ShallHelp Chat Forum : Welcome to the Chat Forum! Chat sessions are automatically erased every 60 minutes. Just select the REFRESH link above to go to the latest chat session. We are glad you are here! Consultant :Made a session for chat date. CrisW :Thanks. I think the Scheduler at AGDT, I can also install here. Consultant :Yes you can, but would you? CrisW : I saw the “wisdom” in having another ticket system outside of our tech site, at my AXN brand site CrisW : when the tech site installation got corrupted, I was able to pull out and create an instance, and then tweak the codes and reuse it at the tech site. Consultant : same with the Appointment System? CrisW : Yes, same issues. But it was fine as I just went on the dev site and downloaded the original package. Since I have a Dev License, I can tweak it. CrisW : I think the corruption happened on the server side. Some of these installations should be done and uploaded via binary, because some files change if it’s not FTP’d as binary. CrisW : I noticed that on the back end, when I review error logs time and again. CrisW : I also notice that of course the web hosting servers also do their own maintenance thing so they make back ups, move stuff, etc. CrisW : So i left a note there that my WP installations are fresh / pure / original WP core files, not installed by an installer. To just leave it alone. In the past, when I used those “quick installers” – if they make a mistake, there’s no way to know where, who, what happened. CrisW : So I decided to just do ALL installations myself, like what I’ve seen in the Tech Portal, Ticket Portal, Appointment Portal, if I did not install those myself, I would not have been able to troubleshoot easily. CrisW : I mean, 48 hour turn around time is still within SLAs. Consultant : I wish you can just have a “tutorial” or one spot where people can go. CrisW : Yes, I did that in the past, I had tech step by step tutorials on the very basic of things, and then Y T kept on either removing the videos (because competitors kept on flagging them). CrisW : I lost interest, because God allowed it to happen, so I look elsewhere. CrisW : All these things that I ended up studying, learning and applying, are all DRIVEN by failures from other companies or organizations that fell short of their promises. (When I paid, so it’s like a bait and switchers) CrisW : I blogged about them all in the past and gave the information for free. CrisW : So people don’t get victimized as I was. 🙂 Consultant : Why did you disable RSS? CrisW : Because that was how I found in the past how my contents were getting scraped, and republished by competitors, and then people thought they were responding to me. The people doing it KNEW they were stealing from me, and did it anyway. So I prayed on how to battle it, WITHOUT having to contact them to fight with them with “cease and desist” orders. Consultant : How? CrisW : It’s actually good when competitors or enemies underestimate me. CrisW : They wouldn’t know how my GOD supplies me with Wisdom on what to do. 🙂 Consultant : That’s your HOW? CrisW : I learned it from Stanford U. 🙂 Consultant : LOL! CrisW : Which I found again AFTER I prayed for Wisdom. CrisW : Then I applied it. CrisW : The effect is, SINCE these enemies have been scraping content from my old blog, I purposely BROKE the old blog. Since all the codes and html links there, I hardcoded myself, you know the shortcuts “/ file name”? I put the complete URL, and put alt tags. CrisW : I also wrote a program that any reference to my content would automatically redirect to my site. I also put verbiage on the copyrighted contents that “These were plagiarised from …. my website …” 🙂 CrisW : I mean, I am generous in some things, like software program I’ve developed and I put “CopyLeft”. But my Copyright, they’re mine. CrisW :When you buy software, that you use on your website, you can, by agreement, know what you can customize, or not. CrisW : The reason I love the forum software is the developers really made it open source, and are so generous with their tech wisdom. So the stuff I learned on their software, I also tried to help other Admins with it. CrisW :Since all these other Admins want to build their own Communities outside of social media. Consultant :I just think that if you are to package your WP theme, with everything in it, some type of knowledge base is necessary, because “Simplified” is actually complicated. CrisW : Yes, well, that’s why I type out here like I do. They can follow along. 🙂 CrisW :But you’re right. 🙂 CrisW : Can you copy this? Let’s go back to testing the Tech Appointments Consultant : Ok. See you there! Consultant : We still do the Comments section here right? i leave this tab open. CrisW : Yes. Consultant : Ok
Test Flow:
1) When a Client sends a New Ticket, it sends the email below from our TICKET SUPPORT TEAM:
————————-
Hello Team!
A New Ticket has been created at:
LOG IN PAGE LINK FOR ADMINS
with the following details:
Name: CLIENT NAME
Email: CLIENT EMAIL NAME
Date and Time of Ticket: 06/10/2021, 15:53
Ticket ID: HY3568526920
Kindly respond to the inquiry within 48 Business Hours.
Thank you!
All the best,
Support Ticket – Tech Team
–
—————-
I will change Signature to
Ticket Support – Tech Team
Here’s how it looks like. All the test tickets were closed. The OLDER Installation tickets are still intact, I just changed the path so we can still see old tickets and testing there. Once we finish with the testing with all the flows, I will back up old ticket system and remove from the server. To RECOGNIZE which is which, the version I did yesterday has the footer years, after the “Powered by”
Ticket Support – Tech Team View
Hey I’ll change authorship on Session date to minimize auto emails from sending each time I add a comment here. (To save you the deleting of the auto emails).
Test Ticket System Work Flow:
1) When a Client sends a New Ticket, it sends a notification email to our TICKET SUPPORT TEAM, CC the client on the ticket so they know what they submitted for us to look into or work on. (“A New Ticket has been submitted”)
2) If the Client is new, they get automatically sent their Log In Credentials, the first time. (“Support Ticket Log In Credentials”)
3) If they forgot their password, the “Forgot password” link can be triggered so they can be sent their PW.(“Password Reminder”)
4) When the Support Team responds to the Ticket, the client receives an email notification (“New Reply Posted”)
5) When the Client responds, the assigned Tech Team member receives an email notification (“New Updated on the Ticket Submitted”)
NOTE:
Admins can see the Dashboard and the statistics (above screenshot), so taking action is easy and quick.
Operators or Agents can see this screenshot below, with no tickets assigned yet. They can be assigned the task, or they can do self-assignment by clicking the Tickets Menu, and then select the “Filters” tab with the status of “New”.
So when a Staff self-assigns a ticket, and responds, BOTH the staff and the client receives the automated email with specific date and time stamps of the original ticket, and the responses.
This is how you can measure response times to issues.
Having such a Ticket Portal in a Company website is crucial in delivering Customer Support, or solving Tech Issues.
A Ticket system, compared to a Simple Contact Form, ONLY the company staff recipient receives the message from the Contact Form Sender.
So imagine this scenario,
If you outsourced your company website development to an outside developer, that developer would have access to your data, UNLESS a superadmin account is created with your domain name, and at the end of the project, the passwords are changed so that the access is revoked after a certain period of time.
If you have a staff that receives a lot of contact form delivered inquiries or issues, and that person leaves the company, or dies, then the company does not have easy access to those details too. Usually, the developer also sets up email servers integration.
So, a Ticket System indeed benefits both Big and Small Enterprises.
When Tickets get so big and overwhelming, there are also companies who “outsource” the ticket systems and pay for “Software as a Service”.
My take is, LEARN how to do it yourself, put it on your own website.
When it gets overwhelming, create some type of knowledge base, or public documentation, or FAQs and then you can have “canned messages” like “How to change your password”. etc.
The one thing I like about Moodle, is they have an in-house Help Menu so developers don’t have to start from scratch.
Itchy.
When closing a ticket, you can just select the “Status” and then don’t assign it to anyone, and then click Save. Doing this does not trigger the automatic emails to the client and staff.
But if you want to send a final message to thee client, they can still see the tickets they have submitted.
I am closing all the Test Tickets now. I decided to take the above screenshots, so People or Clients don’t have to “go test drive it themselves” and muddle the Ticket System with legitimate tickets that would be under SLAs, on our Web Development Packages on the Tech Portal. It’s $100 per billable hour, so we have to put such systems in place to make sure that we deliver what’s needed on time.
So flow is for CLIENTS and those who want to be Clients, they can create a ticket?
They have to schedule an appointment first. Everything starts with the 15 minute Free Consultation.
That way we can know whether we CAN do the project or not. Next is whether we WILL do the project or not.
This Scheduler also forces the client to be clear about the Scope of the Project and the tasks they expect.
I’ve had recent experiences with “some big company” who found out my “active” email address. I can make one off suggestions for free, but I am not an “outsourced unpaid MBA consultant.” If it has become like several documents that I am making for free, yeah, that’s free high skilled labor.
I am not going to access ANYBODY’s site without having the necessary NDA contracts, because I PROTECT myself from the “appearance” of hacking.
I know those people visit this website.
I share free codes here, but don’t pester my email address. (I will be changing it, I’ve noticed several other hackers trying to pitch me HR software outsourcing).
And I know where they got my “company specific email”. From THAT company who don’t care about the privacy of their employees who outsource everything.
So, I think I’m going to be advising clients to open a “project specific email” at PM. PM has a functionality that notifies someone’s alternate email address when a new email arrives.
So, the only way I do the safe type of projects is through Secure open source platforms that cryptologists trust.
I am tempted to publish some of the other things I know but it will give my hackers an idea on how to hack me further. 🙁
Same advise I give to clinicians. Protect your devices. We have all these regulations on EMRs about and Private Health Information, and then some clinicians access the system from their mobile phones with social media apps that loads their contacts on their databases.
In Asia when I visited last, I taught some of these clinicians and walked them through how to check their mobile phones. I was telling them, “why are you exchanging screen shots of patient’s ultrasound results, and then NOT removing the patient’s name, record # etc.?” They don’t know that these apps are not secure. All the media files are “synced” into the app servers, and that’s how you can “sync all your devices” – your PC, laptop, tablet, phone, etc.
Now imagine adding your hacker, onto an extra device.
Unless you know how to look at your “connected devices” – and most people don’t know, it’s the dumbing down of society.
So, when it comes to Tech Projects, Techies have the ability to PICK which types of projects they would do.
Example, if it’s a new business wanting to start their website, selling used items for example, that would be quick for us. But not for them.
A website can contain good things, and / or bad things.
I won’t do the bad things type of websites. Especially those which directly attacks my faith.
In the news lately, there’s been some reported “hackathons” that happened that affected fuel, and the meat industries.
One can only wonder where they keep their servers.
Is it IN HOUSE? Or was it outsourced and then put “in the cloud” (OR, in layman’s terms, “other people’s servers”?
That’s why keeping it simple is best. 🙂
How did that oil company from years ago recover from the malware, remember the other Admin you helped to isolate the virus, that you helped with?
The other Admin just asked me for help. Like for free. He said his company has authorized him to allow a 20K team (from this big antivirus company) to help clean up, but they needed to know which type of virus to clean up. He was kinda sleepless for about 10 days because it halted their entire operations, he was able to isolate it, but I think also because of mental exhaustion, he just called me one night to ask if I can help.
So I asked what he was having issues with, I entered their server room (with security guards) and also he showed me he was using their in-house PC inside their server rooms, that had that direct access to the antivirus company portal, I told him to do what he was doing so I can see what type of error he was seeing.
I brought nothing with me, except my brain of course, no laptop when I entered the secure premises.
It was a simple (for me) fix, since I noticed that he was typing the WRONG command on the DOS prompt. 🙂
One code word, and it got fixed.
Then, as it was in the very early part of the morning, all the other Directors came in early and then at least the Admin “acknowledged” my help, and one director started to “command me” to do this or that.
I had to say, I am not your company consultant. I just got called in to help a dear friend. But I am going home too. 🙂 I just helped troubleshoot here. Like for free.”
After that, when they had something like a “family company celebration” after all got fixed, they made sure to invite me, and so I attended that.
The issue started with them with a malware email attachment from one of their colleagues based in Spain. The Antivirus company was able to clean up everything. It was a big deal, they had operations in many other countries but their main facilities are here in Texas.
It wasn’t some hacker who did that to them, it was one of their staff using their email servers for personal stupid use that corrupted their entire network.
So for me, I always advise others too. If you get an email from someone you don’t know, you can do an instant “block” and “blacklist” as well.
When I did that Autoresponder type business, I learned a lot about RESPECTING people’s email address. You can sign up on a specific mailing list, but that does not give the List Account owner to use my email address for other purposes.
Autoresponder companies, that’s another topic for another day.
That’s why I then decided to not use those “outside” autoresponders SaaS anymore. If they misuse the email addresses in your OWN mailing list, that’s on their servers, that’s the dangerous part.
ShallHelp Chat Forum : Welcome to the Chat Forum! Chat sessions are automatically erased every 60 minutes. Just select the REFRESH link above to go to the latest chat session. We are glad you are here!
Consultant :Made a session for chat date.
CrisW :Thanks. I think the Scheduler at AGDT, I can also install here.
Consultant :Yes you can, but would you?
CrisW : I saw the “wisdom” in having another ticket system outside of our tech site, at my AXN brand site
CrisW : when the tech site installation got corrupted, I was able to pull out and create an instance, and then tweak the codes and reuse it at the tech site.
Consultant : same with the Appointment System?
CrisW : Yes, same issues. But it was fine as I just went on the dev site and downloaded the original package. Since I have a Dev License, I can tweak it.
CrisW : I think the corruption happened on the server side. Some of these installations should be done and uploaded via binary, because some files change if it’s not FTP’d as binary.
CrisW : I noticed that on the back end, when I review error logs time and again.
CrisW : I also notice that of course the web hosting servers also do their own maintenance thing so they make back ups, move stuff, etc.
CrisW : So i left a note there that my WP installations are fresh / pure / original WP core files, not installed by an installer. To just leave it alone. In the past, when I used those “quick installers” – if they make a mistake, there’s no way to know where, who, what happened.
CrisW : So I decided to just do ALL installations myself, like what I’ve seen in the Tech Portal, Ticket Portal, Appointment Portal, if I did not install those myself, I would not have been able to troubleshoot easily.
CrisW : I mean, 48 hour turn around time is still within SLAs.
Consultant : I wish you can just have a “tutorial” or one spot where people can go.
CrisW : Yes, I did that in the past, I had tech step by step tutorials on the very basic of things, and then Y T kept on either removing the videos (because competitors kept on flagging them).
CrisW : I lost interest, because God allowed it to happen, so I look elsewhere.
CrisW : All these things that I ended up studying, learning and applying, are all DRIVEN by failures from other companies or organizations that fell short of their promises. (When I paid, so it’s like a bait and switchers)
CrisW : I blogged about them all in the past and gave the information for free.
CrisW : So people don’t get victimized as I was. 🙂
Consultant : Why did you disable RSS?
CrisW : Because that was how I found in the past how my contents were getting scraped, and republished by competitors, and then people thought they were responding to me. The people doing it KNEW they were stealing from me, and did it anyway. So I prayed on how to battle it, WITHOUT having to contact them to fight with them with “cease and desist” orders.
Consultant : How?
CrisW : It’s actually good when competitors or enemies underestimate me.
CrisW : They wouldn’t know how my GOD supplies me with Wisdom on what to do. 🙂
Consultant : That’s your HOW?
CrisW : I learned it from Stanford U. 🙂
Consultant : LOL!
CrisW : Which I found again AFTER I prayed for Wisdom.
CrisW : Then I applied it.
CrisW : The effect is, SINCE these enemies have been scraping content from my old blog, I purposely BROKE the old blog. Since all the codes and html links there, I hardcoded myself, you know the shortcuts “/ file name”? I put the complete URL, and put alt tags.
CrisW : I also wrote a program that any reference to my content would automatically redirect to my site. I also put verbiage on the copyrighted contents that “These were plagiarised from …. my website …” 🙂
CrisW : I mean, I am generous in some things, like software program I’ve developed and I put “CopyLeft”. But my Copyright, they’re mine.
CrisW :When you buy software, that you use on your website, you can, by agreement, know what you can customize, or not.
CrisW : The reason I love the forum software is the developers really made it open source, and are so generous with their tech wisdom. So the stuff I learned on their software, I also tried to help other Admins with it.
CrisW :Since all these other Admins want to build their own Communities outside of social media.
Consultant :I just think that if you are to package your WP theme, with everything in it, some type of knowledge base is necessary, because “Simplified” is actually complicated.
CrisW : Yes, well, that’s why I type out here like I do. They can follow along. 🙂
CrisW :But you’re right. 🙂
CrisW : Can you copy this? Let’s go back to testing the Tech Appointments
Consultant : Ok. See you there!
Consultant : We still do the Comments section here right? i leave this tab open.
CrisW : Yes.
Consultant : Ok
Test Flow:
1) When a Client sends a New Ticket, it sends the email below from our TICKET SUPPORT TEAM:
————————-
Hello Team!
A New Ticket has been created at:
LOG IN PAGE LINK FOR ADMINS
with the following details:
Name: CLIENT NAME
Email: CLIENT EMAIL NAME
Date and Time of Ticket: 06/10/2021, 15:53
Ticket ID: HY3568526920
Kindly respond to the inquiry within 48 Business Hours.
Thank you!
All the best,
Support Ticket – Tech Team
–
—————-
I will change Signature to
Ticket Support – Tech Team
Here’s how it looks like. All the test tickets were closed. The OLDER Installation tickets are still intact, I just changed the path so we can still see old tickets and testing there. Once we finish with the testing with all the flows, I will back up old ticket system and remove from the server. To RECOGNIZE which is which, the version I did yesterday has the footer years, after the “Powered by”
Ticket Support – Tech Team View
Hey I’ll change authorship on Session date to minimize auto emails from sending each time I add a comment here. (To save you the deleting of the auto emails).
Test Ticket System Work Flow:
1) When a Client sends a New Ticket, it sends a notification email to our TICKET SUPPORT TEAM, CC the client on the ticket so they know what they submitted for us to look into or work on. (“A New Ticket has been submitted”)
2) If the Client is new, they get automatically sent their Log In Credentials, the first time. (“Support Ticket Log In Credentials”)
3) If they forgot their password, the “Forgot password” link can be triggered so they can be sent their PW.(“Password Reminder”)
4) When the Support Team responds to the Ticket, the client receives an email notification (“New Reply Posted”)
5) When the Client responds, the assigned Tech Team member receives an email notification (“New Updated on the Ticket Submitted”)
NOTE:
Admins can see the Dashboard and the statistics (above screenshot), so taking action is easy and quick.
Operators or Agents can see this screenshot below, with no tickets assigned yet. They can be assigned the task, or they can do self-assignment by clicking the Tickets Menu, and then select the “Filters” tab with the status of “New”.
So when a Staff self-assigns a ticket, and responds, BOTH the staff and the client receives the automated email with specific date and time stamps of the original ticket, and the responses.
This is how you can measure response times to issues.
Having such a Ticket Portal in a Company website is crucial in delivering Customer Support, or solving Tech Issues.
A Ticket system, compared to a Simple Contact Form, ONLY the company staff recipient receives the message from the Contact Form Sender.
So imagine this scenario,
If you outsourced your company website development to an outside developer, that developer would have access to your data, UNLESS a superadmin account is created with your domain name, and at the end of the project, the passwords are changed so that the access is revoked after a certain period of time.
If you have a staff that receives a lot of contact form delivered inquiries or issues, and that person leaves the company, or dies, then the company does not have easy access to those details too. Usually, the developer also sets up email servers integration.
So, a Ticket System indeed benefits both Big and Small Enterprises.
When Tickets get so big and overwhelming, there are also companies who “outsource” the ticket systems and pay for “Software as a Service”.
My take is, LEARN how to do it yourself, put it on your own website.
When it gets overwhelming, create some type of knowledge base, or public documentation, or FAQs and then you can have “canned messages” like “How to change your password”. etc.
The one thing I like about Moodle, is they have an in-house Help Menu so developers don’t have to start from scratch.
Itchy.
When closing a ticket, you can just select the “Status” and then don’t assign it to anyone, and then click Save. Doing this does not trigger the automatic emails to the client and staff.
But if you want to send a final message to thee client, they can still see the tickets they have submitted.
I am closing all the Test Tickets now. I decided to take the above screenshots, so People or Clients don’t have to “go test drive it themselves” and muddle the Ticket System with legitimate tickets that would be under SLAs, on our Web Development Packages on the Tech Portal. It’s $100 per billable hour, so we have to put such systems in place to make sure that we deliver what’s needed on time.
So flow is for CLIENTS and those who want to be Clients, they can create a ticket?
They have to schedule an appointment first. Everything starts with the 15 minute Free Consultation.
That way we can know whether we CAN do the project or not. Next is whether we WILL do the project or not.
This Scheduler also forces the client to be clear about the Scope of the Project and the tasks they expect.
I’ve had recent experiences with “some big company” who found out my “active” email address. I can make one off suggestions for free, but I am not an “outsourced unpaid MBA consultant.” If it has become like several documents that I am making for free, yeah, that’s free high skilled labor.
I am not going to access ANYBODY’s site without having the necessary NDA contracts, because I PROTECT myself from the “appearance” of hacking.
I know those people visit this website.
I share free codes here, but don’t pester my email address. (I will be changing it, I’ve noticed several other hackers trying to pitch me HR software outsourcing).
And I know where they got my “company specific email”. From THAT company who don’t care about the privacy of their employees who outsource everything.
So, I think I’m going to be advising clients to open a “project specific email” at PM. PM has a functionality that notifies someone’s alternate email address when a new email arrives.
So, the only way I do the safe type of projects is through Secure open source platforms that cryptologists trust.
I am tempted to publish some of the other things I know but it will give my hackers an idea on how to hack me further. 🙁
Same advise I give to clinicians. Protect your devices. We have all these regulations on EMRs about and Private Health Information, and then some clinicians access the system from their mobile phones with social media apps that loads their contacts on their databases.
In Asia when I visited last, I taught some of these clinicians and walked them through how to check their mobile phones. I was telling them, “why are you exchanging screen shots of patient’s ultrasound results, and then NOT removing the patient’s name, record # etc.?” They don’t know that these apps are not secure. All the media files are “synced” into the app servers, and that’s how you can “sync all your devices” – your PC, laptop, tablet, phone, etc.
Now imagine adding your hacker, onto an extra device.
Unless you know how to look at your “connected devices” – and most people don’t know, it’s the dumbing down of society.
So, when it comes to Tech Projects, Techies have the ability to PICK which types of projects they would do.
Example, if it’s a new business wanting to start their website, selling used items for example, that would be quick for us. But not for them.
A website can contain good things, and / or bad things.
I won’t do the bad things type of websites. Especially those which directly attacks my faith.
In the news lately, there’s been some reported “hackathons” that happened that affected fuel, and the meat industries.
One can only wonder where they keep their servers.
Is it IN HOUSE? Or was it outsourced and then put “in the cloud” (OR, in layman’s terms, “other people’s servers”?
That’s why keeping it simple is best. 🙂
How did that oil company from years ago recover from the malware, remember the other Admin you helped to isolate the virus, that you helped with?
The other Admin just asked me for help. Like for free. He said his company has authorized him to allow a 20K team (from this big antivirus company) to help clean up, but they needed to know which type of virus to clean up. He was kinda sleepless for about 10 days because it halted their entire operations, he was able to isolate it, but I think also because of mental exhaustion, he just called me one night to ask if I can help.
So I asked what he was having issues with, I entered their server room (with security guards) and also he showed me he was using their in-house PC inside their server rooms, that had that direct access to the antivirus company portal, I told him to do what he was doing so I can see what type of error he was seeing.
I brought nothing with me, except my brain of course, no laptop when I entered the secure premises.
It was a simple (for me) fix, since I noticed that he was typing the WRONG command on the DOS prompt. 🙂
One code word, and it got fixed.
Then, as it was in the very early part of the morning, all the other Directors came in early and then at least the Admin “acknowledged” my help, and one director started to “command me” to do this or that.
I had to say, I am not your company consultant. I just got called in to help a dear friend. But I am going home too. 🙂 I just helped troubleshoot here. Like for free.”
After that, when they had something like a “family company celebration” after all got fixed, they made sure to invite me, and so I attended that.
The issue started with them with a malware email attachment from one of their colleagues based in Spain. The Antivirus company was able to clean up everything. It was a big deal, they had operations in many other countries but their main facilities are here in Texas.
It wasn’t some hacker who did that to them, it was one of their staff using their email servers for personal stupid use that corrupted their entire network.
So for me, I always advise others too. If you get an email from someone you don’t know, you can do an instant “block” and “blacklist” as well.
When I did that Autoresponder type business, I learned a lot about RESPECTING people’s email address. You can sign up on a specific mailing list, but that does not give the List Account owner to use my email address for other purposes.
Autoresponder companies, that’s another topic for another day.
That’s why I then decided to not use those “outside” autoresponders SaaS anymore. If they misuse the email addresses in your OWN mailing list, that’s on their servers, that’s the dangerous part.
So that’s the lesson for the day. 🙂