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Within IPS 4 you can use an external database as a login handler. You would do this from the following location in your admin CP System>Settings>Login & Registration From here you can then set up the relevant details needed for connection Database Connection Details In the first section you will need to enter all the details to connect to your mysql data. Ensure these details are 100% connect and can be connected to from the server where your IPS installation is located. Connection Details Schema Information This is where you will set up the information related to where your users are located. You will need to provide the Table and at minimum either an email address or username column. You can of course use both if you are using both methods of login. You will need to add in the password column and tell the system how this password is stored. If this is encrypted you will need to ensure you provide the correct Encryption type. There is also an additional clause which will allow you to add to the end of the query which returns users. So for example, you may have users who you do not want to have access and have a column named 'active'. This will allow you to add active=1 and it will add to the end of the sql statement 'WHERE active=1" Schema Details Login Settings You will need to set up which authentication type is being used, and whether or not to allow Admin CP login with this method. Account Management Finally, there are various options available to determine what happens in various situations, such as changes are made on the local account to a display name or email address. Account Management

After purchasing your cloud community, or anytime you would like to change your domain or sub domain of your cloud account, you can see the below steps. Our cloud communities only support a Root domain (domain.com) or a sub domain (sub.domain.com) so one of these options would be your choice on selecting a url. (We do not support a sub folder of something like domain.com/mycommunity) 1. Using a root domain a. Set your name servers to the following, (this will use our DNS system for your domain, so if you have any other records that are needed for Email or other sub domains, please do provide these other records on your support ticket in step b. and we can add them for you). ns1.invisioncic.com ns2.invisioncic.com ns3.invisioncic.com ns4.invisioncic.com This can be done at the site that you used to register the domain name (domain registrar.) If you have any questions about this change or how to carry it out, please contact the domain registrar for further assistance. b. Submit a support ticket in the client area, letting us know you would like to use your own root domain, please provide the name of the domain, and let us know that you have already set your name servers as in step a. above. 2. Using a Sub Domain a. Submit a support ticket in the client area, letting us know the name of your sub domain you would like to use for your cloud community. At this time we will provide you with two CNAME's that will need to be created at your DNS. Here is an example below. b. If you selected the following sub domain, community.mydomain.com the records we will provide will look something like below, this will be different for each site/url, so these are only examples (do not use them for your site) This first CNAME directs your url to the proper path/url in our system. community CNAME s54107.tryinvision.com. The second CNAME we will provide will be for our auto approval of our SSL Certificate, this is needed at generation of the certificate and also needs to remain in place for the Certificate to auto renew. (this is an auto generated url that will vary for each url) _2a3d95a4f7479c8de59adc0d585ba6eb.community CNAME _13c01faf855f4afc0a6598e8d835d347.auiqqraehs.acm-validations.aws. Here are some examples on how these are entered at your DNS. cPanel Example One > + CNAME Record cPanel Example Two Directadmin Example One Directadmin Example Two AWS Example After creating the CNAME's then reply to the ticket letting us know you are ready to go, at that time we will generate the SSL certificate and apply the url and SSL to your community.

S3 is a reliable, scalable cloud storage service provided by Amazons AWS platform. Using AWS, for some, may be a cost effective and faster way to store data outside of your usual hosting environment. The following guide shows how to set up S3, alongside your Invision Community setup. Note that this guide is correct at the time of writing, and screens may vary from time to time on the AWS console. If you have not set one up already, please first of all ensure you have created an amazon AWS account. You can do this at the following location. (If asked, please ensure you select to use the new management console) https://portal.aws.amazon.com/gp/aws/developer/registration/index.html Creating an S3 bucket When you first log into AWS, you will need to add an S3 storage service to your account. Using the search box provided, type in S3, and select the S3 service Finding S3 in AWS Once you have selected the S3 service, you will be able to create a new S3 'Bucket'. A bucket is simply an area where you will store your data, within the S3 service. Click on create bucket to get started with its creation. Create a New Bucket On the first screen you will be asked for a bucket name, and a region. Choose the region which is closest to the majority of your users, and give your bucket a name. The name can be anything you wish. In this example I have used 'myinvisionbucket' Choosing Name and Region Once you have added the name and chosen your name, select "ACLs enabled", as this is required for the invision applications to function correctly. Enabling ACLs As your items are Accessible on the web, you need to enable public access. Deselect the blocking options, as shown here, and select the checkbox to confirm Ensuring Public Access Finally, select "Create bucket" to create the new S3 bucket you will be using on your site Creating Credentials Before we can go ahead an set up the storage method in our admin CP, we need to create a set of credentials to use with the S3 bucket. In order to do this, you need to visit the Identity and Access Management (IAM) settings page of your AWS account. You can find a direct link to this here https://console.aws.amazon.com/iam/ Once here, we need to first create a group which has full access to your S3 location. Select Access Management -> Groups from the menu on the left. Then Click on "Create New Group" Creating a Group Give it a group name, and then click next step. You will then be given a list of items to select from. Search for S3, click the checkbox at the side of "AmazonS3FullAccess" and click next. Policy Selection You can now click on create group, which will take you back to the first page. On the left, you now need to click on users, and click "Add User" Create User Give the user a name, select "Acccess Key ID - Programmatic Access" then click "Next: Permissions" User Setup Screen On the next screen you will see the name of the group you previously created. Select Group Click the checkbox for this and Click "Next: Tags", then "Next: Review" and finally "Create User" Here you can see your Access ID, and Secret Access Key (click show). Copy these out somewhere so that you have these in the next steps. Setting the storage method In order to set up the new storage method, visit the following location within your Admin CP System -> Overview -> Files -> Storage Settings -> Configurations Once in this location, select to create a new storage method Creating New Storage Method Once you have done this, select "Amazon S3" from the storage method options at the top of the page. We then need to set up an access key and add the information into your Admin CP as we go. The items in the image below are numbered corresponding to the descriptions below Storage Method Options The first item you need to add is a bucket name. This is the Bucket Name you used in the first step of this guide. In our example case, we used myinvisionbucket. The endpoint will be different depending on what you have set up as your region in previous steps. The link below this item will take you to the AWS help guides where you can find the end point name. First of all find this in the list. I have used Europe (Ireland), and therefore I need eu-west-1 for part of my endpoint URL The 'Endpoint' you will enter is the following, where {yourRegion} is replaced with the region name you got above. s3.{yourRegion}.amazonaws.com So in our scenario, we will be using s3.eu-west-1.amazonaws.com The 3rd and final part of setting up the storage method, is to enter the access key and secret. These are the values you copied from creating your user in the previous stage of this guide. Choosing what to store Now that you have created a new storage method connected to your S3 bucket, you can choose what you wish to store in amazon S3. Go to the following location to do this System -> Overview -> Files -> Storage Settings From here, use the dropdown on any of the items to change the storage method to your amazon S3 bucket. If there are items which exist already, a background task will be created to move these to the new location. Changing Storage Method

Creating calendar events is quite a simple process, yet also feature rich. Below shows the basic creation tools available for creating events within your calendars How to create an event You can create a new calendar entry by selecting the "Create Event" button as shown in the image below Click to Create Once selected, you will be shown the Event creation screen. Fill in the relevant details for your event within the form provided to create your event. Some of the finer elements of this page are discussed below. Basic event creation Timezones You may also notice in the bottom left, you can select a timezone. This is handy if you have an event going on in another part of the world, and you are not currently in that location. You can change this so it shows correctly to the correct people. Using correct timezones Repeating Events You will see you can select "This event repeats" in the checkbox above. This will show you options to repeat an event. As you can see in the image below, this can be quite powerful and you can create these in many different ways. Save time by repeating events Event Locations You can optionally add the location of the event and an album which shows images of the event. When adding the location it will show a handy map of the location in which the event is located. Set venues may also be set up within your ACP if you have specific locations which are used on a repeated basis You can also allow people to RSVP the event to say whether or not they are attending. Enter the location to show this on your event Adding a location will show a map to the event location. Note you must ensure you enable mapping for this functionality Maps will be shown of the location if mapping is enabled Similar Events If an event has been done in the past, you can save time by selecting to create a similar event from an old event. Within each calendar event, you will see a button to create a similar event. This will pre-populate the details in event creation, with those same details. Add a similar event

There are various over all settings on the calendar application that you can set up to your liking. You can find these within the following location on the admin CP Community>Calendar>Settings From here you can set up various different items, such as the format of dates on event, the way in which your calendars show (month, week, day, stream) and more

With the new calendar application, you can create calendar events from iCalender feeds should you wish to do so. You would do this from the following location. Community>Calendar>iCalendar Feeds Once you go to this location you will be presented with the following screen. Feed List From a File You will notice from this screen that there are 2 ways in which to add feeds to your calendar. The first of these is by selecting the "Upload iCalendar File" button, which will allow you to simply select a file, a calendar, and a member in which the entries will appear from iCal From File From a Feed The second method of adding these is from a calendar feed which you can add using the "Add iCalendar Feed" button and filling in the details requested. iCal Feed

Blogs can be created in a few different ways, and there are few different types of blogs to consider, depending on their use. Basic Blogs Creating a blog from the front end can easily be done using the Create Blog button on the blogs page. Create Blog Once this is selected you will note that you can create a blog that everyone can view, or you can selectively create a blog that can be viewed only by certain people. This can be handy if for example you have a blog only for your staff to see. Create Blog Privacy Entries and Importing from Feeds Once a blog is created, you can add entries into that blog, but one important other item to note is that you can also create blog entries automatically from an rss feed if you wish to do so. In order to do this you would enter that blog, select manage block, and "Atom/RSS Import" as you can see below. RSS Import Menu Once selected, you can then enter the details of your feed, in which entries will automatically be created. RSS Blog Import Group Blogs From the admin CP, you can also create group blogs. These would be blogs that are created for use by various groups, but would show as owned by a group name. You can add these using the create blog button in Community>Blogs>Blogs within the admin CP. From here you would then select the groups you wish to use this blog along with the owners name that will show. Group Blog

Before you let people loose on creating blogs on your site, there are various settings that you will want to ensure are set up to your liking. Basic Settings First of all, you can set up some global settings for the blogs within the following area in your admin cp. Community>Blogs>Settings Blog Settings This will then allow you to set up whether or not to allow RSS imports and exports, along with globally switch ratings on and off. Group Settings Group Settings Once you have set the basics up, you can then set up your options on a member group level so allow different levels of member access to do different things. You can access the member groups from Members>Members>Groups. There is more about this in the following guide. Once you visit the blog tab, you will see something similar to the below, where you can set up what you would like the members of that group to do. Group Blog Settings

Within downloads there are various other global settings that can be applied to your downloads area, and also setting regarding paid files which you can set. Warning Paid files will be unavailable if you do not have the commerce application installed, as there is a tight integration between the two applications. All sections below are found within the following area of your admin CP Community -> Downloads -> Settings Downloads Index Page On the first tab, you can set up which items you wish to be able to see on the index page of your downloads section. By default, all items are switched on, and selected to show from all categories. This can be changed to show only certain categories and sections, as per your own preference. Index Page Settings Basic Settings Within the basic settings From here you can set up whether or not watermarks are applied to any uploaded screenshots, and other global settings such as allowing direct linking to files on other sites. Basic Settings Paid Settings If you have the commerce application installed, you can also allow paid files to be added to the downloads are by your users. You can find these settings within Community>Downloads>Settings>Paid Files Settings. You will notice within here, you can set commission for the site to earn on whatever is sold by the user within your downloads area. This can be a good source of revenue for your site. Paid Settings

Within the download area on your site, you may find that there is additional information you wish for people to be able to enter on their downloadable items. For example, you may have an area where people produce their own applications and need to add co-authors or version numbers. The downloads application allows to to achieve this by adding extra fields. These can then be used per category. Adding Extra Fields To add some extra fields, you will need to visit the following area in your admin CP. Community>Downloads>Extra Fields Once you are in this area, you will see a list of any existing extra fields. You can create a new on by selecting "Create New" Extra Field Setup You can then fill in the details for your new field, including the field type. As an example below I have added one of field type "Member" which will allow the user to select a members name for the co-author of their application. Adding an Extra Field Displaying Fields You will note that within the setup, you can set where you would like this to display within the download item. Currently you can choose for this to show in the download item sidebar, just below the description of the item, or in a separate tab entirely. Display format for topics can be set using HTML. For example the following would show the field name in bold, a colon, and then the value the user has entered <strong>{title}:</strong> {content} These will be updated whenever the main download item is updated. Adding To a Category Once you have set up extra items, you can choose which categories they show in, by selecting that item to be used on that particular category setup page. So below you will see I have selected for the Co-Author field to be available within my "Files" Category. Adding to a category

The first thing you will need to set up within downloads are your categories. You can set these up from the following location in your admin control panel. Community>Downloads>Categories Creating Once you are here, you will see a screen similar to the below image. To create a new category, simply select the "Create new" button. You can also create sub categories to existing categories if you wish by selecting the + icon next to any existing category. Category List Once selected, you can give the new category a name, and you will see various settings that can be altered to your liking depending on what you are trying to achieve on your site. Category Settings Submission Options On the submissions tab, you can limit what is allowed to be submitted to the category by filetype and size, along with allow for versioning of uploads. You will note that we actually use versioning on our own Marketplace using downloads ourselves. Tip It can be useful to limit allowed extensions on categories. For example if you have a category for ebooks, you know that an ebook is not likely to be an exe file, and you will likely have a predefined list of file extensions they use, such as epub, pdf etc. This then helps with moderation of the sections by ensuring incorrect files are not submitted in an incorrect location in the first place. Submissions 1 In the same section, you can set up whether files must be approved, whether screenshots are needed or allowed, and various other limits on people submissions. Submissions 2 Error Messages Within the error messages tab, you can customise what a user will see if they have no permissions to download or view the files within a category. Tip Adding custom error messages can be useful if you require a subscription of download certain items. You can then tell them about your subscriptions within the message itself, and inform your members how to gain access. Error Messages Forum Submission In addition to other settings, you can have the system automatically create a topic in a forum of your choosing upon submission. This is used in our marketplace to create support topics for individual files. Forum Topics Permissions Once you have created the categories that you wish to have on your downloads system, you will want to set up permissions for these. If you select the dropdown at the side of any category, you will see a permissions button which will take you to the permissions screen for that category. Permissions Link This will then allow you to select the permissions required on each of your user groups. Permission Matrix

Whilst the conversion process itself can take a while on a large system, and can appear complicated, the process is actually quite simple to do. In my example below, I will be starting the conversion of another Invision community database into a new installation of the Invision community software. The process itself is very similar for any conversion. So for example, if you are converting from a vbulletin installation, or a xenforo installation, the process is the same. The only difference is that the questions asked by the converter will be relevant to that specific converter. Important If you have not read the previous step in this guide, we would advise you to do this now. Reading that step will save you a lot of time. Starting a new conversion Select your software To start a new conversion, visit the following location within your admin cp System -> Conversions > Manage Conversions -> Start New Conversion You will then be asked to select the software that you are converting from. Please select this from the list provided. Select Software Items to convert On the next screen, you will be asked to select the items you wish to convert. By default all items are selected, however, you can uncheck anything you wish not to convert. Note that some items, which are required by the converter, cannot be deselected. Select Items Database details Next you will be asked to provide your database details. These are the details of the database in which you are converting. So it would be the database you are using for your current installation, and not your Invision Community installation. Database Details Conversion Details On the final page, before you begin the conversion, you will need to provide the details for each item you are converting. This will include things such as paths to your uploads or attachment folders, paths to creations, group mappings and more. It is highly important that you go through this page carefully, and ensure that the details you provide are correct. Conversion Details Once you click to submit this page, you will see the converter start the conversion process. Please do not close this page until it is completed. Conversion Progress After conversion After the conversion has completed there are two things that you should note. Applies to cloud customers only Cloud customers should note that the background tasks mentioned below, will run through regardless of traffic, automatically. They can however still take some time to progress While the conversion process is complete, the software will now be rebuilding all your content. Until these are complete, you may find some posts may not look quite right, counters may be incorrect, and search will not be up to date. You can see this on your Dashboard by expanding the "Background processes" section, as you can see in the image below. By default, these will run with traffic. Therefore if you have no traffic on your site, they will not be running. In this scenario, you can either set up a cron task on your server, by clicking the link provided to get the details for this, or you can select "Manually run them now" and leave this open on the page. You should now set up the permissions for your usergroups, in order to ensure people have access to what you would like them to access. You can see how to do this in the following guide

In order to ensure that you get a good conversion, its always wise to check a few things over, and ensure that you are fully in a position to convert your site to the Invision Community software. Below are a few things that you should check prior to getting started with your conversion Applies to cloud customers only Feel free to read through this guide, as some items will still be useful in preparing your current installation, such as ensuring you clean up your data. However in the case of our cloud system, please contact support to request the converters are installed for you, and we will provide instructions on what data we will need from yourself to proceed. Get things ready Firstly, we need to get the new Invision Community site ready for converting. If you have not done so already, you need to do the following. Install Invision Community - If you haven't done so already, you need to get the community software installed, ready for you to convert into. You can install this in the same location, or into another location on the same server and move the site later if you wish. It must, however, be on the same server. You can find instructions on how to install in the following location. If you are installing for the first time, ensure you select to include converters, then skip the next step. Install the converters - If you have already installed the suite, then you need to ensure you have added the converters (if you havent already). You can see how to do this here. Set up groups, profile groups etc - During the conversion, you will be asked to map your current usergroups, profile fields etc over to the relevant fields in the IPS software, so ensure you have these set up ready for you to just map them. Change your settings - Things such as images will be imported with the sizes that are specified within the invision software. You should change any settings that you wish to, within the software, prior to importing. Prepare your site Once you have an Invision Community site to convert to, you need to then start preparing your site for the conversion process. Performing these steps will save you from problems as you proceed through the conversion process. Is there a converter available? - If you have not already checked this, then you should check if there is a converter available, or if you need a custom conversion, on the following page https://invisioncommunity.com/services/migrate/ Is everything on your old site accessible? - You need to ensure that your current installation is accessible from the location in which your Invision Community application is installed. In most (almost all) cases, this will mean they need to be on the same server. Is everything working? - Before you begin, if you have moved the old site to a new server ready for the conversion, ensure that everything is working correctly. Ensure paths are correct on your installation and everything is correct as if you were going to continue to use it. This important step can save you a lot of time by ensuring you do not have to start the process again due to mistakes. Clean up your site - Before any conversion, it is wise to clean up your site of anything you don't want to convert. This is to ensure you don't have things there to convert that you are just going to delete afterward, and therefore speed up the process. The less you have to convert, the quicker it will be. Have the details you need in hand! - Ensure you have your old sites paths and database credentials to hand. You will need these details during the conversion process.

Installing the IPS4 converter package is the same as installing any other of our application into the suite. You do this by uploading a fresh set of files from your client area, and then installing from System>Site Features>Applications, as shown in the images below. Applies to cloud customers only If you are a cloud customer please contact support who will be able to advise further on conversion options. Where to get them The first thing that you will need to do, is to get the converter application itself. Go to your client area, and download the full package, however ensure that you select the "Include Converters" checkbox before downloading. Downloading the converters Installing the application To install the application, you will need to visit the following area within the admin cp System>Site Features>Applications If you have uploaded the files correctly, you will see the converters available to install at the bottom of the list, as shown below Installing the application Check the installation Once you have done this, you have installed the converter and you should see these within system>Conversions where you can start your conversion. Converter application installed Before you start

Working through the ticket list is done from the support screen within the admin CP. You can do this from the following location. "Commerce>Support>Support Requests" Once you are here you will see a list of the tickets waiting to be 'worked' You will see from here you can filter which requests you can see on the left, along with changing various settings at the top or creating a new ticket if needed. After clicking on a ticket you will see something similar to the following screen, which we will go through in a little more detail So first of all at the top pf the page you will se there are various dropdowns, each of which let you quickly stage statuses, locations, and severities of tickets. I have numbered each and provided a corresponding list of each items function below. Status - This will allow you to quickly change the status of a ticket Severity - Will allow you to quickly change the severity of a message Department - Changes the department in which a ticket is located Assignment - Allows for quick assignment of a ticket Tracking - Lets you change whether you are tracking the ticket or not Delete - Deletes the ticket from the system completely. Next down the page we have the editor, which you would use for replying to tickets within the ticket area. Again I have numbered these and describe each function below. Allows you to switch from replying so the customer can see, or adding a hidden staff note in the ticket, which can only be seen by members of staff. This area allows yout o set the status, department, and assignment of the ticket after the reply has been submitted, This is a list of stock actions which can be used on the ticket On the right of the page, you will see many usefull bits of information regarding the customer and the ticket. You can see the request history of the customer, invoices, and other usefull detail you may need whilst working the ticket. In addition to this you will see what item the ticket is associated with, if any (and can change this), and any custom fields you have added within your support system. Finally, at the bottom of the page, you can see all the messages within this ticket itself. You may also notice audits of items which have been changed on the status, depending on how this is set up.

Within commerce you can set up coupon codes for use during promotions in your store. These can be set up from Commerce>Store>Coupons Once you visit this area, you will be able to set up codes to give a monetary discount or percentage discount, along with set which products they can be used with, expiry dates, and restrictions on how they can be used. In the example above, I have added a SAVE10 code for people to use in my store which will save the customers 10% on their purchase. This code can then be entered on the checkout screen.

Customer feedback is a good way of finding out how your customers are reacting to replies within your tickets, and the performance of your staff in keeping your customers happy. Within IPS4 we provide the ability to allow rating of a staff reply, directly from the customers client area. You can switch on Customer Feedback from within the admin CP from the following location "Commerce>Support>Settings>Customer Feedback" Once this is switched on, your customers will be able to give a rating to each reply they are sent, along with a note if they have anything else they wish to add These responses can be seen within the ticket reply in the admin CP, for any administrator who has the permission to view them. Permissions for these are set within the administrator permissions section of the admin CP. Clicking on the customer rating text will show you any feedback that was given at the same point as the rating Within the admin CP you can also see how your ratings are 'stacking up' as a whole on your site, or see the ratings as an overview, by visiting the following location: Commerce>Support>Performance (Note that you can change the filters to suite using the tools at the top of each report) In this area you can also see an overview of the support system usage and replies.

It's important within any support system to be able to ensure you can track what is happening with any particular item at a glance. For this we have provided severities, and statuses, which you can assign to your tickets, have your customers assign, or even at times have assigned automaticaly. Severities Severities can be added from the following location within the admin CP - "Commerce>Support>Settings>Severities". These would be given in order to give importance to certain tickets, or simply highlight that a ticket is maybe of less importance. Once you are in this area, you should see a screen similar to the below. from here you can add/edit/delete severity levels on the system. You will note that at the top you can optionally allow your customers to view an edit the severity of their tickets. To add a new severity, you would select the "Create New" button in the top right. A typical setup of a new severity level would look something like the following. You can see here that I have set to allow the customer to set this severity. Tickets by default are ordered by severity, and then by age. This means that by adding the severity critical to the top of the list, these would always appear first. I have also added an icon and a color which will show up on the ticket list. Statuses Statuses Statuses can be added from the following location within the admin CP - "Commerce>Support>Settings>Severities". These can be added to show the status of any given ticket within the support system. Once you are in this area, you should see a screen similar to the below. from here you can add/edit/delete statuses on the system. To add a new status, you would select the "Create New" button in the top right. A typical setup of a new status would look something like the following. There are a few items here which are worth mentioning. Firstly, you can set this as the default status when there is an action. So if a member or a member of staff replies to this, it will be given this status automatically. Additionally you can set it to automatically assign the member of staff to that ticket once the status is changed to this. To give an example, a member of staff may set it to "In progress" and have it automatically assign to them. You will also note that you can display different text to your members for this status than you to to staff. This would mean that this would appear differently in the client area. A typical support screen showing statuses and severities may look like the following

There will be times where it would be useful to be able to capture more information within a support ticket. For example you may need to know the age of the person submitting, or know the users skype contact details. Within commerce we have given you the ability to set up as many of these as you need. Creating New Fields You can set up new fields for tickets within the following area in your admin CP - Commerce>Support>Settings>Custom Fields. When visiting this area, you will see a list of the currently created custom fields. You can create a new one by selecting the "Create New" button. Custom Field List When selecting add new, you can select a name, a description, which departments it is allowed in, and whether or not it is a required field. You will see all of these within the screenshot below. Example Text Field Field Types The above is a simple example of a text field. There are various different types of fields you can use within the custom fields section, including the following Address Checkbox Checkbox Set Code Color Date Editor Email Address FTP Details Member Number Password Poll Radio Rating Select Box Telephone Number Text Text Area Upload URL Username & Password Yes/No As you can see there is a comprehensive list of ways in which you can build up new fields. Each type will have different attributes you can use. For example, the FTP type will allow your users to input FTP details. With this type, you can optionally have the system validate that these are correct. Example FTP Field

In many circumstances in support, you will find that you need to type the same reply, move to the same department etc over and over again. With commerce, we have removed the need to do this by adding stock actions. You may have seen these when using our own support system, if you have been asked to update your access details, or had your ticket escalated. Setting Up You will find the setup for these within the admin CP under "Commerce>Support>Settings>Stock Actions" When first opening this, you will see a list of any stock actions which already exist within the system. Click on Create new to add a new one. Stock Action List After clicking add, you will have various items you can set to happen automatically. Here I have set a stock action to set the status to open, move to the test department, and add a reply to the customer that says I have done so. Creation Of Actions Using Stock Actions Whilst replying to a ticket, you will see a dropdown in the top right of the editor. You can use any of the stock items that are set up from this dropdown menu. Simply select the one you wish to use and everything will be set up as per the Stock Action you have chosen. Using Stock Actions

Within the commerce system, you can use incoming email to receive tickets, rather than using the client area if you wish to do so. These can be received via various different methods, depending on your needs, and will also allow for the receiving of tickets from different emails. Incoming Email You can set these up from the following location within your admin CP. Commerce>Support>Settings>Incoming Emails Once you are here you will see a screen similar to the below where you are given 2 options for the type of email you wish to set up. Incoming Email Options You will also notice you can set to ignore emails, by using filters at the bottom of the page. In order to ignore, select the "Add filter" button and ignore items based on the Destination Email, Sender Email, Subject, or Body of the email being received. This can be done either as an exact match, or partial match. Piping Piping would be the preferred method if you have the access within your server. Piping allows for emails to be directed to a php file where they will be directly processed by the support system. This is something you will need to set up on your server, to point the emails to the following location http://yourinstallationlocation.com/applications/core/interface/incomingemail/piping.php email@example.com There are some basic instructions shown on the piping page to set this up within cpanel. If you use another panel (or in fact no panel at all) you would need to contact your hosting provider for assistance in setting this up. Piping Setup POP3 If you do not have access to use the piping method, you can instead set up pop3 instead. To do this, select the pop3 method and fill in the relevant details from your email provider POP 3 Setup SendGrid For more support heavy communities or communities without the ability to set up piping, it may be preferable to use an external service to receive support tickets via email. For this, we provide integration for SendGrid. Unlike other options, using SendGrid will require you to set the MX records on an entire domain or subdomain to point to SendGrid. This means you must use a dedicated domain or subdomain that you do not need to receive email for other purposes for. This may mean, for example, rather than using support@example.com, you need to use support@support.example.com. If you haven't already, add a domain whitelabel in your SendGrid account for your main domain and make sure it has been validated. This will require creating CNAME records to point to specific locations SendGrid will provide to prove that you own the domain. Contact SendGrid if you need any assistance with this step. Set up the receiving domain in SendGrid. Enter the Destination URL to the URL below and make sure that the POST the raw, full MIME message setting is checked. http://localhost/applications/core/interface/incomingemail/sendgrid.php Test everything is working by sending a test email. You need to have setup a department to receive the emails first. If it does not work, contact technical support for assistance. Outgoing Email You can set these up from the following location within your admin CP. Commerce>Support>Settings>Outgoing Emails Within this section you can set the outgoing email format, which can be one of the following Normal Email - This is general email which would be sent out, without branding. Branded Email - This would contain a branded wrapper to your emails. More advanced users can amend the wrapper to your emails within Customization>Appearance>Emails. You can also set who the emails are set to come from, whether this be the name of the person, the department, or something else. You will also notice in here that you can set a "Send received confirmation?" setting. Switching this setting on will mean that your users will get an email back when they create a ticket, whether this be through the client area, or by email. Outgoing Email

The first thing you will need to ensure that you set up within commerce will be your departments. These are required for the system to function and will be the area in which your tickets will be organized. You may have seen commerce departments already when you submit a ticket to our own ticket system here. Creating a Department You will find the area for setting up departments within the following location in your admin CP. Commerce>Support>Settings>Departments . When opening this up, you will see a screen similar to the below. To set up a new department, click on the "create new" button within the top right. Note that if you already have a department which is similar to this, you can duplicate an existing department using the duplicate icon next to the line in question. Department List In order to set up a department, you should then enter some basics such as the name of the department an associated email address if one is to be used, whether to allow submissions (for example this may be an escalation department which does not allow direct submission), and the text you would like your customers to see when submitting a new ticket in the support area. Department Setup Other Settings Also within the department setup page, you will see that there are various other attributes which you can add to the departments. These are as follows: Submission Charge - This will allow you to charge an amount to the customer in order to have their ticket submitted to this department. It may be that you wish them to pay for a higher priority of support for example. Associable Products - Here you can set products which can be associated with this submission. We actually use this ourselves to allow people to associate their client license with a ticket. Associable Subscription - Similar to the above, you can set subscription which can be associated with this submission. Require an associated purchase/Subscription - This will allow you to force the above items so that an association has to be made. Staff that can view - This will allow you to limit the staff who can see this department Once these are set up, you will be able to see these departments within the support requests screen. This will be discussed further in a later step. Introduction to Support Setting up your email

Your customers have various areas relating to their own purchases and orders on commerce, along with areas to manage their own details such as addresses and alternative contacts on the system. By default these would be access under the store tab, which is what will be shown in this step. Please note, you may have moved these items using the menu manager. Orders Under the orders tab you will see any orders which are still awaiting action. This may be that they are awaiting approval, or that they are awaiting payment or cancellation from the customer. Manage Purchases Under manage purchases, you will be able to view all the purchases that you have made on the system. This is where you can cancel a recurring item if you wish, and see any other detail (such as a downloadable item). Personal Information From here you can view/change your Primary billing and shipping addresses Addresses The personal information section will allow you to change your custom details such as you name and phone number. Alternative Contacts From here you will see alternative contacts which have been set up on your account. These are users who a customer can set to be able to manage the account at their behalf, such as being able to request support. Clicking on Add New Contact will allow you to add a new alternative contact within the system.

Selling advertisement space to your customers can easily achieved within commerce by adding a new product within Commerce>Store>Products. Before reading this step, it is suggested that you read the previous step. This step will cover the items specifically relating to selecting advertisements as the product type. When selecting the Advertisement product type, you will be presented with a screen similar to the following. In addition to the many items discussed in the previous step of this guide, you can choose an advertisement location when selecting this type. This will allow you to sell ad space in one or many locations directly to your customers. You will also be able to set an expiry period for the product, as well as the maximum dimensions for any banners which are uploaded. This allows you control over the size and period that a banner is show for. Any which are purchased will show up within System>Site Promotion>Advertisements as a pending advertisement. This enables you to ensure that the ads are suitable for your site before showing them.

Customer Referrals can be a good way in which to drive sales on your site, as you can get your customers doing the work for you, giving a small benefit to the customer who is referring people to your site. Within the admin CP, you can get to the referral setup section by going to ACP -> Members -> Member Settings -> Referrals. Switching On Once you enable referrals and save them as being on, you will see 3 tabs. The first section you will see will look similar to the screen below, and allow you to switch the system on and off, and to set whether your customers can see the commission rules. In most cases you would leave this on, however if you set up complicated rules, you may wish to switch this off. Switching this off will give you an editor where you can add information to show about the commission received instead. Referrals Main Settings Setting Rules The next tab will show you a list of the commission rules currently set up, and give you the ability to add new ones. Clicking on "Create New" will give you a screen similar to the below. From this screen you can set up a commission rule set, along with the percentage of that sale you would pay the referrer. Commission Rules Referral Banners You may want your customers to use referral banners if they are advertising your site or products. You can add in as many banner as you wish within the Referral Banners tab, which will then be shown to your customers for use when referring people to your site, along with the links for these in html and bbcode. Banner Setup On the customer side Warning It is important to note, that referrals will only apply to new registrations made via the referral links discussed below. If the purchaser is already a registered member of your site, then no referral commission would apply, regardless of the link followed. By default the referrals section on the front end of your site is under Store>My Details>Referrals (of course you can change this using the menu manager). Here they will see their unique links to give to people when referring others to your site. Anyone using these links will be shown as referred by the person who's link they used. Customer Side