Reseller Support Email Piping

[wickwood]

Sorry if this is answered somewhere else in this forum, or if it should be asked somewhere else, but I'm at my wits end here trying to get this setup and haven't found an answer yet.

Here is what I'm trying to do:

I'm a reseller for webhosting services that provided me a copy of ClientExec.
They also provided technical support for server related issues to my clients when I have support issues sent to an e-mail address: support@mydomain.com

Email sent to support@mydomain.com is piped into a Cerberus ticket system that I have access to, but my clients do not. From this system, either I or the Reseller Support Staff can answer these server related questions for clients.

When a support request is answered, the answer is sent back to the email address it came from.

What I would like to do is have my clients be able to create tickets in ClientExec or send an e-mail to support.ticket@mydomain.com.

Then I would like to have tickets that are server related routed to the Reseller Support staff at support@mydomain.com so it goes into the Cerberus ticket system.

Then when a reply is made from the support staff, I would like to have that reply e-mail go back through ClientExec and update the ticket in ClientExec.

Is this even possible?

If it is possible, does anyone know what steps I need to take to make it work?

I'm using ClientExec Version 3.1.4 on a CPanel reseller system.

Thank you very much for your help in advance!
Steve

[Mike]

I haven't tried such a setup but it sounds like it may be possible. Note that I'm not familiar with Cerberus at all so I'll give you the CE setup only.

In CE you'd do the following:
- Create a staff member with the support address support@mydomain.com.
- Assign this staff member to the reseller support department. Make sure they are set to get notifications when a ticket is opened/updated/etc.
- Create a routing rule for reseller support tickets (support.ticket@mydomain.com) to open a ticket in CE and assign to the reseller support department.

Make sure that all ticket replies from Cerberus are coming from the support@mydomain.com address that matches the staff member that you created.

Hope that gets you started. If you get it working let us know in case anyone else is wondering the same thing.

[wickwood]

Thanks Mike, I'll try this right now.

I don't need assistance setting up the Cerberus, that part is done and out of my control really.

All I needed was the plan for CE, which you kindly gave me, and I appreciate it.

I'll post back with my results.

Thanks again,
Steve

[wickwood]

I haven't tried such a setup but it sounds like it may be possible. Note that I'm not familiar with Cerberus at all so I'll give you the CE setup only.

In CE you'd do the following:
- Create a staff member with the support address support@mydomain.com.
- Assign this staff member to the reseller support department. Make sure they are set to get notifications when a ticket is opened/updated/etc.
- Create a routing rule for reseller support tickets (support.ticket@mydomain.com) to open a ticket in CE and assign to the reseller support department.

Make sure that all ticket replies from Cerberus are coming from the support@mydomain.com address that matches the staff member that you created.

Hope that gets you started. If you get it working let us know in case anyone else is wondering the same thing.

Hello Mike,

I actually had already done the first 2 steps. What I didn't fully understand, and did not appropriately ask about, is how I should set up the routing rule for the reseller support tickets.

Here is what I have now done since getting your reply:

Rule Name: Routing To Reseller Tech Support

Request Source: E-mail Pipe Forwarding

User Type: Registered

Autoreponder: None

Open Ticket: Checked

Set Priority: Medium

Set Type: Server/CPanel Issues

Assign to: Reseller Staff Member (Should this go to the whole department, or just the staff member?

Send Copy To: my personal email (this is just for testing for now)

Pipe Forwarding Set-up, Emails: support.ticket@mydomain.com

Filter Out: defaults


I then logged into my Cpanel account for the Domain that CE is running on and setup an email forward for
support.ticket@mydomain.com to
| /usr/local/bin/php -c /home/my-username/public_html/php.ini -q /home/my-username/public_html/clienthub/SupportPipe.php

I included the "-c /home/my-username/public_html/php.ini" because this had to be included to get the crons working for the CE Automation services. I don't know what it does, but my host told me I had to include it to make those works, and so I added here as well since it was a similar command.

When I first entered this I got an error that said the command need to executable, and did I want CPanel to fix it. I answered yes. It said it would enter a Hashbang if required.

So I then sent an e-mail to support.ticket@mydomain.com (the e-mail for my CE support), and I got this bounce back:

The message that you sent could not be delivered to one or more of its
recipients. This is a permanent error. The following address(es) failed:

pipe to |/home/wickwood/public_html/php.ini -q /home/wickwood/public_html/clienthub/SupportPipe.php
generated by support.ticket@clienthub.wickwoodonline.com
local delivery failed

Frankly, now that I did this, I don't understand how sending an e-mail in to create a ticket can get properly assigned to the right department? Seems like this can only be done from the web form.

I'm going to test the web form next and see if that works.

[wickwood]

I just logged in to my test client, and submitted a ticket that should have been routed to my Reseller Tech support team and a copy sent to my personal e-mail address.

I didn't see anything show up anywhere but in the CE ticket system itself, and even though I picked the type "Server/CPanel Issues" the ticket was not assigned to anyone.

I assigned the ticket manually from the Admin side to Reseller Staff Member,
and it showed up in the Cerberus Ticket system but with a bounced status because of the automatic rely generated from the Cerberus system.

So I obviously have a few configuration issues to deal with, especially with the piping issue.

Do you have any advice for me Mike?

[wickwood]

I think if I can figure out how to get the e-mail to pipe correctly to SupportPipe.php I'll have this working.

Instructions in CPanel says:
When piping to a program, you should enter a path relative to your home directory. If the script requires an interpreter such as perl or php, you should omit the "/usr/bin/perl, or /usr/bin/php portion." Make sure that your script is executable and has the appropriate Hashbang at the top of the script. If you do not know how to add the Hashbang, just make sure to name your script file with the correct extension and you will be prompted to have the Hashbang added automatically.

So I tried setting the forward for:
support.ticket@mydomain.com to just /home/my-username/public_html/clienthub/SupportPipe.php

This did not work.

So I tried setting the forward to:
support.ticket@mydomain.com to | /usr/local/bin/php -q /home/wickwood/public_html/clienthub/SupportPipe.php

And when I did this, it reset it to /home/my-username/public_html/clienthub/SupportPipe.php

I sent an email to support.ticket@mydomain.com anyways to test it and it eventually bounced back to me after about 10 minutes of waiting.

I guess it's time to searching answers for this.

If you have any suggestions, they will be most welcome!
Thanks,
Steve

[robertmcox]

So I tried setting the forward to:
support.ticket@mydomain.com to | /usr/local/bin/php -q /home/wickwood/public_html/clienthub/SupportPipe.php


That is the correct setting. There is a bug in previous version of cpanel that causes this, but if you input the mail forwarder as '/usr/local/bin/php -q /home/wickwood/public_html/clienthub/SupportPipe.php' in a recent version of cpanel it should work. (notice the missing | )