ALM: User Guide

The technical support site is an additional entry point into the system, intended for users of your software products or services. It has a substantially simpler interface than the main ALM interface. The site gives users the ability to:

• search self-service articles,
• create Requests to resolve problems,
• track their status and hold discussions with the support team.

In the site settings you can enable or disable display of the Knowledge base (self-service articles), and specify your own URL at which the support site will be available.

To prevent users from registering on the support site themselves, disable the corresponding option in the site settings.

The text of support site pages can be customized using Administration - Settings - Texts.

When creating a Request, a support site visitor must fill in several main fields: Name, Description, Type, and Product. You can add fields that must be filled in when a Request is created. Read the "Settings" section for details.

If you need to fix a certain form of the request — require the user to provide data in a given format — use text templates bound to the request type (Request).

In the support project settings, create the required text templates for the Request entity.

In the Request Types reference list, link each type to the text template that will be inserted into the Description field when a user creates a Request.

When a Request is created, the support site asks the user to select the request type first.

For simple cases, if the request form does not depend on the Request type, select the "Used by default" checkbox on the text template. This text is inserted when a visitor creates a new Request.

By default, a user can always edit their own Request. You can control this behavior; for example, in the "In progress" state, forbid users to change the Request text. For this, the Request state settings have the option "Forbid changing the Request on the support site" on the Advanced tab.

You can allow users to perform additional actions on Requests, for example reject them if, in the user's opinion, their request has not been resolved. To do this, set the option "A support site user can perform the transition" on the corresponding transition, located on the "Advanced" tab.

You can configure integration of the support site with the LDAP directory used in your organization. All employees can then sign in to the support site with their domain account, without having to register on the support site.