Ticket System – How To HelpDesk

OpenSupports is an open source ticket system, very simple to setup and use. Here I will go through setting up step by step. I am assuming you have your server is set up with correct permission. You will need to able to create database and upload installation files to your server. The installation has 7 steps it will go through and check requirements, and settings as it goes to the next step. This one is a very very simple Ticket system.

Server Requirements

PHP 5.6+
MySQL 4.1+
PDO Extension
Apache 2.4+

Installation of OpenSupports

You can start by downloading the OpenSupports ticket system from https://www.opensupports.com/download/

Once you have download the OpenSupports ticket system, then upload to your server and go to URL of your OpenSupports, you should see Step 1 of 7 Select the language and click Next

Then it will check for the Server requirements, if you see any error or missing requirement, install it then click Refresh, once all good, then click Next

You can fill in MySQL server info, at this point create a database if you have not yet, then fill in info below and click Next

MySQL database name: this can be left blank and it will generate automatic
MySQL server port (this can be left blank (default port is 3306)
MySQL user:
MySQL password:

Then select the option if you want your user to access and be able to register it, it’s toggle on/off, make selection, then click Next

Fill in the name of your ticket system, Check box if you want your user to attach a file to ticket and email server info (option to confirm SMTP connection test, to make sure your email server can communicate), then click Next

Admin account name, email and password, fill in info, make sure it’s strong and keep it safe, you will use this account to make changes to your system. Once you have filled in info, click Next
Then it will go through installation and redirect to login page

This is login page where you will enter your admin login info you choose in your last step.
User URL will be yourdomain
Admin URL will be yourdomain/admin

Once you are logged in you will see Dashboard of your new Ticket System, where you can make changes, add user/agents, etc…

That’s it, very simple ready to use your OpenSupports open source ticket system. If you are looking for more feature you can use another open source ticket system called osTickets, I have written a post on how to install osTicket on Ubuntu, enjoy it

osTicket is one of the great open source support system, very easy to install and use. I have noted the whole process, short version, and detailed version. What you will need from start to finish. This installation is fresh, without any add-ons or any customization osTicket version 1.10.1. I have written this installation based on Ubuntu 16.04 with Apache as a web server, it may work just fine with other versions of Ubuntu servers or similar to other flavors of Linux systems. Assuming you have your web server and domain up and running without any issues. So, let’s get started

What you will need

Server requirements: You can get up to date from official docs from osTicket very well documented
- PHP 5.6 (or better I am going to be using PHP7.0)
- MySQL 5.0 (or better)
- 2GB memory recommended 4GB or more
Access to web/database server via SSH
Access to site file via (FTP, SFT, GUI, SSH, etc. …)

Getting server ready to install osTicket:

Installing requirements, you may need to run add this to repository void error, log in to your web server via SSH

Commands:
sudo apt-add-repository ppa:ondrej/php
sudo apt-get install php7.0-gd php7.0-imap php7.0-xml php7.0-mbstring php7.0-intl php–apcu

Downloading osTicket:

https://osticket.com/download/
Once you have downloaded then extract it or upload it to your web server common location: /var/www/

Then set the permission:

commands: make sure to change /var/www/ to your path
sudo chown -R www-data:www-data /var/www/

Click Continue once you have fixed any issues, please correct it before going forward

Setup osTicket Database and give full permission using whichever tool you are comfortable with it, then fill in details and click Install now

if everything went well you should see Congratulation, then just change the permission of your config file

You should be able to login to your osTicket support system with the information you used earlier, see my notes, where I have put in some common issues you may encounter when installing.

Notes and common errors/solution:

You may need to do these if you get errors or other settings changes

If you have not copied the ost-sampleconfig.php to include/ost-config.php
then you will get the following message

You will also need to make sure that ost-config.php has correct permission, otherwise, you will get this message:

if you have already installed the PHP IMAP extension and still gives you an error, take a look at your php.ini file and enable it by uncommenting : /etc/php/php.ini:
;extension=imap.so
to
extension=imap.so

You may need to restart the web service after making changes to take effect:
sudo systemctl restart apache2

error: Valid CSRF Token Required OsTicket:
then need to edit file class.ostsession.php round line 191
catch (DoesNotExist $e) {
$this->data = new SessionData([‘session_id’ => $id]);
$this->data->session_data = “”;

error: Php 7.2 compatibility issue (not recommended to use this version of PHP on osTicket 1.10.1 or 1.10.4, it should support on new version 1.11)
then need to edit file class.ostsession.php round line 197

if(!is_string($this->data->session_data)) { $this->data->session_data = strval($this->data->session_data);

}

These commands to install PHP version 7.0 extensions manually one at a time:
Sudo apt-get install php7.0-gd
Sudo apt-get install php7.0-imap
Sudo apt-get install php7.0-xml
Sudo apt-get install php7.0-mbstring
Sudo apt-get install php7.0-intl
Sudo apt-get install php-apcu

Make sure to protect your ost-config after the installation by changing the permission:
sudo chmod 0644 /var/www/include/ost-config.php

Tag: Ticket System

How to setup OpenSupports Ticket System