Ticket "admin notes"

[bear]

Just wondering why the admin notes in a ticket are large, at the top and have an attention grabbing red background. I also wonder why there is no method to collapse it (unless I've missed it), so you don't need to scroll past a list of these to see ticket contents. Your admins add 5 notes with whois or something, and you're scrolling a really long way to see the replies. 

It would be appreciated if the support desk could see a little love and make notes less "in your face" until needed. Just adding a collapse section button would work, kind of like the sidebar.

[bear]

Actually, the notes "pane" sticks to the spot in the ticket that it was first entered, so it scrolls down with the ticket replies. That means if the note is left for the next admin, they have to review the entire ticket start to finish to be sure they missed no notes. 

Why isn't that at least stuck to the top like all other desk applications?

[yggdrasil]

On 6/29/2020 at 6:18 PM, bear said:

Just wondering why the admin notes in a ticket are large, at the top and have an attention grabbing red background. I also wonder why there is no method to collapse it (unless I've missed it), so you don't need to scroll past a list of these to see ticket contents. Your admins add 5 notes with whois or something, and you're scrolling a really long way to see the replies. 

It would be appreciated if the support desk could see a little love and make notes less "in your face" until needed. Just adding a collapse section button would work, kind of like the sidebar.

Implementing this with standard JS/CSS would be very easy, but of course we can't because everything is behind a dark box. Personally I prefer to see the notes but I can completely understand how this gets messy if you are pasting large chunks of text with ticket notes, being able to collapse them would be useful in your situation. I do like the red attention grab since admin notes means "Hey, you have to look at this first...".

[yggdrasil]

On 6/29/2020 at 7:35 PM, bear said:

Actually, the notes "pane" sticks to the spot in the ticket that it was first entered, so it scrolls down with the ticket replies. That means if the note is left for the next admin, they have to review the entire ticket start to finish to be sure they missed no notes. 

Why isn't that at least stuck to the top like all other desk applications?

You can change this with General Setting > Support > Ticket Reply List Order. Admin notes are basically just replies on the ticket but hidden to the customer, but if you change the order to display them by Newest to Oldest, them admin notes will show at the top. I rather prefer it that way, to see the latest replies first and scroll to see to the older ones.

[bear]

5 hours ago, yggdrasil said:

if you change the order to display them by Newest to Oldest, them admin notes will show at the top

That's the setting already on it, and the note "sticks" to the topmost reply when it was created. Add replies, the note moves down along with it. May be just the way I think, but I believe all notes should be in one place. Not seeing any benefit to *another* moving target (I'm looking at you, widgets, with your meaningless sort order that affects only the drop down list) in this interface aside from maybe keeping the reference that caused the note with it. 

As for the background color, I agree it's attention getting, but it should remain at the top (collapsed or not), rather than have the staff member have to scroll the whole ticket to accurately reply to the latest response. Things will get missed (or researched again), since they may not know about them.

[WHMCS John]

Hi @bear,

Private ticket notes are in chronological order along with the ticket, so that notes can be made as the conversation progresses.

The background is light red so the notes stand out clearly from the conversation with the client, but this can always be customised to your linking with a CSS edit.

There aren't sticky ticket notes or collapsible staff ticket notes because it's not something that's been requested. I located a feature request from several years ago, but it didn't gain much traction from other users: https://requests.whmcs.com/topic/stick-ticket-notes-to-top

Feel free to suggest these ideas now, and if they prove popular it's potentially something we can consider adding in future 🙂

 

[bear]

Thanks, John, but I was aware of all the above (color, moves with responses, etc). I don't see the value with notes doing that, nor in adding my vote to that requests system. It's largely ignored, and hardly gets votes for anything because of reasons we've all stated here on the community. Even when something does get votes, it's usually marked as "not enough interest" and closed.

I also notice that the notes USED to be on top, and it was changed, apparently not by request of users. 
 

Quote

after the support ticket changes in v6.3 the ticket private notes are part of the ticket Thread and not stay on top

Have to live with it, like always. 

Edited July 10, 2020 by bear

[WHMCS John]

Hi @bear,

Ticket notes have indeed been this way since Q1 2016.

We're certainly open to adding different display options in future if there's a demonstrable demand.

[bear]

6 minutes ago, WHMCS John said:

Ticket notes have indeed been this way since Q1 2016.

Was it based on user demand or feature requests, or decided internally and simply changed?

[string]

1 hour ago, yggdrasil said:

Just, please get rid of that requests.whmcs.com site which has no use. And add a community category here called Requests on which people can vote and comment properly.

You are welcome to open a feature request about this on https://requests.whmcs.com 🤪

[wsa]

This why I did my own module because I need to have on top like whmcs have before in 2014 or 2015 

[bear]

3 hours ago, wsa said:

This why I did my own module

Frankly tired of having to hook and module things back to the proper way in this. Every new iteration and change seems to take things further down that rabbit hole. 😞

[yggdrasil]

4 hours ago, wsa said:

This why I did my own module because I need to have on top like whmcs have before in 2014 or 2015 

Did you checked the admin template files if you can't change how this looks?

[yggdrasil]

4 hours ago, bear said:

Frankly tired of having to hook and module things back to the proper way in this. Every new iteration and change seems to take things further down that rabbit hole. 😞

If you describe how you would prefer notes to be displayed, I can take a look at it and see if I can come up with some modification. This of course depends on how many files are open on the admin side (templates), since WHMCS tends to encode everything, some things are just not possible with simple HTML/JS/CSS changes.

[bear]

6 hours ago, yggdrasil said:

If you describe how you would prefer notes to be displayed, I can take a look at it and see if I can come up with some modification.

Thanks for the offer, but I'd rather do without notes than to kludge this and have to chase it on every update, again. 
I wasn't using the built in desk because I'd used third party support systems. Now trying to get away from those and finding the built in desk does things differently than I prefer. I'll just have to deal with it, since edits don't last, and WHMCS won't listen to one voice (or some times many), since they pass it to that request thing so it can die quietly.

[yggdrasil]

3 hours ago, bear said:

Thanks for the offer, but I'd rather do without notes than to kludge this and have to chase it on every update, again. 
I wasn't using the built in desk because I'd used third party support systems. Now trying to get away from those and finding the built in desk does things differently than I prefer. I'll just have to deal with it, since edits don't last, and WHMCS won't listen to one voice (or some times many), since they pass it to that request thing so it can die quietly.

To be honest, any third party ticket solution will be superior to what is build in with WHMCS. I would not bother paying for this either. There are amazing open source ones you can use. You would just need to create an integration for the authentication, both for users and staff, but after that, it will be superior in every way. The only reason to use the one with WHMCS is that its integrated nicely with user accounts, but its something you can probably achieve as well with an external solution.

I used an external integration in the past, but my ticket needs while it's probably the most used feature in WHMCS, for me personally, it's fine. Its simple, but I don't need anything else in complexity (for now). If you have more complex ticket requests or work with a larger team, the build in ticket system will probably fall short in expectations based on the features found in other solutions, even free ones.

One advice I could give you is use WHMCS tickets for customers and users/public requests, but use something else between your staff that is more complex. The benefit is that internal communications (like notes) are also now on a separated private system.

Edited July 11, 2020 by yggdrasil

[bear]

Though appreciated, it's another kludge. 😉
If I take the time and effort to create something to connect a third party script, some new whiz-bang framework will make it's way into WHMCS and break it. I've found it an almost full time job keeping up when updating and all the bits that fall off or develop "wrinkles" as a result. Frustratingly complex set of notes we have on what needs looking at in each version change. 

Lost cause, this question. They won't change.