Tickets without an account

Some people should be able to write to you without ever having an account: a visitor with a pre-sales question, or a reseller who uses your software and only needs support. WHBMP can take their ticket without creating a client account.

Turn it on for a department

1. Open Support > Departments.
2. Add a department, or press Edit on one (for example Sales).
3. Tick Allow submitting without login and save. A green No login needed badge appears on the department.

Only departments with this box ticked appear on the public form. A department that is hidden from clients never does.

The public form

The form is at https://your-site/open-ticket. To send visitors to one department, add ?department= and its number, for example /open-ticket?department=3. Add the link to your Site Menu (Visible to: Everyone) so it shows in the header.

The visitor enters a name, an email, a department, a subject and a message, and any extra details that department asks for (see Extra details on tickets). With no open department the address shows a "not found" page.

The form uses your captcha setting for Support Ticket Submission, and each visitor can send only a few messages a minute.

What happens next

• No account is made. The ticket keeps the name and email on the ticket itself.
• The visitor gets the usual "ticket opened" email. Staff in the department are notified as for any ticket.
• In the admin ticket list the ticket looks like any other, and the Client box on the ticket shows the name, the email and a Guest badge.
• When staff reply, the reply is emailed to the visitor. Each email carries a private link (a long random address) that opens the conversation so the visitor can read it and answer. Anyone who has the link can read the ticket, so tell people not to forward the emails.
• Automatic closing, feedback requests and the other ticket emails work the same way.

What a guest cannot do

A guest has no login, so there is no ticket list and no attachments on the public form. A ticket opened this way is not tied to a service or a domain. If someone becomes a client later, they can open new tickets from their account as usual.

Passwords on these tickets

If the department asks for a password (a root password, an SSH key), it is stored encrypted and erased when the ticket is closed. See Extra details on tickets.