and I want to remain in the "free zone" for
now.
The free version of Awesome Support sets you
up with a fully-functioning WordPress helpdesk.
But if you ever need more functionality, Awesome
Support has a huge variety of premium add-ons
you can check out.
And to offer even better support on your website,
consider combining your new helpdesk with
a WordPress knowledgebase and a live chat
plugin.
Let me know what you think in the comments
section below, like the video and subscribe
if you are new here.
Then, I recommend you check out this video
with some of the best WordPress themes you
can get for free.
Thanks for watching and see you in the next
video!
