SupportTrio allows you to quickly and easily set up a web-based support center and to manage incoming support requests. In this article we will go over the basic steps you will need to take to set up SupportTrio for use on your web site. Of course, the first thing to do is to install SupportTrio on your web server, so if you need help with the installation please visit the following link for instructions: How To Install SupportTrio On Your Web Server.
SupportTrio offers you a wide variety of options to customize the way it works, so you will definitely want to look through each of the pages under the Settings menu to tweak SupportTrio for the needs of your particular web site. This guide will show you just the basics of getting your copy of SupportTrio up and running quickly so you can start providing support to your users.
The first thing you will want to do is to set up at least one department for users to submit tickets into. Most people will begin with one department called "Sales" and one department called "Support," but this will vary widely depending on what you are using the software for. To create your departments, select the Manage Departments option from the Departments menu. Then click the Add Department button and you will find yourself at a page allowing you to create a name and description for your new department, as well as configure a number of options for the department's behavior, such as whether you want to make the department visible to users submitting tickets through your web site.
If you choose to give your departments their own e-mail addresses, as I have done in the above screenshot, you will see the following message after you hit the Add button to add the department:
The next step, then, is to go and set up SupportTrio to retrieve e-mail sent to this address and use it to generate support tickets. It is very important that you do not use e-mail addresses in SupportTrio that are also in use elsewhere. For example, you would not want your Outlook set up to retrieve mail from the same account as SupportTrio, because then if Outlook retrieves the message first the ticket will never make it into your support center.
You can configure SupportTrio's e-mail parsing by simply clicking on the "email accounts page" link in the warning box shown above, or by selecting Settings->Email Parser->Email Account Settings. The resulting page will ask you for the very same information that you would enter if you were setting up Outlook to retrieve messages from the account: e-mail address, POP server address, username, and password. You will also find a couple of options that are unique to SupportTrio. The Messages Per Cron option can be left at "0" for unlimited unless you anticipate receiving an enormous number of support requests at once. Likewise, there is no reason for you to enable the Log Debug Info option unless you are working with our support team to correct a problem.
You will also find the above-pictured options that tell SupportTrio what you would like to do with e-mails that are retrieved from this e-mail account. Don't worry about specifics cases and exceptions right now, as they can be set up later on another settings page. The settings pictured above control what happens to incoming e-mails by default. Since you've already added a department to associate with this e-mail address, go ahead and select the department from the Forward to department dropwdown.
SupportTrio is now set up to receive incoming support tickets by e-mail! The next thing you'll want to do is to make sure it is able to send outgoing messages as well. You can do this by selecting Settings->General->Mail Sending Options. On this page, simply enter your own e-mail address into the Send Test Email field and click the "Send Test Email" button to ensure that outgoing message sending is working with the default settings. If you do not receive the test message, you can learn more about configuring these options in this article: Mail Sending Options.
SupportTrio is now configured to send and receive tickets by e-mail! Be sure to browse our other articles on Setting Up SupportTrio to learn more about the sophisticated options that are available to make SupportTrio work exactly the way you need it to.
