Jitbit HelpDesk Software

 

This is the installation manual for Jitbit Help Desk - a web based help desk software application.
Learn more about it.

 

This file will guide through the basics of installation and operation of Jitbit's Web Based Help Desk software. Thank you for reading it.

Contents:
1. OVERVIEW
2. SYSTEM REQUIREMENTS
3. INSTALLING HELPDESK
4. UPDRADING HELPDESK
5. QUICKSTART
6. Autologin-feature (authentication API)
7. Windows-integrated authentication
8. Helpdesk URL
9. UNINSTALLING HELPDESK
10. Integration with Jitbit CRM
11. API & Email API

 

1. OVERVIEW

Thank you for choosing Jitbit HelpDesk - web based help desk software. Jitbit HelpDesk is a web based help desk solution ("ticket system"), designed to assist help desks to deliver outstanding customer service. Jitbit HelpDesk is an ASP.NET 4.0 web-application with access from client computers via a web browser.

Jitbit offers both hosted and self-hosted versions of the software. This installation manual is about the self-hosted edition "for your server".

1.1. Tickets and Categories

Tickets (aka "issues") are the main entities in the help-desk system. Tickets are submitted by users and organized into categories for convenience.

1.2. User roles

Jitbit Help-Desk has three user roles:

User - is a regular user who submits support tickets to the system.

Technician - is a user who is permitted (by an administrator) to handle tickets in one or more categories. A technician receives email notifications about every new ticket in a category. NOTE: To make a user a technician you have to "grant" him permissions to handle tickets in some category. This is done through the category editing form in the admin section.

Administrator - changes system settings, assigns users to categories (thus making them technicians), creates categories, adds/deletes users etc. NOTE: By default an administrator does not get notified of new issues in the helpdesk system, unless he is assigned as a "technician" to some category.

 

2. JITBIT HELPDESK SYSTEM REQUIREMENTS

2.1. PLATFORMS

Jitbit HelpDesk requires a server running one of the following operating systems:

Since Jitbit HelpDesk is browser based, there is no particular requirement for the client operating system. A variety of popular browsers can be used for client access to Jitbit HelpDesk including:

2.2. PREREQUISITES

The following components are required to be installed on the server hosting Jitbit HelpDesk:

  1. Microsoft .NET Framework 4.0
  2. Internet Information Services (IIS) web-server with ASP.NET feature enabled.

    To enable the required features on Windows 2008 server and above, do this:

  3. Microsoft SQL Server 2005/2008 configured to accept both Windows and SQL authentication (the so called "Mixed Mode")

    How to setup SQL SQL 2005/2008:
    MS SQL Server 2005/2008 "Express edition" is a free edition of MS SQL Server. It is available for download from the Microsoft web site. Jitbit HelpDesk uses SQL-authentication, so MS SQL 2005/2008 has to be installed with the "Mixed Mode" authentication mode (!), with an SA-password specified ("SA" is a built-in "system administrator" user, whos password must be specified explicitly during installation).

  4. Full-Text Search for SQL Server (this is optional, but highly recommended)
  5. If you plan using Windows-authentication under IIS 7 - you will need "Windows authentication" role service installed. Installation instructions

Microsoft .NET Framework, Internet Information Services (IIS) and SQL Server 2005/2008 "Express Edition" are all available at no charge from Microsoft if you do not already have the required components installed.

 

3. INSTALLING HELPDESK read carefully

Jitbit HelpDesk can be installed in TWO WAYS:

3.1. INSTALLING via "setup.exe"

3.2. MANUAL INSTALLATION

3.2.1. Web-application install
3.2.2. Database install

Choose one of the following options

3.3. FIRST STEPS

Jitbit Helpdesk comes with a default administrator user.

Default username: "admin", password: "admin"

Don't forget to change that default password!

4. UPGRADING FROM OLDER VERSIONS

To upgrade your helpdesk to the latest version:

Upgrading from 7.0.8 and lower - ASP.NET MVC

As of version 7.1.0 Jitbit Help Desk uses ASP.NET MVC for some of it's operations. So upgrading from earlier versions requires you to update your "web.config" file with the new settings that were not there before (they're marked with "MVC" comment in the new web.config). And also removing all the "location" tags form the "web.config".

Upgrading from 5.4.10 and lower - .NET 4.0

Please note, that starting from version 5.5 the helpdesk is using .NET Framework 4.0 (previous versions were using 3.5). Upgrading requires two more extra steps:

Also please note that NET Framework 4.0 uses a different method of sending emails via SMTP protocol. If you use an SMTP server via SSL, you may have to change your SMTP port from 465 to 587.

4.1 Full-Text Search

By default Helpdesk searches only within tickets subject and text. Since version 7.4.2 you can increase the search performance and enable searching within ticket replies (comments) as well by installing Full-Text Search components on your SQL Server.

If you had Full-Text Search installed from the start and you've upgraded to version 7.4.2 or above, you don't need to do anything, it just works.

If you're not sure whether or not you have it installed, run this query on your server:

SELECT FULLTEXTSERVICEPROPERTY('IsFullTextInstalled')

If it returns "1", you're all set up. If it returns "0", you need to install Full-Text components. Here are the steps you should take:

Full-Text Components are optional, nothing will break without them, but installing them will improve the search speed and quality dramatically.

 

5. QUICKSTART

5.1. Quickstart

After Jitbit HelpDesk has been successfully installed, open your web-browser and navigate to the location where Jitbit HelpDesk is installed (e.g. "http://myserver/HelpDesk").

Unless you changed the installation scripts, Jitbit Help Desk installs with two predefined users: admin (password "admin") and client (password "client"). CHANGE THESE DEFAULT PASSWORDS BEFORE USING HelpDesk. Use these default users only to login for the first time and start using it.

5.2. Getting help

Most pages in Jitbit HelpDesk web application have a link "get help for this page" at the bottom of the page. Clicking this link provides the most relevant in-depth information about the current page.

 

6. Autologin-feature

AutoLogin (configuring single sign-on with your existing Web-apps and websites)

Jitbit HelpDesk supports "autologin" feature which allows users to be pre-authenticated automatically (by your parent website for example) without entering their username and password. The "autologin" feature is targeted at developers and administrators, who integrate the HelpDesk software into their existing SQL-powered websites and applications. If the user is already authenticated on your parent website (for instance) there are two options:

  1. If a user is already present in the helpdesk's database and you know his password - redirect the user to the link of this kind: "AutoLogin.aspx?username=XXXXXX&pswHash=XXXXX". Where "username" is the user's login name, and "pswHash" is a MD5-hash of the user's HelpDesk-password.
  2. If a user is not already present in the helpdesk database or you don't want to pass his password, use this link format: http://MyHelpdeskUrl/AutoLogin.aspx?username=xxx&email=yyy&userHash=HASH where "username" is the user's username, "email" is is email and HASH is calculated as follows: MD5(username + email + shared-secret). The "shared secret" is specified in the admin panel. Remember to specify a "strong" secret, at least 10 characters (the longer the better).
    You can also specify user's first/last name and company name like this: http://MyHelpdeskUrl/AutoLogin.aspx?username=xxx&email=yyy&userHash=HASH&FirstName=John&LastName=Smith&CompanyName=IBM
When using the "autologin" feature you can optionally redirect users to the "new ticket" page. Just add "&new_ticket=1" to the link above.

 

7. Windows-integrated authentication

Starting from version 1.9 Jitbit HelpDesk supports Windows-integrated authentication and integrating with your existing Active Directory (AD) user's catalog. To enable Windows-integrated authentication edit the web.config file and un-comment this two lines: 

<authentication mode="Windows"></authentication>
<identity impersonate="true"/>
and comment the above tag which enables "Forms" authentication. Also remember to check if Windows-integrated authentication is enabled in IIS directory where HelpDesk is installed, and anonymous access is disabled.

If you plan using Windows-authentication under IIS 7 - you will need "Windows authentication" role service installed. Installation instructions. Also note that you have to disable anonymous authentication in IIS for the helpdesk app.

PLEASE NOTE: that when Windows-authentication is enabled, Jitbit HelpDesk automatically adds a domain-user into HelpDesk database when he logs in for the first time (if he is properly authenticated with his Windows-account). Also HelpDesk will try to connect to your domain-controller and populate the user's email from Active Directory.

Adding windows-user adminitrator

If you're installing via the "setup.exe" you'll be prompted for a Widnows username to add to Helpdesk "administrators" role. If not - there's a setting in the web.config file: 

<add key="WindowsAdminUsername" value="DOMAIN\Username"/>

 

8. Helpdesk URL

All outgoing email notifications about various ticket events contain a hyperlink to a ticket. The URL in those links is being initialised when Helpdesk starts and it is taken from the URL of the very first request to the app.

For example, if you recycle the application pool and make the first request to http://localhost/helpdesk, this URL will be used in all email notififcations from Helpdesk until you recycle the app pool again.

There is a way to override this behaviour by setting a desired URL in the AppURL setting in web.config. Open the web.config file in the root directory of helpdesk and find or add "AppURL" setting inside the <appSettings> section. Like this:

<appSettings>
<add key="AppURL" value="http://support.yourcompany.com" />
</appSettings>

 

9. UNINSTALLING HELPDESK

Automatic uninstallation is available only if you have installed Jitbit HelpDesk using the automated "setup.exe" installer. If you have installed the application manually - you have to manually uninstall it.

To uninstall Jitbit HelpDesk select "Start - All Programs - Jitbit HelpDesk - Uninstall Jitbit HelpDesk". The application will be removed from your system.

PLEASE NOTE: the database is NOT uninstalled during the automated uninstallation procedure.

 

10. Jitbit CRM integration

If you have both Jitbit CRM and Jitbit Help Desk installed, it is possible to integrate the two systems and enable:

Setting up the integration is easy:

  1. In both CRM and HelpDesk go to the admin panel and specify "Shared secret for remote authentication" (to whatever values you want, don't have to be the same)
  2. In the Helpdesk application go to the admin panel and set the url of the CRM application and the "Jitbit CRM shared key" - to the value you specified in #1. This will enable viewing CRM companies in Helpdesk
  3. In the CRM application go to the admin panel and set the url of the Helpdesk application and the "Jitbit Helpdesk shared key" - to the value you specified in #1. This will enable the "tickets from company" links in CRM

 

11. API & Email API

The helpdesk app includes a "RESTful" web-service for integrating with other apps. The service address is: http://servername/helpdesk/API.svc

API docs can be found here: http://www.jitbit.com/web-helpdesk/helpdesk-API/

Email API

Email API manual can be found here: Email API