Allow anonymous to submit ticket (the way anonymous would submit comment)

I found this issue when searching for the same functionality for a site I work on. We would like for anonymous users to be able to submit support tickets, in case they run into an issue in signing up for an account.

One issue that could be problematic using CCK to add additional fields would be the emails the the Support module sends because it's currently using the email address stored in a user's profile. You may be able to override the email functionality using hook_mail_alter though. However, if you're going to go to the trouble of writing some custom code, it seems to make more sense to write a patch that adds the desired functionality to the Support module.

At this point anonymous tickets are not supported. The main problem is indeed the email notification issue. Patches are very welcome to solve this.

I would like this also. Willing put it out on elance - anyone want to contribute $ to the effort?

I have written a small module that allows you to create anonymous tickets. Source code is included.

In a nutshell, what makes this module:

• Allow anonymous users to submit support tickets
• Assigns a client to them (configured in /admin/support/anonymous)
• Redirect to the page with the text "Thank you, etc." (configured)
• Hides additional CCK-field for registered users (configured)

PS: Discuss possible on my site. The site is in Russian, but there is installed Google Translate :)

I expect anonymous support would behave like this:

1) Anonymous user creates a ticket and gets a special link to it with complex ID, which the user may use later to open the ticket again.
2) Anonymous is not even required to enter own email, but if he does this, notifications via mail should works.
3) Anonymous is not even forced to write down the ID - it could be saved in SESSION and restored once user visits website again.

Any ideas how this could be implemented?

Subscribing...

I've created a tutorial on how to do integration with 'webform' and 'support'. Anonymous users can submit a webform and the result will be saved as a support ticket. Also, a new user will be created for the anonymous user and he/she will be notified automatically when the ticket is updated since the new user and the support ticket author is the same.

http://drupal.org/node/801250

Please test and help me improve it, is not perfect.

Subscribing... we'd also greatly benefit from anonymous ticket submission.

dmitrii module works well, but how does the user receive a response, as it does not appear to collect an email address

Hello Steve
Thank you for testing my module.

You should add CCK fields into content type Support ticket (/admin/content/node-type/support-ticket/fields):
- Company (field_support_ticket_user)
- E-Mail (field_support_ticket_email)
- any other you whant
Workflow:
- anonimous users add supports tickets
- ticket administrator create new user for ticket author using data from additional cck fields and change ticket "Authored by" field to this user

PS: new version (with minor changes) of the module is in attached file

I wanted to try making a patch to allow anonymous ticket submissions without having to use CCK. This is a different approach than the one taken in dmitrii's module above.

I'm attaching a patch for the dev version of Support. I've only done initial testing, but it seems to be working, so far. I'd be interested in feedback from anyone who might test it.

The attached patch also includes the patch I wrote for #934266: Global "Auto-assign new tickets to" field not auto-completing. If needed, I can separate it out later.

I tried to apply this patch, but it reports not finding a file to patch.

Never mind. Did not see the reference to the DEV version. My bad.

Actually, it won't patch with the DEV version neither.

kannary,

Sorry for the confusion. I used git to generate the patch and didn't take a close enough look at what it created. Please try this updated patch. To double check, I just tested that it applies to the current DRUPAL-6--1 (6.x-1.x-dev) version of the module.

And thanks for testing. I'm eager to hear your feedback.

Thanks, I sort of figure out that was the problem.

Actually I simply applied the patch manually, which worked out excellent. Great job and thanks for both the reply and the effort.

Another way to allow anonymous users to submit support tickets is to use the Inline Registration module http://drupal.org/project/inline_registration. It works for me.

@webremake, the Inline Registration module may work for some use cases, but not necessarily all. In our case, we want users to be able to submit tickets, even if they're unable to register or login for some reason. Plus, we want to minimize the amount of information the user has to provide (ie, simplify the form).

I think the patch adds useful functionality, so I'm reopening the issue.

@Matt V.
I applied your patch for anonymous users and recognized that

• Automatic creation of users: Global settings.
  When trying to delete the new user I get the error message that the email address is empty
• Automatic creation of users: Disabled
  When fetching emails it announces that 1 message was downloaded. But the according ticked queue stays empty

Since I am completely new to the module:
Please tell me if I handled the settings in the wrong way or if these effects are bugs.

it work for me, thankz for the patch, even you have to do manually.

Is it still the patch from 16 that's needed to have anonymous tickets possible?

dunno, as far as I can see in v7 its already supported ...

I need v6 :-)

this is work with drupal 7 version? thank you

It's actually sad that a support system won't be able to do tickets about login problems because it requires the user to log in. Unless you use mail collection, which allow other problems (user sends from another mail address than the one registered).

However, I just applied this patch manually to 6.x-1.8, and it looks to be working so far. I'll test it some more, and re-roll it against dev when I'm confident it's ok.

Attached patch rerolled against 6.x-1.x-dev

We are running the patch above (well, actually a D7 port of it) in production. The only problem we have encountered so far is that there is no validation of the mail field.

Hi Fuzzy76, I'm trying to apply the patch in D7 but the code is different. The changes that need to be applied in the support.module don't match with the file. Could you please confirm how you implemented the patch in D7? Thanks!

Attached is the patch we are using. It's half a year old, and I don't even remember who on my team did it, so it comes completely without warranties. :)

fuzzy76, thanks for your quick reply!!!
That patch is related with D7, although it didn't work for me :( ... Will continue looking.. Thanks!!