This documentation page does not apply to our software versions for Joomla! 4.0 and later versions. If you are not using Joomla 3 please consult the documentation index to find and read the correct version of the documentation.
Since Akeeba Ticket System 2.4.1 we allow -under certain conditions- Guest users to file tickets. Guest users, in Joomla! lingo, are visitors who are not logged in, i.e. they do not have a user account yet. Please make sure you understand the "How does this feature work?" section below before trying to use this feature. It tells you how this feature works and which settings, in ATS and Joomla! itself, will conflict with it and make it not work as you think it should.
If you do not want this feature, you don't need to do anything. Guest tickets will only be allowed if you set up one or more ATS categories to allow Guest users to create tickets.
Unregistered (Guest) users can create tickets as long as the ATS category has the Create privilege for the Guest user group. Joomla's user registration must be enabled in the Options of the Users component in the backend; or the Force user creation when filing Guest tickets option in Akeeba Ticket System's Options page must be set to Yes.
The users will need to provide an email address and a name when filing a ticket from the web. If the Show CAPTCHA when filing Guest tickets option in Akeeba Ticket System's Options page is also set they will be asked to solve a CAPTCHA as well. This is a good idea since it will cut down on spam ticket submissions. Please note that you must have one or more plugins in the "captcha" group activated in Joomla's Plugins page. Moreover, you must have selected a default CAPTCHA plugin in Joomla's Global Configuration page. If any of these three conditions is not met a CAPTCHA will not be shown to Guest users trying to file a new ticket. Also note that, obviously, the CAPTCHA will not apply to tickets created by sending an email.
If you have enabled the Credits feature and have a non-zero credits charge for creating new tickets Guest users will, of course, be unable to create tickets. The reason is that a new user account would be created for them which has zero credits. They would simply receive a message which lets them know that they don't have enough credits to post a new ticket.
When filing a ticket by email we obviously already have their email address. If they have provided their full name as part of the From address of their email we will use that. Otherwise we will also use the email address as the user's full name. Akeeba Ticket System will create a Joomla! username derived from the user's full name or, if that's not possible, their email address. Users can change their email address and full name in Joomla's user profile edit page whenever they want, as long as you've provided such a page in your site's frontend. Users cannot change their username themselves; this is a restriction of Joomla! itself, not Akeeba Ticket System.
As implied above, a new user account is created for the guest user and assigned to the ticket. That user account has a random password. The username and the password are both emailed to the user by Joomla! itself. Please note that if you have configured Joomla! to not send the password to the user then the user will very obviously not receive their password which makes it impossible for them to log in. In this case they will either have to use the Forgot Password feature of Joomla! itself or contact you and ask for a password to be issued. For this reason we recommend that you configure Joomla! to send the password to new users over email.
The user account may need to be activated by the user, per the Options in Joomla's backend. If, however, you have enabled Force user creation when filing Guest tickets the user registration settings of Joomla! will be ignored and the user account will be activated. As noted above, enabling this option will also allow Akeeba Ticket System to create new Joomla! users even if you have disabled user registration in the Options page of Joomla's Users component.
The user will need to log into your site with the created user account to reply to the ticket or file more tickets. If they try to file a ticket as a Guest with an email address already in use by a user account on the site they will be asked to log in to file a new ticket.
If you are using template overrides, the files (in your
template's html/com_ats directory) need to be
modified as of Akeeba Ticket System 2.4.1
NewTickets/form.php