Before beginning please make sure that you have read the information and related links about Joomla access control. In this chapter we will implement a site using the following specifications:

In order to implement these specifications we will have to create Joomla user groups, Joomla viewing access levels and ATS categories.

We will begin by creating the Joomla! User Groups requires for all of the above. Go to Users, Groups in the back-end of your site and click on New. Create three user groups:

Please take care to select the correct parent group! Using the Public group as the parent decouples the Akeeba Ticket System privileges from the account type. This is very important!

Then go to Users, Access Levels. You have to create one new viewing access level:

The idea is that if you are a customer or a member of the tech support team you will be granted access to the Customer Support ticket category.

Now go to Components, Akeeba Ticket System, Categories. You will need to create two categories.

The first category has a title of Pre-Sales Requests. Find the Access drop-down and set it to Registered. In the Category Permissions tab click on the Registered group and give it the following permissions:

DO NOT set any permission to Denied. If a user belongs to a group where a permission is Denied or that has a group in any parent level that has this permissions Denied then you can never, ever give that permission to this user. This is the most common mistake. If you want to deny a permission there's a 99% chance that the Inherited option is what you really need.

Then click on the Sales staff group and give them the following permissions:

Save this category and create a new category with a title of Customer Support. Find the Access drop-down and set it to Customer Support Access. In the Category Permissions tab click on the Customers group and give it the following permissions:

DO NOT set any permission to Denied. If a user belongs to a group where a permission is Denied or that has a group in any parent level that has this permissions Denied then you can never, ever give that permission to this user. This is the most common mistake. If you want to deny a permission there's a 99% chance that the Inherited option is what you really need.

Then click on the Tech Support group and give them the following permissions:

Do note that now the Support Staff doesn't have access to the Customer Support category and the Tech Support users don't have access to the Pre-Sales requests.

Now let's create the menu item. Go to the Menus menu and select the menu you want to create a link to Akeeba Ticket System. Create a new menu item of the type Akeeba Ticket System, Categories. Make sure the Access is set to Registered.

That's it! You now have to assign users to groups and you're ready to start offering support services through your site:

A user may belong to many groups at once. For example if Alice needs to be able to answer both pre-sales and customer support requests she must be assigned to both the Sales Staff and Tech Support groups.