Merged Is it possible to set up Kunena as a help desk / job ticketing system?

A straight-up answer:

(1) Use Joomla ACL
(2) Assign the ACL to specific users or classes of users
(3) Use access control for your Joomla category
(4) Allow only holders of the Joomla ACL to be able to access the category


That's how we do things here at K.org.

Does this help?

If you would like a personalised, direct involvement of someone to set this up for you, would you be prefer me to move this topic to one of the "requests for help" (pay or not pay) categories? I could do that for you.

Ok I am willing to pay to make this work, but I want to make sure we are on the same page. I think your replies are for the original question not the second question i had. My first question was how to make it so that only the users that open the question can reply & see it.

So my second question and what i want to do now is hide the Support Forums from the main forum category. This can be found at donkquity.com/forum/index.html .

I got the URL for the Support Category and made it so it works in the new tab for Support like in here.
donkquity.com/forum/support.html

So how do I hide the category so that it is not displayed on the main forum but still is active so it works on the support side?

Truly sorry if there was any hurt feelings and for any confusion that I may have caused. Just want to make sure we are on the same page, because I cant understand how user access levels would have anything to do with this. That is why I believe this was miss communication. I want everyone, registered and non registered users to be able to view the support forums.

It really makes it difficut (from a forum moderation perspective) when we have multiple subjects per topic. I understand that your primary interest here is in knowing the answer to your main issue which is basically summarised as follows:

(1) You have a category that you want only to be accessed by certain users, in other words a class of users defined by a Joomla ACL scheme.
(2) We do not know whether you have implemented a Joomla ACL scheme that will support this idea.
(3) You want to know how to use the Kunena Category Manager to define which specific things on the Permissions tab that will allow certain categories to be visible or accessible to certain users or a class of users defined in (1) above
(4) The information available to you in Sections, Categories, sub-Categories (Part 1) and Sections, Categories, sub-Categories (Part 2) - advanced setup for special groups has not helped; and
(5) You would be willing to pay someone for their time to devise a solution that meets the obejctive stated in (1) above.

Have I correctly summarised the issue for you?

Hi everyone,

We're looking for a way to create a private ticket area so that when a user posts a new topic, it's only visible to that respective user and moderators, but not to any other users. As far as I can see, this can't be done in Kunena 3.0 by default.

Thus, rather than using different software for the private area, we're thinking about contributing the feature to Kunena, however we want to make sure that we're not wasting our time and that this would be a feature that the Kunena team is interested in accepting (assuming the code quality is good and that the feature is backward compatible). Is there any interest in us coding this feature?

Looking forward to your reply.

Kind regards,
Nick

G'day, Nick.

I think there could be significant interest in this and many other ideas that people may have that contributes to and enhances the functionality of Kunena.. I recall, in a general sense, that I've replied in the past to questions, suggestions, comments (and complaints) from people who have wanted to use Kunena as a job ticketing system. Indeed, raising the hope that your help could realise this ambition couldn't have come at a better time.

In my opinion, the best way that you (and others who may have ideas for developing new features for Kunena) can assist us is to contact Matias whose address is given on our team page or, if you like, apply to join the team as a developer by using the link to the application form that is given, also, on that page.

Thanks a lot, Nick. You guys do great work. (It was delightful to meet Rod Martin at Noordwijkerhout a few weeks ago and, if you are talking to him, please give him my regards.)

Thank you, sozzled! Great information! I emailed Matias

Thanks for the kind words! I passed on your regards to Rod (via a message since he's training today).

Cheers,
Nick

Version: Kunena 2.0.4 on a Joomla 2.5.11 series platform.
==============
I have a situation where having a category that facilitates private discussions [post and reply] between a specified user and a specified team leader with the possibility of allowing access to other specified users regardless of group memberships is required. [auto access to super admin]

The situation:
I am building a training site for IT volunteers. The forum facilitates general discussion using the multi group access strategy.
However what the group or access level system fails to do is allow individual users by username to be allocated to a category so that they can have a discussion with their team leader with out interruption by other volunteers and preferably in a private setting.

Currently I believe the only way to facilitate this is to use an individual group for each individual volunteer username and when talking about a large number of volunteers this becomes ineffective and unmanageable.

Ideally what would be nice is if there was in the permissions section of each category an option to select individual users with at least two [ volunteer and trainer ] or many.

Questions:
Is there a way to easily tweek the software to allow for the above?
Is there currently a plugin that can be installed for the above purpose?
Any ideas of suggestions are most welcome.

To get a better idea of the situation please visit the first draft production at:
itvolunteers.net

G'day, bizzymate, and welcome to the forum.

Yes, this is an interesting scenario and the problems you have stem from the fact that Joomla access permissions are not based on an individual user's account (like you have with the Microsoft Windows operating system where objects are protected by ACLs held in the PC's registry or, more broadly, through another mechanisms like Active Directory ).

We've had similar discussions like this one in the past (see User Groups, User Group Privileges, ACLs and, although as you correctly say, it's possible to manage these things by allocating each user to their own Joomla ACL group and creating categories that are protected based on that ACL, the technique is cumbersome and becomes increasingly difficult to manage when the population of your site grows.

In this case it would seem that a forum-based solution is probably not the ideal one for you. Although, I should add, a general forum would still be of use for questions where it is not necessary to keep things "private".

The short answer to your question is no; it is probably not feasible to use Joomla ACLs to control the protection over forum categories to the degree that you want to control them. There are, however, other mechanisms that may be more appropriate to your case.

There are other Joomla extensions that may be of use to you. JomSocial Groups has features that allow your members to create their own private discussions, to invite other members to participate in those discussions, and to control who is allowed to be part of those discussions. Community Builder has similar features with their GroupJive product and you might like to do some research with those products. There's always private messaging, too, and help desk applications that may be useful.

Thank you very much for your informative response!
You are correct when you say that there are other avenues to achieve the "core ware" to support private discussions and I shall look into it.
I fully intend to maintain Kunena forum support for the site, if at all possible, due to it's excellent integration with other components/extensions and the Joomla platform generally.
However you mention reference to Microsoft style ACL and this may be an avenue of research as I feel the site will most definitely and inevitably need a very robust "username" orientated approach to access.
CB [which I currently run may be able to offer a way, possibly through a modified profile blog tab system... however this is subject to feasibility and trialing. [the limitations on "utility" for the CB blog compared to the forum is the issue. [ file sharing, containing information, categorizing etc etc.]
Possibly running another forum system along side kunena may be useful such as PHPBB or other.
Again, thank you for your insights....

Edit: thinking on it, a stripped down forum bulletin board system that could be installed as private CB Tab is where I think I will head....

It is interesting to note that CB Group jive offers nothing more than what Kunena already offers by way of making categories private to a given group.
As as far as I can tell from reading the support literature it does not reduce privacy down to an individual user and selected "Other members". [staying purely group focused] Facebook type ACL offers something along the lines of what I am looking for I think...