Create an OTRS module to allow using Joomla as a customer user backend

[vittala]

OTRS has the ability to have multiple customer user back-ends that provide customer user information. See http://doc.otrs.org/3.0/en/html/customer-user-backend.html

Theoretically, it would be possible to map Joomla users into OTRS users, thereby removing the need to manually create or sync OTRS users with Joomla users. This opens the potential of having users register in Joomla and immediately have OTRS access with the gateway.

Things to resolve for this are:

• How to get the users - RPC to Joomla or direct MySQL connection. RPC will be a bit slower, but more flexible (doesn't assume MySQL and doesn't require MySQL access - RPC can be written as a gateway RPC plugin)
• How to map user fields from Joomla to OTRS (e.g. First Name / Last Name are not supported by Joomla out of the box)
• How does the Joomla 1.6 contact stuff potentially effect this? What about other Joomla user management extensions?

[OpenNingia]

Hi vittala,

I've the same need that you describe in this issue. If it is possible could you point me to the right direction on how to achieve the goal?

Basically I'm directed to integrate OTRS with my existing Joomla MySql database. Given my needs are less generic than yours I might be able to succed faster.

I need to map these values:

Customer Name UserName Company Email

The scenario is a Joomla portal with lots of user already registered. They should be able to submit tickets without registering again to OTRS ( and of course without us, customer service, to add manually the users to OTRS )

[vittala]

Hi OpenNingia

The quickest way to get what you want is to take Kernel/System/CustomerUser/LDAP.pm and create your own CustomerUser datasource module based on LDAP.pm that connects directly with the Joomla MySQL instance. At a minimum, you'll need to implement the new, GenerateRandomPassword, CustomerName, CustomerSearch, CustomerUserList, CustomerIDs and CustomerUserDataGet methods. I believe CustomerUserDataGet, CustomerUserUpdate and SetPassword can all be left to do nothing.

Once you have your own OTRS customer user source module that's getting data from Joomla, you need to modify your OTRS configuration as described in http://doc.otrs.org/3.0/en/html/customer-user-backend.html to use your module.

Regards Vittal

[vittala]

This is a note to myself - another possible route is to provide a Joomla plugin providing handlers for the onAfterStoreUser and onAfterDeleteUser events pushing user data to OTRS. The plugin would take OTRS connection data from the main OTRS Joomla gateway component, but need a parameter to control which groups users were automatically added to. Providing a group mapping between Joomla groups and OTRS customer user groups would be a nice to have, but may not map well into Joomla 1.5's group functionality.

[Evanion]

We are setting up a company that will use OTRS, and a key aspect of the business plan is the ability for the user to register from the site, so we really need this feature. Is there any update on this?

[update] Just found a comment in another issue, talking about syncing both OTRS and Joomla with a LDAP server. It might be a solution for us.

[vittala]

Hi Evanion

I'm afraid there's no update on this issue at the moment.

The LDAP synchronisation is probably your current best bet. I'm not aware of a Joomla component that will register new users and add them to an LDAP server (a future release of http://extensions.joomla.org/extensions/access-a-security/site-access/authentication-cloud-based/18108 might). It might be relatively simple to have onXXXXXXUser joomla triggers call a script to update the LDAP system.

Regards Vittal