Configuring Reply Approvals

The following details will assist you in getting up and running with the Reply Approvals extension.

For a detailed overview of the functionality available within this extension, view the Reply Approvals product page.

Installation

For assistance on installing a premium plugin for KB Support, please view this article.

Reply Approvals Overview

If an agent who is defined as needing to have their ticket replies approved authors a reply, the Reply Approvals extension will stop any notifications being sent out to the customer advising them of the reply. Additionally, the reply will not be visible to the customer within the front end ticket screen.

Instead if configured, Reply Approvals will send a notification to the defined list of approvers advising them that their approval is required. On visiting the ticket screen, replies requiring approval will be clearly indicated.

When an approver approves a reply, the events that are normally associated with a new reply will take place. For example, the customer will receive an email notification that a new reply has been added to their ticket, and the reply will become visible within the front end customer ticket screen. If the ticket was due to close upon submission of the reply, the close processes will take place.

Upon declining a reply, the agent who authored the reply will receive a notification that the reply has been declined and the reply will be deleted never having been seen by the customer.

Replies that are pending approval are still visible within the admin ticket screen by all agents that have access to the ticket however, a notification icon is displayed indicating that approval is pending.

Viewing agent cannot approve replies

For approvers, as well as the icon, additional action links are displayed enabling the quick approval or the declining of the reply.

Viewing agent is an approver

To decline a reply, you must first click to view the reply.

When declining a reply, a reason must be entered.

The Create Article action link is not displayed for a reply until it is approved.

As an additional way of notifying approvers that there are reply approvals pending, Reply Approvals will display a notice at the top of admin pages.

Clicking the View Tickets link within this notice will filter the ticket display to all tickets with replies pending approvals.

Reply Approvals Settings

Click on the Settings option within the Tickets menu and select the Extensions tab. Once the page has loaded, click the Reply Approvals heading to access the settings screen.

These setting options will determine the agents who need to have their replies approved, who can approve the replies and which notifications take place during these processes.

There are three sections within this page;

Reply Approvals

Agents Need Approval
Use the multiple select input field to select which of your agents need to have their ticket replies approved. You can select any number of agents who have the Support Worker capability.

Approvers
Select the agents who are able to approve replies that have been created by agents within the Agents Need Approval option. You can select any number of agents who have the Support Manager capability.

Approver Notifications

Use this section to determine whether agents who are defined within the Approvers field should receive an email notification when a new reply is pending approval.

Agent Notifications

This section determines whether to send a notification to an agent when their reply has been declined.

Note the availability of the following additional template tags which can be used within the content field;

• {declined_by}
  Inserts the name of the agent who declined the reply
• {declined_reply_reason}
  Inserts the reason that was specified when the reply was declined
•  {declined_reply_content}
  Inserts the reply that the agent authored