Rhino Support for WordPress allows you to bring your RhinoSupport.com help desk right into any site powered by WordPress. Visitors can create new support tickets as well as view existing tickets (if logged in) - without even leaving your WordPress site. Here's a quick overview:
Creating a professional customer support area for your customers is an important factor for any successful company. This step by step “How To” page will give you a simple to use, but fully functional help desk for your WordPress site.
In short, this plugin gives your customers a way to submit tickets directly to the Rhino Support system, view tickets, and go directly to their tickets at Rhino Support for follow-up messages.
The first step is to install the Rhino Support WordPress plugin. This “Help Desk” plugin can easily be implemented into your site for faster communication between clients and businesses.
On the Dashboard, click “Plugins”, then “Add New”.
Underneath the “Install Plugins” page header, click “Upload”.
Once on this screen, click “Browse” to find the Rhino Support .zip file.
Locate the .zip file (whether downloaded to your desktop or to another folder), and click “Open” or a similar equivalent. This takes you back to the “Install Plugins” screen where the path to your downloaded plugin will show in the path field.
With your file loaded, the “Install Now” icon is highlighted, allowing access/permission to upload the Rhino Help Desk Plugin to your WordPress site.
NOTE: There may be instances where your server prompts you for a user name and password. In this event, simply enter the information for your FTP server. This is information you would normally put in your FTP program to transfer files. Your hosting company can get this information if needed.
Once it installs, click “Activate Plugin”.
Once you activate the plugin, it is listed as one of your selectable plugins under the Plugin Directory. Get started by clicking on the “Rhino Support” link in the left sidebar.
Now that the Rhino Support plugin is installed and activated, it is time to enter the plugin’s API key.
Click the “Rhino Support” link from the Dashboard to the left. This takes you to a “Settings Page” to get your API key:
NOTE: You will need need to be logged into your Rhino Support Account before clicking “Settings”. If you don’t already have a Rhino Support account, then you will need to set one up. Rhino Support offers a 15 day trial period.
If you need an API Key, click the “Click Here” link off to the right.
Below the “Input Your API Key” field are two links:
Click the “Click here to get your Rhino Supports Account API Key.” - This takes you directly to the Support Login below to get access to your API key.
Enter your e-mail and password to log in. If you don’t know your password, click the “Forgot Password” link above the blue “Login” button and check your e-mail.
NOTE : Make sure if you Copy/Paste your “Input your API key” code, it is exactly as it is written/shown, with proper case sensitivity, and no extra spacing. Copying and pasting can sometimes carry over an extra space. Ensure there are none.
Once your API key is entered, click the “Save API Key” prompt.
The second link is: “Click here for Instructions on how to get your API Key.” – This shows how to get the information necessary to locate and utilize your API key.
The instructions are simple:
1.) Click “Settings”.
2.) Click the link under “Other Resources”.
3.) Your API key is displayed below.
This section details how to create and set up access to different departments for the Rhino Support. This determines who has access to what and allows the plugin to work with those departments. First we need to create departments so you can assign access.
NOTE: These instructions are not for setting up the plugin. Just the department itself.
Click Settings in the screenshot below:
To create a new department, type the name of your department in the “Type Department Name” text box, then click “Add Department”.
Once the new department is added, go to “Department Access” under your Settings Page. Here, there are two different ways to control access for tech support tickets for your site:
Click within each box to assign departments to each group (Non-logged in users and logged in users).
1.) Department Access for non-logged in users - “Non-logged in users” are people that are simply browsing your site, such as visitors wanting to purchase a product or services from your company. This option allows access to those departments without having to be logged in.
Pre-Sales and Customer Service would be good choices here as that allows customers to make an inquiry on your wares or services without logging in.
2.) Department Access for logged in users - Logged in users are people that have registered for your site through WordPress. Examples include those who registered prior in order to leave comments or you might be running a membership site they belong to already.
Installation videos and other confidential materials would be a good choice here.
A drop down box will appear. Click the appropriate department for each box depending on what you want non logged in users and logged in users to see.
Once completed, click “Save Departments”. This controls the areas for logged in members and non-members / members who are not logged in. You should now see the list of accessible departments for each group.
Congratulations! You’ve now assigned access to different departments!
It is now time to add a way for your members to submit tickets via the Rhino Support plugin at your website. This allows users to post tickets to your Rhino Support Desk while at your WordPress installation. There are two ways to allow people to submit forms:
1.) Embed a form on a page.
2.) Add a tab that will create a pop-up form on the site.
For now, let’s focus on the first option of creating a form that’s embedded into your page.
To embed a form, first create a “New Page” in WordPress by clicking the “Add New” link under Pages in the sidebar (usually found to the left).
Give it a descriptive title by typing into the field under Add New Page.
Once the new page is in place, there is an orange Rhino Support icon in your format toolbar:
Clicking this icon will show two selections:
[rhinosupport_create]
[rhinosupport_listtickets]
Click on “[rhinosupport_create]“, and it will create the necessary code.
Once that is done, it will generate a form that looks like this:
This section doesn’t focus on the Rhino Support plugin itself, but provides details how to add pages to a navigation menu in WordPress, giving visitors a way to find any page you want. In this case, it’s the page with the ticket submission form.
To add a “New Ticket” or “Support Ticket” link to your site’s navigation menu, go to the Dashboard, select “Appearance”, then “Menus”.
In the “Pages” section, click on the choice for your your ticketing page, then “Add To Menu”, and it is now added to the site’s main navigation. Once set, click “Save Menu”. You should see something like this:
Refresh your site (usually the main page) to see the updated changes. You should now see a link for a new ticket and anything else you added.
NOTE: These menus are not specifically related to the plugin itself. They help with your plugin but are WordPress functions.
After your customers click the link, they’ll be taken to a page with a form with the following options: E-mail, Name, Department, Subject, and Message.
The previous option above embeds a contact form within specific pages and requires your members to click the link in the menu. Normally this is acceptable and how most sites have their customer support link.
If you prefer an alternate way of having customers submit a ticket, click the “Rhino Support” tab on the left hand side of your WordPress Admin areas. Scroll down and you’ll see a option to add a scrolling tab to your site. This will control how members can submit a ticket.
Clicking the radio button next to “All sections of the site” will show a floating/scrolling tab to all pages of your site.
Clicking “Specific pages or posts” will only show the tab on certain pages which you can pick by clicking the link above “Save Settings”.
This can be put on all sections of the site, or on specific pages or posts, depending on your specific needs.
The tab will always be visible for customers to use, providing a pop-up window for easy access.
The end result is the same as clicking the link in the first menu example above. You’re simply changing the way they fill out a form and thus submit a ticket.
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Once your members submit a ticket, it’s good to give them some sort of reassurance or message their submission was successful.
If you would like to give a personalized “Thank you” to your customers, there are two types of “Thank You” messages to offer your user base to let them know that they have submitted a ticket successfully.
Under the Rhino Support tabs on the Dashboard, select either “Use a custom thank you message” or “Use a specific thank you page”.
For the custom “Thank You” message, a message is shown after a successful submission. Once the form has been submitted, a ticket is created in Rhino. This “Thank You” message will be on the same page as the form submission page.
Type out your Thank You message. Click “Save Settings”, and your custom message is ready for use.
When a ticket is submitted successfully, the form will go away, displaying your message. Your ticket will look something like this to your customers:
The specific Thank You page redirects to a set URL location after the ticket has been submitted. This ticket can be created and customized to a page however you want with a custom message.
The specific URL redirection screen looks like this where you can specify a absolute URL or pick an existing page:
After a successful submission, they’ll see whatever page or URL you specified in the screen above.
Now that the Rhino Support plugin is installed, users can have a convenient way to submit tickets for the Rhino Support system and see a list of their tickets they’ve already submitted.
If you haven’t created any tickets yet, there will be nothing displayed within the list.
To answer tickets, you want to create a “List Ticket” page. Once you create the page, you will need to add the “[rhinosupport_listtickets]” code to your page. This is done by clicking on the orange “Rhino Support” icon in your tool bar to the content area of a page.
Once the “View Ticket” page is created, this page shows a list of tickets similar to this screenshot.
If no tickets have been created, then the list will be empty.
Note: If you hover the mouse over the subject, you’ll notice the link doesn’t go to your WordPress install. This is because the actual tickets aren’t located within your site but at Rhino Support.
This page with a listing of ticket while at your site creates a listing to allow you easy access to the tickets at the Rhino Support Area elsewhere. Once you click any of the subject titles you will go to the corresponding ticket at Rhino Support.
If you or your members aren’t logged in as someone with the ability to reply to tickets, you’ll see this:
If you or your customers see that, make sure to log in.
