Support

Remember, the editor area is not controlled by ATS; it's the WYSIWYG editor provided by Joomla. The editor is a black box. We ask Joomla to create an editor with the name X and we can only expect a POST variable named X allegedly containing the user-provided HTML upon form submission. There is no interaction on the client-side.

Of course, both TinyMCE (shipped with Joomla!) and JCE offer a way to do user uploads when image data is dragged or pasted into the editor. I know that JCE Pro also allows you to say something to the effect of “all uploads of a user foo will be in images/users/foo, at a maximum of 20 MiB in total, and the user will only be able to see image files therein” to make this contraption a bit safer for use by the general public.

There's a catch with image uploads, though. It's a de facto security and privacy concern. Attachments cannot be accessed directly; you have to go through ATS to download them. We can, therefore, control who can download what, the default being that attachments can only be downloaded by the owner of the ticket, and the support staff. This allows us to have public tickets with inherently private attachments. Uploaded images are public, and can only ever be public, even for private tickets. If you know their URL, you can access them – even without logging into the site. Moreover, you cannot automatically clean up uploaded user images, but you can automatically delete obsolete user attachments.

TL;DR: What you have in mind is not possible the way you imagine it. Something similar to that is possible, even without spending any additional money, but it does with security, privacy, and liability implications. Your best bet is to not allow this, instead having your users go through ATS' Attachments to upload files. At worst, you could put a module on the ticket form to link to a page which explains, step-by-step, how the user can attach files. I've found that a short video with a concise write-up below it will work with virtually every user out there.

Now, let's go for the longer version.

I apologise if the following reply is a bit repetitive, but I feel it necessary to clarify what I think might've been misunderstood.

What I understand you have in mind is this:

• User pastes (or drags and drops) image into the editor.
• This image becomes an ATS attachment.

This is not possible, it cannot be possible, and will never be possible because Joomla! does not offer an API which can be used to implement this functionality. We cannot intercept the paste or drag'n'drop action. We cannot magically convert an inline image / video / mp3 / other static media file into an ATS upload. These hit the technical limitations of what Joomla can and cannot do. Implementing a new editor from scratch to make that possible is not a good use of our time, nor will it ever have a positive return of investment unless we raise ATS' price to a point that it's no longer competitive with SaaS help desk solutions. So, we might just as well say that this idea is impossible.

If, however, you are content with the pasted (or dragged and dropped) image being uploaded externally to ATS, as a plain old file in (a subdirectory of) the site's images directory, even if the ticket is never submitted: yes, there are ways to do this. Remember, the biggest downside is that these are publicly accessible files. Anyone with the URL to the image can see it, even if they are not logged into the site. There is also no control over their content, or quantity. These last three sentences have security, privacy, and liability implications.

Joomla's built-in TinyMCE editor does allow this feature. Edit the Editor - TinyMCE plugin. Click on a profile. Set “Images Drag and Drop” to Yes. Set the “Images Directory” to the subdirectory of images you want the uploads to end up into.

JCE Pro, a paid offering, does allow you to do that, and also have a separate subdirectory for each user's pasted / dragged'n'dropped images. If I recall correctly, it also allows you to have a quota for the maximum total size of uploads per user.

I did not remember if it's a JCE or JCE Pro feature. I have not used the free version in well over a decade :)

Have a wonderful day!