Twitter Channel

The Twitter channel can handle multiple accounts and will create tickets on new mentions and direct messages.

Contents

Activate or Deactivate Channel

The Twitter channel is disabled by default and needs to be activated before use. To do this, go to Settings -> Tickets -> Channels and click the "Activate" link on the Twitter channel row. The channel can be deactivated in the same way, instead this time by clicking the "Deactivate" link on the same row.

Accounts

Setting up your Twitter Account For Access

To set up a Twitter account to work with the help desk, you need to set up an application with the right permissions, follow the steps below.

  1. Visit the Twitter Developers website - https://dev.twitter.com/ - and sign in to your Twitter account.
  2. Go to the application management site - https://apps.twitter.com/ - and click "Create New App".
  3. Enter a name, description and website URL, these are not important. Agree to the Twitter terms and create the application.
  4. On the application manage page, click on the "Permissions" tab.
  5. Change the Access level to "Read, Write and Access direct messages" and save.
  6. Next, click on the "Keys and Access Tokens" tab.
  7. Click on the "Create my access token" button towards the bottom of the page.

On this page, you now have everything needed to set up the account in the help desk. The important details are the consumer key, consumer secret, access token and access token secret.

Create or Update an Account

To create a new account, or update an existing one, please follow the following steps.

  1. Visit Settings -> Tickets -> Channels and click on the "Settings" link on the Twitter channel row. If you're creating a new account click "Add Account", or if you're updating an existing account, search for it and click the edit (pencil) icon on the right side of the table row.
  2. Complete the input fields:
    1. Twitter Handle - Your Twitter account handle including the @ at the start, for example @supportpal.
    2. Active - If the account is active and should be included when polling for new tweets.
    3. Consumer Key - The consumer key found on the "Keys and Access Tokens" page in the Twitter application (See Setting up your Twitter Account For Access).
    4. Consumer Secret - The consumer secret found on the "Keys and Access Tokens" page in the Twitter application (See Setting up your Twitter Account For Access).
    5. Access Token - The consumer secret found on the "Keys and Access Tokens" page in the Twitter application (See Setting up your Twitter Account For Access).
    6. Access Token Secret - The consumer secret found on the "Keys and Access Tokens" page in the Twitter application (See Setting up your Twitter Account For Access).
    7. Import New Tweets Only - Lets the ticket importing start from the current time to avoid pulling in tweets from the past. This option is only available for new accounts.
    8. Import Tweets - If it should convert tweets mentioning your Twitter handle into tickets.
    9. Import Direct Messages - If it should convert direct messages sent to your Twitter handle into tickets.
    10. Default Department - Select the department in which messages sent to this account should be opened as tickets in.
    11. Default Priority - Select the priority with which tickets opened by this account are set as.
  3. Once all the details have been entered, click the "Validate Authentication" button.
  4. If it has successfully verified the details, you can click the "Submit" button to finish.

Delete an Account

To delete an account, follow the below steps:

  1. Visit Settings -> Tickets -> Channels and click on the "Settings" link on the Twitter channel row.
  2. Search for the account you wish to delete.
  3. Click the delete (cross) icon located on the right of the table.
  4. Click on the left button, "Yes, I'm sure", that pops up confirming you would like to delete this account and it will then be deleted.

Modifying the Polling Time

The active accounts are polled automatically by a scheduled task (See Scheduled Tasks). Edit the scheduled task to change the polling frequency and you can manually run the task to verify it's working.