Maian Support v1.3 Documentation
- HOME - - INSTALLATION - - LIVE SUPPORT - - UPGRADE - - F.A.Q - - SCRIPT INFO -
Please read the following installation instructions carefully:
• A server running PHP v4.3 or higher. Some of the syntax will NOT work on earlier versions.
• Javascript enabled browser for Knowledge Base, Admin Menu & Live Support Modules.
• A MySQL database to hold the script tables.
GD Library with Freetype support for captcha code display. To find out how to check if you have this installed, see the F.A.Q page.
1 => Create a database to hold the script tables. If you are unsure of this procedure contact your web hosting company.

2 => Open up the 'inc/db_connection.inc.php' file in a text editor and edit it to point to the database you just created. DO NOT comment out the prefix function. If you don`t need to change it leave it as it is.

3 => Upload all the files/folders into a directory on your web server. Example: /support/

4 => If you are using the attachments option, chmod the following folder to 777 to make it world writeable. (If your server accepts 755, then you should choose this as its known to be more secure):

- images/attachments/

5 => Access the 'install/index.php' file in your browser and follow the set up instructions to complete installation.

6 => If the setup was successful log in to your admin area (see script usage below) and select 'Settings' from the left hand system menu. Update the settings to your own preferences.

7 => Update the templates if you wish to change the layout of the script. These are found in the /templates/ directory. If you are trying to adapt the system into your own site, start by editing the header/footer files.

8 => Thats it, all done. For script usage, see below.
If the auto install has aborted, this is no problem, follow these instructions:

1 => Access your database using your MySQL admin program. PHPMYADMIN?. Click on the database you created for this script and delete any tables that have been created by this script. If you only have 1 database, be careful not to delete any other important tables.

2 => IMPORTANT!: The .sql file in the script has the prefix of 'ms_' before the table names. If you have specified a different prefix in the connection file then you need to change the prefix for the table names in the 'docs/schematic/tables.sql' file BEFORE you run it.

3 => When you are ready browse for and run the 'docs/schematic/tables.sql' file to set up the script tables.

4 => Log in to your admin area and select 'Settings' from the left hand system menu. Update the settings to your own preferences.

5 => Update the templates if you wish to change the layout of the script. These are found in the /templates/ directory. If you are trying to adapt the system into your own site, start by editing the header/footer files.

6 => Thats it, all done. For account set up see below.
1 => Firstly, log in to your administration area with the following user information:

E-Mail: you@yoursite.com
Password: admin

IMPORTANT! This account is created for you when you install the system and cannot be deleted! It is important you change these details immediately to something else. ie, your own e-mail address and password. Note that this is the main account id and is not effected by the admin type. This is to prevent you from accidentally locking yourself out of the system.

When you update your password, you will be forced to log back in with your new one.

2 => Next, you need to create some departments, do this by selecting 'Departments' from the drop down menu. Add as many different departments as you need. ie: Billing, Accounts, Sales etc

IMPORTANT! At least one department must be created before you can use the live support module. For more info click the link above.

3 => When you have added some departments you need to add some users to the system by clicking 'Users' from the drop down menu. Other users are optional. Add as many users as you need for each department. You can also assign a user as a Live Support user. Click the link on the menu for more info on the Live Support module. For info on the user statuses, see below.

4 => If you have enabled the knowledge Base, select 'Knowledge Base' from the drop down menu and add some frequently asked questions. More info below.

5 => Test the system and make sure everything is working ok.
Each user can have one of the following admin statuses:

Administrator: Anyone with these privileges has full access to all features of the admin area. It is recommended that only one person have administration rights.

Super Moderator: Anyone with this status has access to all support tickets and the knowledge base, but does not have access to certain admin areas, such as 'Users','Departments' or 'Settings'. So basically, anything that is to do with the system set up.

Moderator: Moderators ONLY have access to the ticket department you assign them. Nothing else.

NOTE: If a moderator moves a ticket to a department he/she has no access to, they will no longer be able to view that ticket unless it is re-assigned back to them.
The knowledge base is optional. This lets you add some frequently asked questions to the system. It can be useful if you find yourself responding to the same ticket questions.

Add questions/answers in your admin area. You can add as many as you need and assign questions to specific or all departments. If enabled, the knowledge base questions are visible on the main ticket page. A combination of CSS/Ajax/Javascript controls the knowledge base display code. Answers appear in a javascript generated pop up window.
Tickets can ONLY be deleted when their status is 'Closed', so to delete a ticket, close it first. This prevents you from accidentally deleting a live ticket.

You can also close tickets permanently. If a ticket is closed permanently, the person who opened the original ticket can add no more responses. All mods and admins who have access can re-open the ticket at any time.

If you find someone has opened a new ticket that relates to a previous ticket, you can merge the tickets together. The new ticket is added to the previous ticket and the new ticket is deleted. You also have the option of notifying the original author of the ticket about the merge.
v1.3 see`s the introduction of ban filters. Enable the ban filters in your settings. This can be another useful spam prevention option. You can ban e-mail addresses, complete e-mail domains, words and/or ip address ranges. If a ticket is submitted and a ban match is found, an error is displayed.

Note that the ban filters are in their experimentary stages at the moment, so feedback would be appreciated.
v1.3 introduced an auto cron facility. This runs in the background and closes tickets that have not been replied to after X amount of days. This cron runs each time the admin area is accessed.

Note that tickets are only closed when they are awaiting a reply from the ticket author. If they are waiting on admin, they will not auto close.
The templates for the script are in 'templates' directory.

Edit using a text editor, then re-upload. You must be careful NOT to remove any of the code between the PHP tags in the .tpl.php files, as some of these are important to the script. Others simply display language data. Unless you are an advanced user it is recommended you leave them all in place.

PHP and/or HTML may be used in the .tpl.php templates.

The templates in the 'templates/data_tables/' folder are .tpl templates and can only include HTML or the system tags. These templates contain the data that was originally in the index.php file but was moved in version 1.3. This was for easier editing. More info in the following file:

- templates/data_tables/README.txt

The e-mail templates are in the 'templates/email/' directory. Edit using a text editor if necessary, then re-upload. For a list of user variables, see the following file:

- templates/email/README.txt

Most of the colours, font styles, borders etc are controlled by the CSS (Cascading Style Sheet). There are 5 CSS files in the script. The admin CSS files probably won`t need changing:

- admin/css/css.css (Admin display)
- admin/css/menu.css (Omni slide menu)
- css/css.css (Public display)
- css/gb_styles.css (Knowledge base window)
- css/kbase.css (Knowledge base)

Besides the CSS elements in the stylesheet, there may a few isolated inline style tags in the templates.
For spam prevention, this script utilises a Captcha class to generate a random image on the create ticket and live support pages.

For most people the default options will be fine. however if you wish, you can adjust the captcha settings. To alter the captcha settings, please open the following file in your text editor:

- classes/php-captcha.inc.php

Descriptions of each option are shown. Once you have made any changes, save and re-upload this file. Here are a couple of examples:

Changing how many coloured lines are displayed:

Open the captcha class in a text editor. Find the following line in the config options:

define('CAPTCHA_NUM_LINES', 40);

Increase the 40 for more lines, decrease for less. 0 would be a blank background. Save and re-upload captcha class.

Adding new fonts

Fonts MUST be True-Type Fonts (.ttf). Upload new fonts into the 'classes/fonts/' directory.

Open the captcha class and find the following:

$aFonts = array('classes/fonts/arial.ttf','classes/fonts/verdana.ttf'),

Add new fonts to array:

$aFonts = array('classes/fonts/helvetica.ttf','classes/fonts/arial.ttf','classes/fonts/verdana.ttf'),

Save and re-upload captcha class.
Hopefully this installation guide has helped you get the script up and running. Check out the F.A.Q page for some solutions to common problems.

If you require any help at all, please see the support options on the main page. Thank you.
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