HelpDesk OnlineTM
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Customer Databases
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Accesing External Databases
HelpDesk Online does not maintain customer database itself. It is able to access external databases. Release
2.01 provides support for
HelpDesk access external databases in order to check validity of customer id (as per service request entry
form) and to provide operators with customer account details. See configuration notes below.
Accounts Online
Check Use Accounts Online box (System Setup panel) in order to enable Accounts Online customer database
lookups. You will need to provide full pathname to Accounts Online configuration file (in most cases it is
config.cgi located in the same directory you installed Accounts Online).
If not defined HelpDesk will try to open config.cgi file from its own installation directory.
Plain text database
Plain text database is a text file with each line representing single record. Each record consists of
fields, separated with a character (or character sequence) known as delimiter. Here is a sample file:
bond:James Bond:Secret Service Agent
gates:Bill Gates:CEO
john:John Doe:Customer, The
phantom::
The sample data table uses colon character as a delimiter. The columns are User ID, Name, Occupation. Please
note, that some fields may be empty.
In order to enable plain text database support
- check Use plain-text database box (System Setup panel)
- fill in full path name of the plain text database file (Plain text file path)
- fill in field names separated with semicolon (Field names) in the same order they appear in database. If you
do not want some fields to be visible (e.g. credit card number), leave its name blank. (Example:
UserID;;Occupation to suppress user name as per sample database).
- Select delimiter (Field separator)
Important: HelpDesk expects customer id to be the very first field.
3rd party software
HelpDesk uses external script to access customer databases maintained by 3rd party software. The script must conform
to the following specifications:
Parameters passed via command line. The very last parameter is customer id.
Example:
/usr/local/bin/getcusrecord gates
Being executed script must print to STDOUT queried account data. The text will displayed in customer info window
as is. The only processing HelpDesk performs is replacement of new line symbols with new line html tag (<br>).
If customer account does not exist script prints nothing.
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