Brimir

Brimir is a simple helpdesk system that can be used to handle support requests via incoming email. Brimir is currently used in production at Ivaldi.

Major fork changes

1. Added private notes for tickets (simple, single textarea in ticket context visible only for agents)
2. Added possibility to change sender for ticket (in case that someone sent request to our private email and we do not have redirect functionality in our email client)
3. Added simple templates support (Based on TinyMCE plugin ans stored in db)
4. Added consumed_time attribute for ticket (we want to know how long we have been working on that ticket)
5. Added pure Slack integration through rules functionality
6. Added Polish locale
7. Added Deadline attribute for Ticket
8. Sorted (with headers) tickets table
9. Groups functionality: Ticket can belongs to group, Agent can be member of any group
10. New role: Admin with maximum privileges
11. Agent is not an admin: can manage tickets only from own groups
12. Pure calendar view added (fullcalendar)
13. New notifications added: ping (remind assignee about ticket), deadline (for deadline reached)
14. Very simple knowledge base with ability to connect articles to tickets

Installation

Brimir is a rather simple Ruby on Rails application. The only difficulty in setting things up is how to get incoming email to work. See the next section for details.

Any Rails application needs a web server with Ruby support first. We use Phusion Passenger (mod_rails) ourselves, but you can also use Thin, Puma or Unicorn. Phusion Passenger can be installed for Nginx or Apache, you can chose wichever you like best. The installation differs depending on your distribution, so have a look at their Nginx installation manual or their Apache installation manual.

After setting up a webserver, you have to create a database for Brimir and modify the config file in config/database.yml to reflect the details. Set your details under the production section. We advise to use adapter: postgresql or adapter: mysql2 for production usage, because those are the only two adapters and database servers we test.

Next up: configuring your outgoing email address and url. This can be set in config/environments/production.rb by adding the following lines before the keyword end:

config.action_mailer.default_options = { from: '[email protected]' }

config.action_mailer.default_url_options = { host: 'brimir.yoururl.com' }

Now install the required gems by running the following command if you want PostgreSQL support:

bundle install --without sqlite mysql development test --deployment

Run the following command to install gems if you want MySQL support:

bundle install --without sqlite postgresql development test --deployment

Generate a secret_key_base in the secrets.yml file:

sed -i "s/<%= ENV\[\"SECRET_KEY_BASE\"\] %>/`bin/rake secret`/g" config/secrets.yml

Next, load the database schema and precompile assets:

rake db:schema:load RAILS_ENV=production
rake assets:precompile RAILS_ENV=production

Last thing left to do before logging in is making a user and adding some statuses. You can do this by running:

bin/rails console production
u = User.new({ email: '[email protected]', password: 'somepassword', password_confirmation: 'somepassword' }); u.agent = true; u.save!

Incoming email

Incoming emails can be posted to the tickets url by using the script found in scripts/post-mail. Create an alias in your /etc/aliases file like this:

brimir: "|/bin/bash /path/to/your/brimir/repo/script/post-mail http://yoururl.com/tickets.json"

Now sending an email to [email protected] should start curl and post the email to your brimir installation.

Contributing

We appreciate all contributions! If you would like to contribute, please follow these steps:

• Fork the repo.
• Create a branch with a name that describes the change.
• Make your changes in the branch.
• Submit a pull-request to merge your feature-branch in our master branch.

Requested features

Some users have made requests for the following features. If you would like to contribute, you could add any of these.

• Allowing customers to update ticket status, with correct email notifications.
• Switchable property to support threads by using special tags in the subject line instead of relying on mail headers.
• Support for hosted incoming mail services (Sendgrid, Mandrill), possibly using griddler gem.
• Ability to sign in using a Single Sign On functionality based on Shared Token or JWT.
• Signing in using LDAP.
• Queue sorting by column header.
• Private note addition to tickets.
• Automated replies based on the current rule system.
• Closing issues from the overview page.
• Remove user functionality, without losing ticket and reply information.
• Adding knowledge base functionality.
• Welcome mail for new users (after mailing a ticket for example) with their password.
• Set priority, assignee and labels on the create ticket form.
• Assign tickets to groups of users
• When replying, select a response from pre-defined canned responses and modify to your needs
• TicketsController#create should limit access to IP and be user/pass protected
• TicketsController#new should be configurable as open-to-the-world or not
• Integration with OpsWeekly
• Social media integration such as FreshDesk and Zoho have (reply to requests via social media)
• Ticket creation api (and improving existing api)

License

Brimir is licensed under the GNU Affero General Public License Version 3.