Ticket Event Notifications And Alerts In Your Browser

May 10, 2017 | Tips

Over the last few years browsers have started to integrate technology for Push Notifications. What this means is that websites can push alerts directly to you via your browser.  Most sites use these for order notifications or for marketing - alerting you to discounts and coupons.  Many times these alerts can be super annoying.  But, if you own our Notifications add-on you can use this technology to keep on top of your ticket flow without leaving the current tab in your browser.

Overview

Pushover (www.pushover.net) is a service that makes it easy to create these notifications.  For a one time fee of $4.99 they will allow you access to their push notifications server and permit you to send 7,500 messages per month directly to your browser - without any additional charges each month.  Its just $4.99 for all time.

You can send these notifications to any device that has a browser they support - which is super awesome.  So here is how you can use this service to integrate with Awesome Support.

1. Sign up for Pushover - they have a 7 day free trial.

You can sign up here. If offered, make sure you choose the BROWSER option when you sign up for your trial (they have Android and iOS apps as well).

2. Configure your browser(s)

Go to your account page in Pushover and click the link to add a device under Your Devices.  You will be asked to choose the type of device to configure - make sure you choose Browser.  You can configure more than one browser.

For each browser you configure you will immediately receive an alert in the browser itself asking you to confirm that you wish to receive notifications from Pushover.net.  You must choose the option to allow these notifications!

3. Retrieve your private email address

Also in your account page is an email address that looks similar to this: xyznnnabc@pomail.net.  Just make a note of it because we'll need it later.

4. Install our Notifications add-on

If you haven't already done so, install our Notifications module.  You can find installation instructions here.  This module allows you to send alerts to 3rd parties or to Slack.  While the free Awesome Support core plugin can send notifications, those are only delivered to the parties involved in the ticket - the agent or the customer.  The Notifications add-on allow you to send notifications to others not directly involved in the ticket - eg: managers and, in this tutorial, Pushover.net.

5. Configure the notifications module to receive emails for the ticket events you are interested in.

You can send/receive notifications for 5 different events:

  • New Ticket
  • New Reply From Agent
  • New Reply From Client
  • Ticket Closed
  • Ticket Re-opened

You can also triggers notifications for status changes  - eg: when a ticket status goes to Escalated or Level 2.

To configure the contents for these event notices:

  • Go to the TICKETS->SETTINGS->NOTIFICATIONS tab
  • At the top of the tab just tick the box next to each event you would like to be notified about.
  • Scroll down to the email templates area.
  • For each event you selected above simply configure the contents of the email alert - make sure you set one of the email addresses to your private pushover.net email address you saved in step 3 above!

You should make your message relatively small - a couple of lines at most.  And, because this is the regular Notifications add-on you can use our standard email template tags.  Learn more about configuring outgoing emails and template tags.

6. Click Save and Enjoy!

Sit back and watch the notifications roll in for each of the events you selected.  If you're not a fan of Slack or of checking your email regularly, this might be a good alternative for you - you can receive just the notifications you are interested in (eg: new tickets).

Here's another tip - each of your agents or managers can sign up for a pushover.net account and get their own private email address.  Since you can send out multiple emails for each notification event, each of those pushover users can receive browser based alerts as well!

And one final tip - our RULES ENGINE add-on can send out multiple notifications for each event.  This means that if you want to use the Notifications add-on for true email notifications you might not be able to use it for notifications to Pushover.  But, with the RULES ENGINE you can send a completely different set of emails to PUSHOVER.

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