I've had this in the back of my mind while trying our the STS module, and now I'm ready to tackle it.

Two issues are caused by our cron only running once every four hours.

1)
For up to four hours, the user can't see any ticket, and doesn't get an email confirmation.
During this time our staff don't know there is a new ticket waiting.

I can't understand why email isn't sent straight away after ticket creation, or why the ticket is not created in the user's account? Surely none of this 'immediate action' should have to wait for cron to run? Can this be explained please?

2)
Once the ticket has been created, I *do* sort-of understand why the email account is only polled when cron runs. However, whilst the rest of the site should only get updated every four hours, I'd like the support ticket system to check for new email replies every thirty minutes.

Can you recommend a module that might help with controlling cron runs in this manner?

Thanks.

Comments

-Anti-’s picture

-Anti- commented

Sorry to bump this.
Site goes live today, and I really need help with this, especially 1)
The only thing I can do today is make cron run every few minutes, but that is not a long-term solution.

jeremy’s picture

jeremy commented
Status: Active » Postponed (maintainer needs more info)

Please open separate issues when reporting separate problems, as otherwise things get confused. Your #1 issue sounds rather strange, are you doing any aggressive caching on the website? Is this user logged in or anonymous? Do you have any contrib mail modules installed?

As for your second issue, read the INSTALL file. Specifically read about the "download mail via support/fetch" permission,

jeremy’s picture

jeremy commented

How are these tickets being created? Via email? If so, then yes you will not see them until cron runs (or you set things up re issue #2).

anthonysomerset’s picture

anthonysomerset commented
Status: Postponed (maintainer needs more info) » Closed (works as designed)

best alternative that requires no added modules (please note a potential security risk depending on how you look at it)

open up download mail via support/fetch permission to anonymous users and then copy the link to the fetch url

create a cron job that runs wget in much the similar fashion to your drupal cron and just set it up to run more regularly

as i mentioned this then does allow people to theoretically fetch support tickets for you, but if they cant see your support tickets this isnt really a problem for most

if you need a module for this try: http://drupal.org/project/elysia_cron or others can be found here: http://drupal.org/search/apachesolr_search/cron?filters=type%3Aproject_p...

-Anti-’s picture

-Anti- commented

> How are these tickets being created? Via email?

Yes. Webform is emailing a form submission to the 'support ticket email account' which was set-up for that client.

I can set-up webform to send an immediate reply, saying the email was received, but then the user will also receive a copy of the ticket after cron runs (up to four hours later), which could be confusing to them.

I assume by your response that if the form at /node/add/support-ticket is used, the emails would be sent straight away?

-Anti-’s picture

-Anti- commented

anthonysomerset, thanks for your solutions.
I didn't realise that I could use the 'fetch' url in its own cronjob.
That is certainly something to consider.

Could this be set-up as a drupal 'action', so when the user submits the webform, the 'fetch' url is somehow 'run'?

jeremy’s picture

jeremy commented

> if the form at /node/add/support-ticket is used, the emails would be sent straight away?

That is correct.

> Could this be set-up as a drupal 'action', so when the user submits the webform, the 'fetch'
> url is somehow 'run'?

Actions and Triggers integration is on the todo list, but none of the code is yet written. it's simple enough to write, but sadly I've lacked in time lately.

-Anti-’s picture

-Anti- commented

Thanks.

One last question:
Is there anything I can do in the cPanel email filters to trigger 'the fetch'?
There are filter options to 'pipe to program' and 'deliver to folder'.

anthonysomerset’s picture

anthonysomerset commented

>Could this be set-up as a drupal 'action', so when the user submits the webform, the 'fetch' url is somehow 'run'?

if the user uses the webform the ticket is automatically sent, no fetching is needed

support ticket system doesnt use mail piping, although i reckon that is a valid feature request for another ticket
using the pipe mail wouldnt do anything useful at this stage

-Anti-’s picture

-Anti- commented

OK, thanks.