Problem with Limit features and categories

[akwil]

Hello,
Firstly I would like to say thank you for this script. Great job!

My question.
I have created many categories -> more than 100.
Also I have 10 Staff members.

What I wanted to do is to prohibit other staff members from changing features on the website.
So I have changed for each staff member to NOT be an administrator.
Then I had to choose which categories and features the staff members are able to use…
What I had to do is to tick all categories (for each user) to make sure my staff members are able to change categories for each type of request. Also I have prohibited some features for them (that was the point).

The problem is when I am trying to tick all the categories and press save I see that not all of them are ticked. Like 80 from 100 are ticked. Retry and the same…

Is there a limit of categories or what?

Thank you for your help.
Artur

[Klemen]

Wow, I never expected anyone having 100 categories in HESK. You may want to reconsider this, I'm not sure customers will be fond of searching through 100 categories to find the correct one.

Anyway, to make it work you will need to change column type in database structure.

In table "hesk_users" the `categories` column type needs to be changed from VARCHAR to TEXT - you can do that in phpMyAdmin.

[akwil]

Thank you Klemen for you very fast reply!
I really appreciate that!

I knew that you will be in shock that someone have created over 100 categories

It is not like that i have created 100 categories to be visible for customers (i'm not stupid)
Customers see only 10. Others are private -> to let staff members specify the problem.

For example. Client choose Citrix category. After it staff memer can precise what kind of Citrix problem it is. So they change category to correct one... client dont have to know all the details. Staff have to...
Having so many categories is great for the reports to see which points are the weakest ones...

I hope its clear now why i needed it so much...

Thanks again
Artur

[akwil]

I have just follow your instruction.
It works now perfect!

Thank you very much once again.

Greetings,
Artur

[oalexandrino]

​Hi Akwil and Klemen!

So, my problem is (was) exactly the same that Akwil sent in the first thread of this post.

About the following Klemen's comment "I'm not sure customers will be fond of searching through 100 categories to find the correct one."...

I'd say the following:

Each company has its own way to conduct its process.

In our case, no final user will be able to choose any categories.

How is going to be this process?

When I user open a ticket, there is a team in charge to monitory hesk Interface and look for no assigned new tickets .

No final user has the privilege to assign any ticket. Service Desk's team is the only unit that can do that.

When I team's member of our Service Desk realize that a new ticket was created, he or she must get this ticket, provide the correct troubleshooting and/or assign to someone else of the team.

At this moment, he or she will classify the correct category. Final user could classify in a wrogn way.

I wonder if Hesk could have a distiction in group of categories, like so:

Connectivity\UTP Problem
Connectivity\VPN
Connectivity\Firewall

A dropdown o subcategories would be a great way to mitigate too many categories.

In order to do that, I think that you must create another database's table to provide a new relationship.

What I could realize is that you put all categories in the varchar's field in the "hesk_users" table.

But, I believe that an user can have "n" categories, so, the 225 was a limit in our company.

So, these are my suggestions and congrats to the job!

Before I asking again...updating the kind of the field will work perfectly???? (We are in 2014!)

I'm asking that because I downloaded it this month. So, I don't know if the programming language is the same. I don't want to see bugs in the production!

Thank you very much!

[Klemen]

I agree sub-categories would be the best way to handle this, but it is not something HESK supports at the moment.

Yes, changing the `categories` filed in the "hesk_users" database from VARCHAR to TEXT should allow you to assign more categories to each user.

If you have MySQL version 5.0.3 or later you can also leave the field type as VARCHAR and simply increase the limit, for example by running this query in a tool like phpMyAdmin:

Code: Select all

ALTER TABLE `hesk_users` CHANGE `categories` `categories` VARCHAR(10000) NOT NULL DEFAULT ''

[akwil]

Hi Klemen, Hi oalexandrino

Klemen we are still working on 2.4.2 version.
I think i made a right decision. If something works and it works correctly dont tuch it:)

oalexandrino - regarding your question.
I also have about >100 categories. And to be honest i found a very good solution for it.

Put yourself in cutstomer shoes. He/She will never scroll down your 100 categories.
You can be sure he/she will stay with one of the first 15-20

The worst job is behind you -> adding those 100 categories.
Now what you have to do is to hide all of them:) (there is a button for it).
Leave only the MAIN ones.
Rest of the 100 categories should be visible for you team (helpdesk/servicedesk).

Now you have to think like a user.
In my case I could easily say that 10 of my points are in the same group (problems with Outlook or problems with Citrix, Network problems, Application problems...etc).
So just think like a user and try to make it as simple as you can.
They should only see the main categories... it's for you (helpdesk servicedesk) to have the idea what they are talking about.
Later on service desk/help desk should update the category to correct one...
Having the smaller list will help you to classify who should take care of the ticket.
Later on the specialist decide what is the sub cat.
User is not the IT Specialist:) he is just a user.

But the goal is to have the idea what they are talking about.
Hope you agree with me at this point.

Hope I helped you somehow....

Greetings
Artur Kwil