HelpDesk For osCommerce

[Guest]

I've installed the Helpdesk for osCommerce contribution with POP3 addon. Like others, I haven't gotten it working yet--all the parts are there, but I'm not receiving the e-mails in the Helpdesk.

This was very tricky to discover, but I finally have it working! I'll post an update asap, should make everyone's life a lot easier.

This is probably because I have yet to add in the mail aliases entries; I'm waiting to hear back from my hosting provider about the location and editability of the mail aliases file. Hopefully once I get those entries in, it will all work fine.

 

Regards,

 

--Grayson

<{POST_SNAPBACK}>

You do not need any aliases once you have this POP3 addition working.

[grayson]

This was very tricky to discover, but I finally have it working! I'll post an update asap, should make everyone's life a lot easier.

You do not need any aliases once you have this POP3 addition working.

<{POST_SNAPBACK}>

This sounds great, because my provider just told me I'd have to pay to get them to configure the mailaliases file for me :-(. I look forward to reading how you got it to work, Lane! Do post soon! :-)

 

--Grayson

[grayson]

Despite not having done a thing to my setup, the Helpdesk with POP3 addon is working just fine for me now -- I just tested some e-mails and they came through. Don't know why they didn't yesterday after I installed, but hey....never look a gift horse in the mouth. :-)

 

I've got a problem now with apostrophes in the text the customer enters into the "contact us" box--the mails come through (though with double apostrophes), but the browser chokes on it ("Fatal error: Call to a member function on a non-object in /home/butt1348/butterwing.nl/www/testamoo/includes/application_top.php on line 316"). Not sure if this is Helpdesk-related or just plain contact_us.php-related. Off to try to figure that one out now....

 

Regards,

 

--Grayson

[grayson]

Despite not having done a thing to my setup, the Helpdesk with POP3 addon is working just fine for me now -- I just tested some e-mails and they came through. Don't know why they didn't yesterday after I installed, but hey....never look a gift horse in the mouth. :-)

<{POST_SNAPBACK}>

I spoke too soon. I was checking my account in Outlook, not via the admin Helpdesk. Doh! (Of course, this is reassuring, since code that suddenly starts behaving differently without your having done anything to it is a Bad Thing.) So Lane, I'm still avidly awaiting your tales of success!

 

--Grayson

[Guest]

I put my codebase up for anyone interested in testing it out. I also wrote up a bit of help on using the POP3 module. The contribution has all additions to the original contribution plus several of my own. It's running on my store, but be WARNED that I have not had time to test my packaging effort; there could be missing files, bad instructions, etc.

 

Only grab it if you are knowledgable about linux command lines, have full access to your server (or a helpful system admin) and can debug php.

 

Thanks!

 

Grab it here

[Snowman]

lane

 

what is it exactly that you have changed?

 

I have this script running on several sites including my own and have never had an issue...

[Guest]

lane

 

what is it exactly that you have changed?

 

I have this script running on several sites including my own and have never had an issue...

<{POST_SNAPBACK}>

First, if you have this contribution working ... don't update!

 

There are many people for whom this contribution did not work; typically because the server on which the store ran was not the same server upon which the pop3 server ran. The pop3 addition to this contribution worked for a few people, but was not documented on it's use and many people had trouble getting it to work.

 

It's this last aspect, using the pop3 ability, that I've "enhanced" in my release (at least I hope I have). Mostly the changes involved some tips on getting it to work, a few bug fixes and more control over it's actions. I also re-wrote the output so that errors are meaningful and usually give a clue as to what went wrong, and made the format compatible with running the pop3 script via a cron job (ie, for logging).

 

No new functionality (yet).

[grayson]

Lane,

 

Thanks for uploading your changes. There is an error in helpdesk_pop3.php:

 

ON line 62,

  if ($conn = imap_open("{".DEFAULT_HELPDESK_MAILSERVER.DEFAULT_HELPDESK_PROTOCOL_SPECIFICATION."}".$mailbox, $username, $password, $mode))

 

should read

  if ($conn = imap_open("{".DEFAULT_HELPDESK_MAILSERVER.DEFAULT_HELPDESK_PROTOCOL_SPECIFICATION."}".$mailbox, $emailaddress, $password, $mode))

 

$username in this case holds the text name the user supplied for the account (such as "My Store Customer Service"), not the username to access the server.

 

Regards,

 

--Grayson

[grayson]

Here's something that might help someone else get this contribution running.

 

Wherever $languages_id is referenced, you might have a problem if you are using a language other than English. I'm using Dutch, and I just discovered that all the database queries for tickets (for example, in admin/helpdesk.php) have been trying to pull out entries where the language_id is 4 (Dutch) while the helpdesk tables in the DB only have entries for language_ids 1, 2, and 3. As a result, I wasn't seeing any tickets even though they're being picked up from the mail server just fine and inserted nicely into the DB.

 

After inserting entries for language_id = 4 into the helpdesk_status and helpdesk_priorities tables in the DB, the contribution is working fine.

 

[specifically, for those who'd like it spelled out: run the following sql queries, replacing the '4' in each one with your language_id -- you can find this in the languages table in the database. You can also change the text values (Low, Open, etc) to whatever you want them to be in your language. In fact, that's exactly what these language entries are designed for: to show you statuses / priorities in your own language.

INSERT INTO `helpdesk_priorities` ( `priority_id` , `languages_id` , `title` )
VALUES ('1', '4', 'Medium');
INSERT INTO `helpdesk_priorities` ( `priority_id` , `languages_id` , `title` )
VALUES ('2', '4', 'High');
INSERT INTO `helpdesk_priorities` ( `priority_id` , `languages_id` , `title` )
VALUES ('3', '4', 'Low');
INSERT INTO `helpdesk_statuses` ( `priority_id` , `languages_id` , `title` )
VALUES ('1', '4', 'Pending');
INSERT INTO `helpdesk_statuses` ( `priority_id` , `languages_id` , `title` )
VALUES ('2', '4', 'Open');
INSERT INTO `helpdesk_statuses` ( `priority_id` , `languages_id` , `title` )
VALUES ('3', '4', 'Closed');

Regards,

 

--Grayson

[Guest]

Lane,

 

Thanks for uploading your changes. There is an error in helpdesk_pop3.php:

 

ON line 62,

  if ($conn = imap_open("{".DEFAULT_HELPDESK_MAILSERVER.DEFAULT_HELPDESK_PROTOCOL_SPECIFICATION."}".$mailbox, $username, $password, $mode))

 

should read

  if ($conn = imap_open("{".DEFAULT_HELPDESK_MAILSERVER.DEFAULT_HELPDESK_PROTOCOL_SPECIFICATION."}".$mailbox, $emailaddress, $password, $mode))

 

$username in this case holds the text name the user supplied for the account (such as "My Store Customer Service"), not the username to access the server.

 

Regards,

 

--Grayson

<{POST_SNAPBACK}>

The change was actually due to my otherwise not being able to use the pop3 module.

 

Few servers accept the email address as the account name, at least none of mine do. So, I made the user field the "email" user account, and since we already have a "name" for the account (ie, the Dept. title) I used that where the name would be displayed.

 

Of course, existing installs would not like this, as you found. Not sure what the best method is here, as you can not make the email address field do double duty as both the email address to where inquires are sent and the user account. Perhaps add a new field? I didn't do this because it seemed silly to have the account name twice in the table, but maybe for backwards sake this is the way to go.

[grayson]

The change was actually due to my otherwise not being able to use the pop3 module.

 

Few servers accept the email address as the account name, at least none of mine do. So, I made the user field the "email" user account, and since we already have a "name" for the account (ie, the Dept. title) I used that where the name would be displayed.

 

Of course, existing installs would not like this, as you found. Not sure what the best method is here, as you can not make the email address field do double duty as both the email address to where inquires are sent and the user account. Perhaps add a new field? I didn't do this because it seemed silly to have the account name twice in the table, but maybe for backwards sake this is the way to go.

<{POST_SNAPBACK}>

Maybe just add some comments about the use of the name field in the Admin, because as you say, the department title already serves as the name for the account. That makes the name field you specify in the admin ideal for what you're saying (and now I see that this is probably always what it was intended to do), but I think it needs to be commented better so people understand this. My server wants the entire e-mail address (username@domain.nl) for the username, which is why using $emailaddress in the imap_open call works for me (and others?). So maybe a comment in your documentation about those two options (using entire email address vs. just using user name) and that if your server wants just the user name, where to fill that in in the Admin. Then folks can just sort it out for themselves, but at least they know where to look.

 

Regards,

 

--Grayson

[clongato]

Is anyone using helpdesk with PHP5?

 

I?m getting this error:

 

Fatal error: Using $this when not in object context in /home/ironfitt/public_html/manager/includes/classes/mime_decode.php on line 191

 

I know this is by the differences between PHP4 and PHP5 when using '$this' statement, but I haven?t came up with a fix for it yet.

 

Does anyone know?

 

Thanks for ANY help!

 

Claudio

[djmonkey1]

What exactly is this contribution intended to do?

 

All I'm looking for is a way to have customers submit emails form contact_us.php, and depending on the selection made from the subject line drop down menu, have the emails sent to various email addresses (one destination per subject is perfect).

[Guest]

What exactly is this contribution intended to do?

 

All I'm looking for is a way to have customers submit emails form contact_us.php, and depending on the selection made from the subject line drop down menu, have the emails sent to various email addresses (one destination per subject is perfect).

It works similar, but instead of basing the destination email address on the subject, it bases it on the "Department" to contact. It also allows you to reply to emails directly from the admin page, and keeps a complete record of all the emails sent/received in it's DB table.

[[MaDBuCe]]

We had this working for more than a year.

 

It only seems to work on Apache 1.3.3 as we recently upgraded our server

to Apache 2.0.45 and the helpdesk started throwing imap_open() errors.

 

We recompiled php and stille have this error.

 

Somebody has some advise?

Edited October 10, 2005 by [MaDBuCe]

[Guest]

' date='Oct 10 2005, 11:33 AM' post='718395']

We had this working for more than a year.

 

It only seems to work on Apache 1.3.3 as we recently upgraded our server

to Apache 2.0.45 and the helpdesk started throwing imap_open() errors.

 

We recompiled php and stille have this error.

 

Somebody has some advise?

The most likely problem is that you don't have imap compiled for Apache and/or php.

 

I updated this contribution to output error messagaes that really help in tracking down problems. Even if you don't want to use my updated version it's worth using it during debugging.

 

If you still have trouble, post the error message(s) you get.

[kenle]

Hi all,

 

I got this thing to work on my server, but for email that has attachments, it does not seem to work. After I sync, the attachment is gone. ONly text is available. Anyone got the idea?

 

Also, If I dont' want to delete mails on the server, what should I do?

 

 

Thanks

[Guest]

Hi all,

 

I got this thing to work on my server, but for email that has attachments, it does not seem to work. After I sync, the attachment is gone. ONly text is available. Anyone got the idea?

 

Also, If I dont' want to delete mails on the server, what should I do?

Thanks

Attachments do not work, and neither do many HTML emails. The contribution was coded for text only emails, and since I prefer this I never thought about modifying it (if it's even possible).

 

You can tell the contribution not to remove the email from the server, I forget what option it is but one of the contributions configuration options controls this. (But may not be named to readily indicated this).

 

Hope that helps

[iweblogix]

I have installed HelpDesk for OsCommerce. Followed the instructions as far as I can tell. I tried to set it up using POP3 but when trying to sync with the mail server received errors saying it couldn't even communicate with the mail server (powweb mail server) I tried to set it up using IMAP and this may be the only way I can get it to work but I am not sure. I've got it setup now to use IMAP somewhat but It isn't working. I receive the following errors: (the exact addresses I didn't display ni the description of this error message)

 

[Fri Dec 2 13:33:59 2005 -0800] [MISC] +++ Helpdesk Mail retrieval system version 0.2 by Mario Hebert & Lane Roathe (www.ifd.com)

[Fri Dec 2 13:33:59 2005 -0800] [MISC] +++ Emails will be deleted from the server +++

[Fri Dec 2 13:33:59 2005 -0800] [iNFO] Processing emails for [All] (sales@mycompanyname.com/My Company name

 

Warning: imap_open(): Couldn't open stream {mail03.powweb.com} in /www/b/userhome/htdocs/ocart/catalog/admin/helpdesk_pop3.php on line 62

[Fri Dec 2 13:33:59 2005 -0800] [ERROR] Unable to connect: Can not authenticate to IMAP server: AUTHENTICATE LOGIN failed

 

Its an authentication problem it looks like. maybe because of '(sales@mycompanyname.com/My Company name ' <---- Line but I'm not sure.

 

Any help would be greatly appreciated if anyone has gotten this to work ( on powweb shared hosting) or at all.

[Guest]

I have installed HelpDesk for OsCommerce. Followed the instructions as far as I can tell. I tried to set it up using POP3 but when trying to sync with the mail server received errors saying it couldn't even communicate with the mail server (powweb mail server) I tried to set it up using IMAP and this may be the only way I can get it to work but I am not sure. I've got it setup now to use IMAP somewhat but It isn't working. I receive the following errors: (the exact addresses I didn't display ni the description of this error message)

 

[Fri Dec 2 13:33:59 2005 -0800] [MISC] +++ Helpdesk Mail retrieval system version 0.2 by Mario Hebert & Lane Roathe (www.ifd.com)

[Fri Dec 2 13:33:59 2005 -0800] [MISC] +++ Emails will be deleted from the server +++

[Fri Dec 2 13:33:59 2005 -0800] [iNFO] Processing emails for [All] (sales@mycompanyname.com/My Company name

 

Warning: imap_open(): Couldn't open stream {mail03.powweb.com} in /www/b/userhome/htdocs/ocart/catalog/admin/helpdesk_pop3.php on line 62

[Fri Dec 2 13:33:59 2005 -0800] [ERROR] Unable to connect: Can not authenticate to IMAP server: AUTHENTICATE LOGIN failed

 

Its an authentication problem it looks like. maybe because of '(sales@mycompanyname.com/My Company name ' <---- Line but I'm not sure.

I've not worked on an IMAP server before, so there's not much help I can give. I would say to google on the error message, that's how I tracked down a solution for my POP3 issues.

 

Your most likely failure reason is that the authentication method used by this process, a simple clear-text password, is not accepted by the server which could be requiring SSL or other security. The best bet in this case is to reduce the security for that single account's login.

 

Hope that is useful :)

[Guest]

I've installed this add-on and it seems to work OK in almost all cases (plain text and HTML e-mails) but I have one case where the body is empty ... then it's hard to help the sender ... ;-)

 

The case where helpdesk fetches a blank body is when helpdesk is fetching a HTML mail with a picture from the IMAP server. I've tried this from both Outlook Express and Thundermail with the same result.

 

Has anyone experienced this or got a fix for this?

 

TIA,

Fred

[Guest]

I've installed this add-on and it seems to work OK in almost all cases (plain text and HTML e-mails) but I have one case where the body is empty ... then it's hard to help the sender ... ;-)

 

The case where helpdesk fetches a blank body is when helpdesk is fetching a HTML mail with a picture from the IMAP server. I've tried this from both Outlook Express and Thundermail with the same result.

 

Has anyone experienced this or got a fix for this?

I don't think anyone has. I've experienced the same thing. It's pretty rare in my case and I just reply with a "please resend your email in plain-text so we can help you" template.

 

Another thing to watch for is large files; I've found that emails with attachments over 1MB will cause the connection to time out (as if the server was not available) and all emails will be "lost".

 

Two problems that would be great to solve, but I've not got the time anymore for hacking around. :(

[coves]

I am pulling my hair out, been reading and reading and can not figure this email out... I get the error below and am also showing how it is configured.... Lane, can you please help? Running on Linux and I have SSL turned off if this makes a difference?

 

**** Tried this with no luck

POP3/IMAP/NNTP server pop3.server.com:110

Protocol specification /pop3

Mailbox INBOX

 

**** Currently running this

POP3/IMAP/NNTP server pop3.server.com

Protocol specification /pop3:110

Mailbox INBOX

 

 

[sun Mar 26 11:05:54 2006 -0500] [MISC] +++ Helpdesk Mail retrieval system version 0.2 by Mario Hebert & Lane Roathe (www.ifd.com)

[sun Mar 26 11:05:54 2006 -0500] [MISC] +++ Emails will be deleted from the server +++

[sun Mar 26 11:05:54 2006 -0500] [iNFO] Processing emails for [Webmaster] (webmaster@myemail.com/Tech Department)

 

Warning: imap_open(): Couldn't open stream {pop3.server.com/pop3:110} in /var/www/html/store/admin/helpdesk_pop3.php on line 62

[sun Mar 26 11:05:54 2006 -0500] [ERROR] Unable to connect: Certificate failure for pop3.server.com: self signed certificate: /C=--/ST=SomeState/L=SomeCity/O=SomeOrganization/OU=SomeOrganizationalUnit/CN=localhost.localdomain/emailAddress=root@localhost.localdomain

[Guest]

looks like is incorrectly configured. First the name and email address fields seem incorrect. Second for the certificate try /novalidate-cert on the protocol spec. Setup the imap_errors function as well as it brings more info of the error. So you do that when the imap_open fails.

[coves]

looks like is incorrectly configured. First the name and email address fields seem incorrect. Second for the certificate try /novalidate-cert on the protocol spec. Setup the imap_errors function as well as it brings more info of the error. So you do that when the imap_open fails.

 

Thanks very much for the response, I have cleaned things up a wee bit and it is looking better, but still not working.... I am looking for how to setup imap_errors?

 

Also, have there been any additional updates to this program in the last while? It looks great so far but I am concerned about setting up a cron after this is all said and done....

 

Again, thanks for the reply and I appreciate your help!

Bill

 

*****************************************

[sun Apr 9 21:48:05 2006 -0400] [MISC] +++ Helpdesk Mail retrieval system version 0.2 by Mario Hebert & Lane Roathe (www.ifd.com)

[sun Apr 9 21:48:05 2006 -0400] [MISC] +++ Emails will be deleted from the server +++

[sun Apr 9 21:48:05 2006 -0400] [iNFO] Processing emails for [Webmaster] (webmaster@mystore.com/Tech Department)

 

Warning: imap_open(): Couldn't open stream {mail.mystore.com:110/novalidate-cert} in /var/www/html/store/admin/helpdesk_pop3.php on line 62

[sun Apr 9 21:48:05 2006 -0400] [ERROR] Unable to connect: [CLOSED] IMAP connection broken (server response)

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