Limit Support to Sales only

[JohnDar]

I have one department in my Support configuration and that is for just sales. That's all I need.

Prior to the recent update, it wasn't possible for members who had not purchased a product to contact me via the Support system.

Now, the Support button seems to be available to everyone and I'm finding that members are using it to send in a broad range of queries (most of which are just questions best asked in the Forums) to attain personal, one-to-one help. Having 'Sales' as the name of the support department doesn't deter them. They just start by saying, "Sorry if this is the wrong place, but..."

If I set the Sales support config to force visibility for purchased product support only, that excludes all other members, but the 'New Request' button is still visible and can still be pressed. When someone (without a purchase) presses the 'New Request' button, it produces an error message intended for the admins, "Before a ticket can be added, you must create at least one department in the AdminCP." That's not really something that should be shown to members.

Is there a way to restrict access to the support system to just members who have active purchases? Failing that, can the error message be changed to something that members will understand, such as "There are no support departments currently available to you".

[Marc]

We would need to look further into this for you, however the access details on file appear to be incorrect or missing. Could you please update these details by visiting your client area, selecting the relevant purchase, then clicking "Review/Update Access Information" under the "Stored Access Information" section. 

We look forward to further assisting you. 

 

[JohnDar]

In order to make things as easy as possible for you to test, I just created a dummy account in the 'members' group. Having done that and logged in as that member from the sign in page, I have discovered that the odd error message has been replaced with a much more acceptable, "The page you are trying to access is not available for your account".

It looks like the "Before a ticket can be added, you must create at least one department in the AdminCP" message only appears when an admin logs in 'as' a member from the ACP.

I (wrongly) assumed that when logging in as a different member via the ACP, that all Board behaviour would mirror that experienced by that member. In this instance, it isn't the case.

We live and learn. 🙂

Edited November 18, 2022 by JohnDar

[Marc]

Ah, of course. You can then change that message using language strings also if you wanted to do so. Am I correct in saying you now have what you need?

Also, your site is fascinating

[JohnDar]

Thank you. 😀 Yes, I have everything I need.