It’s not a bug It’s a feature - IP.commerce Ticket System

[HCICT]

On our forum we support from different  departments. To give support we use a ticket system from IP.commerce.

The ticket system makes it possible to create tickets for different departments. The Pipe mail is responsible for delivering the mail at the proper department.

Now when using the ticket system, we detect a problem. After I spoke with Invisionpower support, they say it isn’t a bug, but a feature. And that it would be better to share it in “Company Feedback” forum. If there is enough input and feedback, they can include it in a further update.

Okay, so now I will explain how the problem starts.

You have two departments in IP.commerce ticket system:

• Technical support -> pipe mail <- support@website.com
• Financial support -> pipe mail <- financial@website.com

When I send a support request to support@website.com, this mail will be delivered to the ticket system and become a ticket. When I send within 10 minutes another support request to financial@website.com, this mail will be merged to our first ticket, that was sent to the support@website.com. This second request isn’t seen as a new request to our financial department.

The reason that Invisionpower explain why this happened, I quote:

Quote

This is intentional functionality, if an email is received within 10 minutes of a support request being created by email, the email body will be added as a reply to the existing ticket.

It helps to prevent a situation where a customer can send many emails for the same thing but in many different support tickets.

In my opinion this can be more accurate. I have seen this in many ticket systems, they all work in this situation the same.

 

First change:

Always make a separation between departments. I think it is not good that a request to “support” can be merged with a request to “financial” department.

Second change:

Tickets needs a frame of reference. By making or replaying a request ticket, you will receive a mail with your ID in the subject.

Subject example: “#979690 - It’s not a bug It’s a feature”.

If the customer replies back to the ticket, the ticket system will detect the ID from the ticket and merged it with the ticket that’s already exist.
If a mail is send to a department without a ID, this mail will be seen as a new request. This prevents (how it is now) that you make different requests, but end up in the same ticket.

I’m very curious how you feel about this and please let me know 

Thank you in advance for your feedback.

HCICT

[DannyPhantom]

This is not a good solution, when a member want to contact to different departments for 2 different reasons that this system will merge this to one ticket.

The better way would be to include a notification that the member also had contact a other department so that someone need to check it if this is correct or if the member only want to spam. 

 

 

[Tracy Perry]

it is rather short sighted. I would not call it a bug either, but it's definitely a design flaw in my opinion.

There have been several times when I have contacted my hosting provider in reference to a technical issue but then shortly after that contacted the sales department to have additional services enabled (like additional IP's, etc).

I would NOT expect my sales request (which has to be handled by that department) to be going to the technical team which has nothing to do with the billing/service additions aspect.

[Charles]

Thanks for a good use case. We will look into that

[MADMAN32395]

15 hours ago, HCICT said:

Always make a separation between departments.

This should always be the case if contacting billing@ and support@ ; then backend the admins would decide if the tickets need to be merged.