Click the links to the topics outlined below to learn more information:

Managing Customers

Importing Customers

Exporting Customers

Adding Customers with LDAP

Managing Customers

Customers may be external companies that you support or individual internal users. Set them up by entering details, importing as CSV files or through the LDAP Integrator.

If you are importing your Customers via CSV load, please consult the Importing Customers Guide.  If you are importing your Customers through the LDAP Integrator, please consult the LDAP Configuration Guide. If you are adding them manually, please follow the guidelines below:

If you wish to enter your Customers (also titled “Users”) manually, this is done via the Your Company drop-down menu, seen below.
Clicking on Customers and “Add New Customer” will bring up the details screen in which you can create your new User/Customer record. There are numerous fields in which you can add as much or as little data as is required. Your Customer may be an individual if, for instance, you are supporting internal IT. Otherwise, you may wish to have Customers as Organisations, then associate individual contacts at the organisation with the Customer.
To do the latter, create your Customer with the name of the company. Then, via Your Company > Contacts, create the name of the individual Contacts at that organisation. Then, on the Contacts record, in the Customer (shown in the example below as ‘Store’) drop-down, select the name of the Customer that the Contact is associated with. Click OK to save. The Customer will now be linked and visible in the fields on the Ticket logging screen.

Learn more about Contacts here.

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Importing Customers

HotH has the ability to load external Customer data files directly into the databases. You can therefore download data from any existing databases and populate the HotH databases.

In addition, HotH also has the ability to export your Customer data from the HotH database to a CSV file, which you can learn more about on the Exporting Customers Guide.

The files to be imported must be flat files of comma-separated values. Each line in the text file represents a HotH record of a particular type. The first characters in each line indicate the type of record to be loaded. You should also note that special rules apply to some fields, please take advice from Support before loading new data type. You can use Import to execute a SQL string, but again please take advice from Support before doing this.

Note: Tickets and Notes are loaded into the current Ticket Folder. Any Customers referenced in the Tickets should belong to the current Folder. HotH does not make these checks.

How to import the file

In the WebServer, go to Import CSV from Settings.
Select the file to import records and click Import. If there are errors they will be listed. You need to review the errors. The error log is listed to the file suppdesk.err. If there are no errors you can navigate away.

In the Windows interface the Import CSV option is on the Database ribbon tab/menu. You need to navigate to where the import file is located.

Import Format

Excel column headings are supplied below to assist. You do not need to supply data for every field, just enter those you need. (Though there are some validation rules, these are not documented here.)

Dates should be entered as DD/MM/YYYY for UK format and MM/DD/YYYY if US format is in use.

Customer Record – Type C

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Exporting Customers

You can export the current Customer databases into a named file. The output records have the same layout as the corresponding Import records. This is useful if you want to create an import file; create a ‘dummy’ record, populating the required fields with discernible text, such as REF in a reference field. The exported data can then be used as a template for the import layout.

How to Export Customers

To export data, show the Customer records in the summary and filter the list as required.

In the WebServer, navigate to Your Company > Customers (Users), then use the Export option in the Summary Options navigation bar; this will then offer the option to View the output. Now, you can open or save the file.
In the Windows interface, you can export the Customer records in the summary list using Export CSV on the File ribbon tab/Menu. Additionally, in the Windows version you can use the Export CSV option on the Database menu to export more Customer records.
Tick the Customer box, click the OK button and then choose a location and file name for the export file. The default is export.txt on the HotH directory. If this file already exists, you must confirm to replace the existing file. On completion, you can view the export file before being returned to the main window.

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Configuring LDAP Interface

The LDAP interface of HotH l will extract data from one or more directory service providers (e.g. Active Directory) using the LDAP application protocol. It uses the data to create HotH Customers, Contacts, and if required, WebGuest logins. It is only available from the Windows UI at present.

LDAP Management

The maintenance screen for the LDAP interface can be reached from the Explorer menu on the left hand side where the option is termed “Scripts”.On selecting this, the summary panel shows one line for each LDAP script that has been created. “New” allows creation of a new script. In both cases, the user is presented with a screen as shown below.To make a connection and extract data from an AD system various options have to be populated in the above screen. Clicking on the button “Query LDAP Server” will initiate the extract but will not load the data into HotH and can be used whilst testing. To load the data into HotH the button “Load above data into SupportDesk” has to be clicked.

Once a connection has been made to the AD database, it is the other settings on the screen that control what data is extracted and how it is loaded into HotH.

The settings to connect with the AD system are listed below:

Server

This must be the AD server (name or IP Address).

Username

A username that can connect to that Server and has rights to query AD.

Password

A valid password for the given user.

Domain

Should be the Domain of the AD.

Base DN

The point from where HotH will start searching for users in your AD structure. It is your full domain with each component of the domain name preceded with “DC=” (For example, the Base DN for myCompany.com would be DC=myCompany,DC=com). The Base DN field can be extended to provide some filtering of data from AD. For example, you may wish to only load users from an OU called Users. In this case, your Base DN might be: “OU=Users,DC=MyCompany,DC=com“

Scope

There are three options for the Scope. The most common option is Whole Tree. Unless advised otherwise by one of the House-on-the-Hill consultants, choose this setting.Filter

Allows filtering of the data extracted from AD. There are built in options available from the Filter drop-down and, unless advised otherwise, use the one highlighted here. This filter will exclude all users marked as Disabled in AD.As can be seen in the filter, use can be made of wildcards (cn=*) to return all users. This can be modified for testing purposes or if your AD contains more than 1000 users – when it can also be used to split the number of extracted users between multiple scripts. There is a limit on the number of results AD will return from an ldap query (default is around 1000). If you need to load more than 1000 users from AD, the example filters below would be applied to identical scripts and would have the effect of extracting the data selectively based on the first letter of the user name. So filter 1 would pull out users beginning with “a”. Filter 2 would include those beginning with “b” through to “h”, and filter 3 – “i” through to “o”  more filters can be added to cover all users.

Filter 1
(&(objectClass=User)(objectCategory=User)(cn=a*)(!userAccountControl:1.2.840.113556.1.4.803:=2) )

Filter 2
(&objectClass=User)(objectCategory=User)(|(cn=b*)(cn=c*)(cn=d*)(cn=e*)(cn=f*)(cn=g*)(cn=h*)) (!userAccountControl:1.2.840.113556.1.4.803:=2) )

Filter 3
(&(objectClass=User)(objectCategory=User)(|(cn=i*)(cn=j*)(cn=k*)(cn=l*)(cn=m*)(cn=n*)(cn=o*)) (!userAccountControl:1.2.840.113556.1.4.803:=2) )

LDAP Authentication

LDAP Authentication is not normally ticked. When you have LDAP Authentication switched on, HotH passes the login and password combination to the LDAP server for authentication. Careful consideration should be taken before ticking this option as you may find yourself locked out of the software if the LDAP setup is incorrect. The final settings at the bottom of the screen control how and where the data is loaded into HotH.Loading Mode

Determines how the data will be loaded into HotH. The most common loading mode is “Users as SupportDesk Customers & Computers as Inventory”. Unless advised otherwise by a House-on-the-Hill consultant, choose this setting. Changing the Loading Mode can make big changes to your setup and it should not be changed without careful consideration.

• Load OUs as Ticket Folders – Not usually set. If set, the load will create multiple Ticket folders in line with the names of your OUs.
• Load OUs from Highest Level – Not usually set. This controls where HotH will read the OUs from per user before writing the information to House-on-the-Hill.

When HotH imports your Customers from Active Directory, if a customer is in an Organisational Unit, HotH will record the OU in the Customer OU field – just underneath the Title field in the Customer screen. However, you can have OUs within OUs in Active Directory. HotH can record up to two levels of OUs on the Customerscreen. The first OU goes into the OU field mentioned above, and the next level goes into the Department field (Unless a Department has been set in AD, in which case that value is added.)

• Add Customers as WebGuests – If the option is ticked HotH will create a WebServer Account for each user as well as a Customer record as part of the load process. A Customer Lock-In will be applied to all WebGuest Accounts. This will lock them into seeing ONLY their own Tickets when they log into the WebServer – these rights can be modified using the Login maintenance screen.
• Sync – This option works in conjunction with the Workflow Engine, also known as the Escalator. If the Sync option is ticked and the equivalent option “Sync LDAP” is ticked on the Escalator configuration screen then the script will be run automatically once a day by the Escalator. By default, the LDAP Sync will be run at the first scan of the escalator after midnight unless specific offsets have been set in the database.

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