Can anyone tell me if theres a better way to do this?  Its one of my biggest frustrations with WHD.  We use many Custom Fields so I can gather information from forms on the self service portal and an important one is Change Control.  Once its approved I have an action rule send it to a Change Control distro containing stakeholders.  To do this I have to build the action rule email by custom field display order #s.  Example:

Start Date: <custom_1>

Start Time: <custom_2>

Completion: <custom_3>

End Time: <Custom_4>

If I want to add a new field under Start Time (or just change the order they are displayed on the form), I have to change the actual display order # of the custom field to 3, so now Completion becomes <custom_4> because it changes the rest down the line.   Now all my subsequent action rule emails are displaying the wrong field so I have to manually change all of them.

I hope this makes sense.  The way this has to be done is really bad and should use Field Name instead of display order #.  Maybe I'm doing it wrong or maybe theres a better way.

Not sure if this is possible, so advice would be gratefully received.

We have a tech group calendar set up for chnage management which is populated by the scheduled date in change tickets.  Our techs use this when they are both implementing a change, and as a guide to whats going on when they want to schedule a change.

I would like to be able to highlight certain dates and mark them as "Change Freeze in force" so the techs know not to try and schedule anything during certain periods.

If I raise a ticket to do this it just populates the calendar with the ticket number, tech name and scheduled date/time so it doesnt look any different to any other change,

Does anyone have any suggestions?

TIA

Hello,

We just purchased WHD and we are at the setup process.

I need to create a ticket custom field that includes a table and will serve us as an replaceable item ordering form.

With the default ticket types in Ticket Custom Fields that is not possible.

Is there a way around it?

Basically I want to create something like the image below :

Where VAR1 will be set by default with fixed values, Var2 will be inserted by the client and Var3 needs to be a checkbox also selected by the client.

Have anyone tried or created something similar?

Thanks in advance!

Is it possible to pull field data into tech notes?  Basically I have a field that is called "User's Full Name", instead of me typing in the users name when I create a note can I pull the data from that field. This will help when I am doing a bulk change.

Hi guys,

Does anyone know how to auto cc tickets?

And also have the checkbox checked by default ?

Thanks!

The refresh i have it set to 5 mins but it constantly goes to disabled, how come?

Version 12.1.0

We get the following error trying to send emails to clients on a particular domain:

Invalid address: com.sun.mail.smtp.SMTPAddressFailedException: 550 5.7.1 Unable to relay

We've configured our exchange 2013 server with an open relay to allow connections from the Web Help Desk server which authenticates anonymously, the tests work fine and we can send emails to our internal domain without issue.  We've recently synced accounts from another external office which uses a different domain but the above error is generated when trying to send an email from a ticket.  I've checked settings on the Web Help Desk and that is configured to send emails to any domain.

Any ideas on what am I missing? Thanks in advance!

Hi All,

We've been working through integrating the Solar Winds Web Helpdesk with our in-house Job management/Accounting software and I thought I'd share some results.

We are using the powershell invoke-restmethod commandlet to query the API interface, but as a big disclaimer I am no expert and have a fair bit of help from the solarwinds team!

The main reason for posting is that I was very surprised at how little information on integration with this product there was on the web. So for what it's worth here it is.

For those looking, you will need the API manual: http://www.solarwinds.com/documentation/webhelpdesk/docs/whd_api_12.1.0/web%20help%20desk%20api.html

We needed to search for tickets that had a blank custom field so we new which tickets had not yet been synced with our JM/A system.

Invoke-RestMethod "http://helpdeskURL/helpdesk/WebObjects/Helpdesk.woa/ra/Tickets?&qualifier=(customFields.stringValue %3D null)&apiKey=keygeneratedundertechaccount" > D:\tickets\NewJobs.txt

Then strip the ticket number out so we could get then query the ticket details. (sorry this became a table when I copied the line into this window...)

It also strips the leading spaces and outputs each tickets details into a file which is called the ticket number

We also wanted to be able to update the ticket custom field with the new job number from our system (you can see the ticket number I was experimenting with was 115 and the json file containing the new field value is called test.json)

Invoke-RestMethod "http://helpdeskURL/helpdesk/WebObjects/Helpdesk.woa/ra/Tickets/115?&apiKey=keygeneratedundertechaccount" -InFile test.json -Method Put

Contents of the test.json file looks like this (custom field ID is 13, Job number to be inserted E12345)

{"customFields": [ {"definitionId": 13, "restValue": "E12345"}]}

It's still a work in progress, as I mentioned I'm no expert. The next thing I have to do is work out how to query to show tickets that have been updated since last time I queried the Helpdesk system... so if anyone wants to chime in please do!

Other information I found useful along the way:

To produce a list of customers locations

Command:

  Invoke-RestMethod "http://helpdeskURL/helpdesk/WebObjects/Helpdesk.woa/ra/Locations?&apiKey=keygeneratedundertechaccount" >Locations-customersites.txt

To produce a list of status types

Command:

Invoke-RestMethod "http://helpdeskURL/helpdesk/WebObjects/Helpdesk.woa/ra/StatusTypes?&apiKey=keygeneratedundertechaccount" >Statustypes.txt

To get a list of priority types

Command:

Invoke-RestMethod "http://helpdeskURL/helpdesk/WebObjects/Helpdesk.woa/ra/PriorityTypes?&apiKey=keygeneratedundertechaccount" >prioritytypes.txt

To request a list of request types

Command:

Invoke-RestMethod "http://helpdeskURL/helpdesk/WebObjects/Helpdesk.woa/ra/RequestTypes?&apiKey=keygeneratedundertechaccount" >requesttypes.txt

Get a list of Techs and their IDs

Command:

Invoke-RestMethod "http://helpdeskURL/helpdesk/WebObjects/Helpdesk.woa/ra/Techs?&apiKey=keygeneratedundertechaccount" >techs.txt

Ben

The first question I have is regarding custom asset fields. Ive noticed that custom asset fields show up on all asset types unless you go into the asset and set specific custom fields. Is there a way to prevent custom asset fields from showing up on all assets and only have them show up on assets you specify?

Second question is regarding required fields when assets are created. I have asset number, model, location, status all set as required fields. However, when I create an asset the only fields that show bold (indicating they are required) are Asset No, Model, Location. Status and Asset Type are not bold, but when I try to save prompt saying that they are.

Third, we have LDAP setup to import our technicians and end users. We had it originally setup to deactivate the client when the LDAP records were removed. We noticed that several of our accounts were being marked inactive without a chance in Active Directory. We found that it happened to AD accounts that were disabled and that were not disabled. We would like to keep it configured to deactivate the client when LDAP records are removed to prevent having to maintain AD and then having to maintain WHD. Is there a setting I can change to prevent accounts from being marked inactive without them actually being inactive? Perhaps the time out settings?

Is there a way in WHD to search a certain inventory location to see what parts and quantities of those parts are in each location?

Example, we have field techs that have some parts on their trucks. We can look up parts in WHD, but it will just show the parts list and the inventory column shows the quantity of each part in each location.

Kind of like this:

We need to be able to search for parts in a specific location. So we could search for parts in the warehouse and get something like this:

PS we're running 12.1.0 so if this is covered in a later version, please let me know that as well. We have the later version but are trying to clean up this one and maximize our productivity on it before switching so we don't just move junk and have "new" junk instead. 

Hi

I've uploaded our assets in the WHD and should have 2576 but it only shows 2500 + more, I cannot export out 2576 as when I try it only says 2501, anyone else had this problem and how do I fix it, thanks in advance

Hi guys,

Does anyone know how to auto cc tickets?

And also have the checkbox checked by default ?

Thanks!

One of the WHD features is the ability to push notifications to your mobile phone using the Apple Push Notifications Service. This service requires a certificate which expires today. If you want to continue using these notifications you need to install the new certificate availalbe from your customer portal.

Click on License Management -> MyDownloads (under Web Help Desk licenses information) -> scroll toAdditional Downloads and click Download button next to "Apple Push Notification (APN) Certificate".

When using Office365 as the Incoming Mail Account, it causes intermittent connection issues whereby the helpdesk shows a timeout message from the server:

"A previous attempt to connect to name@domain.com (host 'outlook.office365.com') failed for 'name@domain.com'. 0 interval(s) remaining until retry."

Unable to connect to the Incoming Mail Account 'name@domain.com' due to the following error:

"Error while contacting mailbox: The helpdesk was able to make a connection with the Exchange web server, but a timeout occurred while attempting to retrieve the Exchange folder list. Please see FAQ<http://www.solarwinds.com:80/onlinehelp?productType=WebHelpDesk&language=en_US&productVersion=12.5.0&viewType=ProductView&authenticationKey=ignore&helpKey=HelpDeskFAQ125ExchangeConnectError> for more information.

I understand that we can ignore this timeout message, however we receive them so frequently it's not really possible to do. On top of this, if we have any other issue it's them spammed over by these messages and we can't see the other underlying issue. On top of this, it's quite distressing to see so many timeout messages in a short period of time across multiple days.

The Mail Account is set to Exchange, I understand that I can change this to POP3 or IMAP but this is not a feasible option.

I've increased the Connection Timeout to 400+ and this isn't reducing the error messages by much.

The connection to the server seems fine using this test: Microsoft Remote Connectivity Analyzer

Using Wireshark we can check the data packets but nothing seems off there either.

The firewall isn't causing any issues and the port isn't an issue either.

Multiple sites have reported the same issue, is this happening for anyone else here?

I've logged this with SolarWinds support, any further assistance would be very much appreciated if anyone has any ideas to try.

Solarwinds WebHelpDesk is very powerful, but for those who use Slack as communication and alerting platform, there still is no integration.

We as a IT team struggled a bit keeping up with the immense flow of emails and filtering them out as well as being really pro-active on new tickets (first response time) as well as realizing we got new tickets assigned or a user / client wrote a new note.

To overcome those challenges and due to the fact that we all have Slack on all our systems from workstation to smartphone, we decided to integrate this. Since I spend a bit of time on those scripts and thought they might be helpful for others as well, I am sharing them here now and explain on how to implement this.

Please note: Those scripts are a version 1 - I am very aware that they could be further cleaned up and simplified.. but I wanted to share them already... bugs are possible as well...

Requirements:

• You need Solarwinds WebHelpDesk
• The scripts use the field "Pager" in "Techs" for the Slack-Username - put all the Slack-Usernames of your Techs in this field - no @ - just the name
• The scripts assumes you are executing it directly on the server that has the PostgreSQL database installed
• The scripts assumes the database user/pw is defaulted to WHD

How to implement them:

• Create the 5x files as show further below in e.g. "C:\Scripts\WHD" on the PostresSQL server
• Create a new Windows Task that starts the WebHelpDesk_SlackAlerts.cmd file every 30 minutes
  • this file actually executes the PowerShell Scripts - it is just a work-around - it bypasses any PowerShell Script execution restritions
• download the PostgesSQL ODBC drivers from the following link - assuming you haven't installed them on the system already
  • PostgreSQL: File Browser
  • Text link: https://www.postgresql.org/ftp/odbc/versions/msi/
• Edit the PRTGSlackWebHookNotificationPSv2.ps1
  • This file was originally from our PRTG installation and modified there already. It was further modified for WHD alerts - I do not claim to have invented this script nor do I want to abuse any copyrights on it! source: www.paessler.com for monitoring solutions
  • Line 41: adjust the URL for the FavIcon.ico to your external WebHelpDesk URL
• Create a new WebHook-Application in your Slack Account
  • Incoming Webhooks | Slack
  • Text link: https://api.slack.com/incoming-webhooks
  • You will need the WebHook URL for the scripts now
• Edit the CheckNewTicketsFirstResponse.ps1
  • This script posts to a generic channel in our case - we want to see new tickets as a group - assuming assigned tech is currently unavailable and couldn't touch it...
  • adjust the PostgresSQL settings - if needed - IP / Port / User etc...
  • Line 7 - ticket_age_minutes = 88
    • this is a minute value - we alert on a Slack-Group "helpdesk" if there is a ticket older than 88 minutes - we fire the script every 30 minutes, so it could be up to two hours old..
  • Line 9 - $channel - adjust this to the Slack-Group channel you want to use for those alerts
  • Line 77 - adjust the URL to your external WebHelpdesk URL
  • Line 99 - adjust the Link to your own WebHook URL
• Edit the CheckTicketAssigned.ps1
  • This will send the message to the Tech directly through the SlackBot channel - only he will see it
  • This will only fire if the Tech did not yet put a Tech-Note in the ticket after it was assigned to him
  • adjust the PostgresSQL settings - if needed - IP / Port / User etc...
  • Line 7 - entry_age_minutes = 32
    • this is a minute value - we run the scripts every 30 minutes - the alert due to some variable time can not be older than 32 minutes by default...
  • Line 74 - adjust the URL to your external WebHelpdesk URL
  • Line 97 - adjust the Link to your own WebHook URL
• Edit the CheckTicketNewClientNote.ps1
  • This will send the message to the Tech directly through the SlackBot channel - only he will see it
  • This will only fire if the Tech did not yet put a Tech-Note in the ticket after the client / user did leave a comment or note
  • adjust the PostgresSQL settings - if needed - IP / Port / User etc...
  • Line 7 - entry_age_minutes = 32
    • this is a minute value - we run the scripts every 30 minutes - the alert due to some variable time can not be older than 32 minutes by default...
  • Line 74 - adjust the URL to your external WebHelpdesk URL
  • Line 97 - adjust the Link to your own WebHook URL

After that you should be all set.

We have further integration in to PRTG while monitoring the database for "new tickets older than 120 minutes" and looking for the logfile "SlackLogErrorDetails.txt" indicating that a Slack notification did not go through by the script - most likely due to special characters that the scripts already should take care off, but in case it happens again this file would appear. You can integrate that as well with your monitoring system, but this is beyond the scope of the simple notifications.

Other logfiles show just what was send out and indicate that everything is working well.

Not sure if this is possible, so advice would be gratefully received.

We have a tech group calendar set up for chnage management which is populated by the scheduled date in change tickets.  Our techs use this when they are both implementing a change, and as a guide to whats going on when they want to schedule a change.

I would like to be able to highlight certain dates and mark them as "Change Freeze in force" so the techs know not to try and schedule anything during certain periods.

If I raise a ticket to do this it just populates the calendar with the ticket number, tech name and scheduled date/time so it doesnt look any different to any other change,

Does anyone have any suggestions?

TIA

One of the WHD features is the ability to push notifications to your mobile phone using the Apple Push Notifications Service. This service requires a certificate which expires today. If you want to continue using these notifications you need to install the new certificate availalbe from your customer portal.

Click on License Management -> MyDownloads (under Web Help Desk licenses information) -> scroll toAdditional Downloads and click Download button next to "Apple Push Notification (APN) Certificate".

The refresh i have it set to 5 mins but it constantly goes to disabled, how come?

Version 12.1.0

As the subject states, my Windows 10 PCs can't be reached.  Disabling the firewall makes them reachable, so obviously a port or rule needs to be enabled.  Can anyone confirm what rule or port this might be?

I've recently deployed Windows 7 AND Windows 10 PCs.  Only the Windows 10 PCs have this issue.  My gut feeling is that this is an OOTB configuration difference in the Win 10 firewall and I am not the first to have this issue... hoping to find others here with that experience.  Thank you in advance.

Craig

How can I update the template for the IT Change approval email that is sent to the CAB group?  I can't find the settings anywhere in the UI. I checked the email templates, status types, and approval process with no luck. Here's what my current CAB Change Approval email looks like:

TlCKET XXXXX

---------------------------------------

APPROVAL INFO

Approval Process: IT CR (CMR)

Approval Step: IT CAB Approval

My Vote:

YES - https://xxxxxxxxx

NO  - https://xxxxxxxxx

---------------------------------------

TICKET INFO

Ticket No.: XXXXX

Report Date: 9/25/17 7:46 am

Reporter: xxxxxxxxxx

District: Information Technology Services

Tech: 

Status: Pending - Waiting for Approval

Request Type: IT Request > IT Change Request (CMR)

Request Detail:  

Change Request Name:: XXXXXXXX
APPROVE Change Type:: Minor Requested Change Date and Time:: 9/25/17 12:00 am
Affected System (S) Impacted by Change Request: xxxxxxxxxx
Request Description:: n/a Has the change been tested?: No Customer
Communication:: n/a Test Plan:: n/a Release/Add'l Notes:: n/a Installation
Plan:: n/a

TlCKET