Enable TINYMCE Editor for Tickets as well as Auto-Save functionality

Hello,

You can already use the TinyMCREEditor to add bold headlines, etc.That being said, regarding the Auto-save, in the mean time, there's a utility for Firefox called Lazarus which saves form data.

Hi Chris

Yes, I am aware of those hacks / addons - but don't you think these features should really be standard? Afterall, surely that is the entire point of a feature request?

Hello,

You're correct. The Feature Request system is for users to requests features to be implemented into WHMCS. However if you review my response, I stated "in the mean time..." as a useful alternative until your request is potentially implemented.

Fair enough Chris - and your fast reply is appreciated :-)

Hear what you say about in the meantime - I just think these two features would create even more super awesomeness in the ticket system - and really it's my only bug bear :-)

You mention TinyMCREEditor is already available, but it does not seem to be part of my standard set up (unless I am missing something?) so how do I add that?

Hello,

I apologize - the editor is for client area display (Knowledge base), and email rich content (Email Templates). I've updated the title to be a bit more specific where adding the TinyMCREditor to the ticket system would be beneficial.

And to note, I do agree on both points that they would be beneficial.

OK thank you - happy with the updated title - don't forget to vote it up :-)

Also - isn't it TINYMCE Editor not TINYMCREditor (a small pedantic spelling point ;-)

Edited > I have the issue that I reference PHP's PCRE, hence the typo. Thanks for the correction.

Hope this will be implemented! I voted!

Hoping that the addition of this editor will also facilitate the use of images in service ticket replies. It's often quite helpful to be able to put screenshots showing how-to's as a part of the reply.

Yes, adding images in to the body of the email would be useful

I don't care too much about us being able to put images in the body of an email but we get a lot of clients that send us images in the body and when they get piped to a support ticket they get lost. So being able to see images would be great. Or a feature similar to gmails "show images" button.

We would also use HTML for links, so being able to hyper link a word instead of paste a URL would be very useful.

+1 we need the TINYMCE Editor

Yep - if the TINYMCE editor were in the support ticket email system, you could easily add images as well.

we need an WYSIWYG html editor in all text area fields (WHMCS backend) - now it is only in Email Templates, Mass Mailing, Knowledge-Base and Announcements, but it should be in the tickets system, the quotes proposal text and customer notes and so on and so on. every text area fields in the WHMCS should have this option.

I would like to be able to use html in the body of support ticket messages. It would be nice to put some things in bold, etc. to highlight them for the clients.

we need an WYSIWYG html editor in all text area fields (WHMCS backend) - now it is only in Email Templates, Mass Mailing, Knowledge-Base and Announcements, but it should be in the tickets system, the quotes proposal text and customer notes and so on and so on. every text area fields in the WHMCS should have this option.

Hi,

You are right,

I think that we need an WYSIWYG html editor in all text area fields (WHMCS backend) - now it is only in Email Templates, Mass Mailing, Knowledge-Base and Announcements, but it should be in the tickets system, the quotes proposal text and customer notes and so on and so on.

every text area fields in the WHMCS should have this option.

I can't wait to see this feature impelemented for that reason I voted..

Everybody here is posting about HTML editing, and I would like it too, but I'm here to vote for fixing the lost text on login timeout problem. **This is particularly bad when it happens on the customer facing side. **

Yes...

http://requests.whmcs.com/responses/admin-ticket-editor

http://requests.whmcs.com/responses/wysiwyg-editor-for-templates

http://requests.whmcs.com/responses/support-ticket-signature-ability-to-use-html-and-bbcode

http://requests.whmcs.com/responses/admin-product-description-wysiwyg-text-editor

http://requests.whmcs.com/responses/enable-tinymce-editor-for-tickets-as-well-as-auto-save-functionality

So any further comments from WHMCS team about possibility to add auto save ?

Definitely need a WYSIWYG editor for the tickets area.

Another long support ticket I just wrote was lost after the system timed out ! Now I have to retype everything again. Hopeless. Desperately need auto save.

HTML is evil and should be stamped out like polio and plague ;)

Can we do a group buy on this? Join forces and pay a developer to build and tinymce addon.

The longer I have to use *bold like this* and the clients ignore my important ticket *bold*, the more frustrated I will be.

@ Rich - why should we have to pay more for very simple, essential functionality that should be core to the product?!

Come on people, spread the word and let's get this voted up :-)

@ sol2010 - I also think that it's an essential functionality and it should be core to the product. But the fact is they are not doing anything about it.

I don't want to wait for years for this thats why I said lets pay a programmer to get this done.

"YEARS" would be acceptable, but at the rates these folks work, it may be DECADES!

Happy New Year all WHMCS friends :-)

I'm using the WYSIWYG editor in this post to let you know that WHMCS have announced.... wait for it .... the inclusion of this essential tool NOTHING regarding this important improvement.

Probably too busy writing 5.3 which I guess will miss out on this badly needed feature. But it's a new year, so gotta live in hope, eh @matt ?

Please, if you can bump this request by spreading the word, let's get it happening!

All the best for 2014!

Allowing HTML formatting via a rich text editor does present certain security challenges, however do remember that you can use some BB Code in ticket replies such as bold italics underlined

From what I've heard, it's not a "priority" because there aren't that "many requests".

As to what the definition of "many requests" that's up to interpretations!

1. WHMCS Dev Team

   Posted 4 hours ago......Allowing HTML formatting via a rich text editor does

   present certain security challenges, however do remember that you can

   use some BB Code in ticket replies such as bold italics underlined

Really? This is news to me! Can you please indicate how one goes about using BB Code in ticket replies?? Is there a browser plugin/addon to enable buttons for this?

What about auto-saving functionality to prevent lost replies?

So the status of this job is "Requires Feedback" from WHMCS.

@WHMCS staff: Please can you specify exactly "what" feedback you need that's not already been mentioned above?

+1 vote... we need this Editor

+1 for this request

I wish could press that I like this request buttons more times... Just lost 20 minutes today writing a request and lost it when I try to send it because my login token became invallid.

Another +1 for this.

+1 for this

+1 for this

So the status of this job is STILL "Requires Feedback" from WHMCS.

@WHMCS staff: Please can you specify exactly "what" feedback you need that's not already been mentioned above?

@WHMCS Chris

Auto save FTW

This is so needed. How long do we have to put up with plain text and no auto-save!!!

@WHMCS staff: Please can you specify exactly "what" feedback you need that's not already been mentioned above?

I hope that when this feature request will be implemented it will be for the latest TINYMCE 4.2.1 as been asked here:

https://requests.whmcs.com/responses/upgrade-tinymce-to-421

Come on @whmcs give us some hope!!

@WHMCS Chris

Perhaps a better option than HTML would be to allow for markdown to be used in ticket replies.

https://requests.whmcs.com/responses/enable-tinymce-editor-for-tickets-as-well-as-auto-save-functionality

https://requests.whmcs.com/responses/enable-tinymce-editor-for-tickets-as-well-as-auto-save-functionality

Hi,

This feature request was on Requires Feedback status - and now it's Declined ?

why?

wwwwww

As the OP I'd also like to know why it was declined?

@WHMCS Chris

This has been marked as declined specifically because it refers to TinyMCE.

Rich text formatting in support tickets is something that is high up on our roadmap, but the direction we're looking to head in not just for this, but for a lot of rich text formatting within the product moving forward is Markdown thanks to its lightweight, easy to use and easy-to-read plain-text fallback. Plans are already underway for this to be introduced to ticket replies.

That's terrific news. Markdown does make so much more sense because it is lightweight and easy to use. Thank you.

Where it won't make sense is for sending mass emails, TinyMCE is still better for that. What this really boils down to is WHMCS is a great billing and support tool but, not so good for responsive emails for marketing, follow-ups and drip campaigns, which is why we're moving all communications to MailChimp that aren't related to billing and support.

Hi,

This feature request is about 2 things:

1. Enable TINYMCE Editor for Tickets

2. Enable Auto-Save functionality for Tickets.

Regarding the 1st issue - the official answer is that TINYMCE Editor will not be added - but as far as I know in #CORE-8697 TINYMCE Editor was planned to be added - is it a final answer?

Will using Markdown will be something simple, with easy buttons to apply formatting etc - just like in this feature request system, or will it be something cumbersome like using the BB codes?

Using BB code or something like that is not a good solution (any way BB code is not working now - there is a bug that cause the BB code to affect only in the ticket system and the client area (i.e. inside WHMCS) - but in regular mail it's not working - so if you use BB code in a ticket and the customer gets the answer by mail - he will get the BB code and not the outcome of it - see

#CORE-6714)

Please make sure that using Markdown will work inside WHMCS and in any mail system our customer my use and that using the system (Markdown) will be simple and using buttons etc - without the need to remember the code to do something.

Another thing is to check what will happen to HTML mail that we gets from our customer - will the original design will be what we will see in the ticket system?

Let's say the customer sends us a mail with a table - will it be visible as a table in WHMCS ticket?

What about text color? if our customer use red text to emphasis or to mark something - will we see it as intended in the ticket system?

What about a link using hyperlink - will the relevant word that the customer added a link on - will retain the relevant link (as an hyperlink)?

=====================

As far as I know TinyMCE 4.2.8 is a good solution to the issues I described and lots of system use it as the default text editor.

I don't know if Markdown is a good enough substitute - but any way please take under consideration all the issues above.

and - what about the Auto-Save functionality ?

Thanks!

Ram

====

By the way - I see that in the new feature request system all the request that was under "Requires Feedback" status is now in "Declined" (the status Requires Feedback is no longer available) and that there is another status for Declined feature requests - " Currently Declined" - so maybe this feature request is really still in Requires Feedback (don't know what feedback needed) and not really declined?

+1 for autosave feature

Well +1 to Markdown than tinyMCE, regarding auto save functionalty, would love to have this features so just in case it won't loss the lengthy replies that we are experiencing a lot.

What I would like to suggest is to use LocalStorage to save the replies in certain time interval with Ticket ID as a key, so even after we disconnected or timeout we can still fetch it using Ticket ID from the client machine and NO DB interaction needed. Just a thought.

Cheers.

Hi,

Thanks for your votes and feedback on this suggestions everyone. I'm pleased to announce that Markdown and auto-save functionality is being added in v6.3. Take a look at our latest blog post for the details, we think it meets the points raised here very well: http://blog.whmcs.com/?t=112150

YES! Awesome! I'm so happy about this.

Thanks @John, for the good news... I've lost count of how many times I've had to re-type a customer response due to no auto-save, though things have improved a bit with the recent addition of the warning message that the token has expired.

As for Markdown - sounds fine - so long as it is super easy to SIMPLY add bold, bullets and other basic formatting etc.... it's really not a complicated feature request - even though this is now over 3 years old.....

Special thanks to @ramf for being a solid supporter.

Hi,

Thanks for adding the auto save - It's a real life saver.

But I have to say that the markdown feature is not a good solution....

After testing it on version 6.3.0 RC1 - it is clearly far far away from what we expected.

There is no comparison between markdown and TinyMCE...

- There is no way to write in color,

- The option to add a table is horrible - try to use it and tell me that this is something you can work with. I still haven't tested what happens hen a customer send a table to us.

- There is no option to copy & paste from word or excel.

- There is no image editing / editing option.

- There is a bug with formatting text when opening a new ticket (I opened a Bug report to WHMCS)

Sadly Markdown is not a good solution for all of us that waited for a WYSIWYG ticket text editor.

TinyMCE is by far a better option....

@Whmcs Please reconsider this issue.

Thanks!

Hi Jeff.

As far as I see it the most common formatting are:

• Bold (it can be done with markdown without a problem)
• Add colors to a text (it cannot be done with markdown)
• Add hyperlinks (it can be done with markdown without a problem)
• Change the size of text (it can be done with markdown - but only partly by using the headers formatting - there is no way to select or set a size)
• Align text to the left / right / middle (it cannot be done with markdown - you can use the keyboard to do it - left or right any way - but the preview will always be align to the left)
• Change the text direction from LTR to RTL (it cannot be done with markdown - you can use the keyboard to do it - but the preview will always be align to the left) - hope you can understand the difference between text alignment and text direction.
• Create lists (it can be done with markdown without a problem)
• Add picture to a text (it cannot be done with markdown)
• Create tables (it can be done with markdown - but in a very cumbrous way - and as you can see it's not working well).
• Paste tables from word etc. (it cannot be done with markdown)

Don't get me wrong - I think that addressing the ticket formatting issue is more then welcome, and there is no doubt that markdown is better then noting - but it lacks so much that it's hard to really rejoice.

Another thing that I will want to check is what dose the customer see directly in his mail software - I have the feeling that it may be the same as BB codes that affected only the client area and in the email it self the text was without the formatting (actually with BB code is was worse because the client got the text + code not just without formatting - see #CORE-6714).

Regards,

Ram