SupportPro Documentation

Brands

Streamline your support across multiple brands (companies) within a single installation of SupportPro.

Key Features

Many frontends, single backend
Create a personalised frontend for each brand, with its own unique self-service area.
Shared departments
Departments are shared between brands, to keep things organised in the interface. Operators can be assigned to brands and brands assigned to departments for providing permissions on who can view and reply to tickets.
Context-specific signatures
Create signatures that are used when a ticket has a specific department or is for a specific brand instead of your default signature.
User accounts per brand
User accounts are registered per brand to allow you to capture different information (profile and custom fields) for each brand.
Email templates per brand
Write personalised email templates specific for each brand.

Searching for Brands

Table sorting

By default the table is sorted alphabetically. Once the table has loaded you're able to change the sort column by clicking the up/down arrows:

Down arrow: descending order
Up arrow: ascending order

This action is only temporary and will disappear once the page has been reloaded.

Filtering the table

It's possible to filter Brands based on their name, and whether they're enabled or not:

Visit Settings -> Core -> Brands and click "Filter Results".
Search terms:
1. Name - It is possible to search for partial names. For example, you could find "ACME Software" by searching for "soft" or "ware".
2. Enabled - Whether the brand is enabled or not.
The table will be filtered automatically as you enter search terms.

Creating or Updating a Brand

Server Setup

All brands must operate from a sub-domain; relative URLs are not supported.

In order to create a new brand, you must point your your brand domain to your SupportPro installation.

If you're using one of the below control panels please jump to their specific guides:

Otherwise the easiest way to achieve this is to create a CNAME record. For example, if your help desk is locked to https://support.supportpro.com/ and your new brand operates under https://www.support.mybrand.com/ then your CNAME record would look like:

support.mybrand.com. 3600  IN      CNAME   support.supportpro.com.

For more information on how to create a CNAME DNS record, please speak to your hosting provider or domain registrar.

cPanel

If you use cPanel to manage your websites, some additional setup is required beyond creating a CNAME record.

Same cPanel Account

If your brand and SupportPro installation share the same cPanel account, follow the below steps:

Create CNAME record as instructed above
Add your brand domain as an "Addon Domain"
Register a sub-domain (within cPanel) for the addon domain, for example: support.mybrand.com

Different cPanel Accounts

If your brand and SupportPro installation are on separate cPanel accounts but share the same physical server, the configuration becomes slightly more complex. Ultimately, we need to create an Apache vHost that routes the brand domain to the SupportPro installation on the other cPanel account.

Method 1 (requires root access to WHM)

The easiest method to achieve this (recommended by cPanel Support), requires root access to WHM:

Create CNAME record as instructed above
Login to WHM as root and browse to Home » Service Configuration » Apache Configuration » Include Editor
Select All Versions for Pre VirtualHost Include
Edit and enter the below VirtualHost into the input box. We recommend to cross-reference the below with other VirtualHost's in /usr/local/apache/conf/httpd.conf, as depending on your server setup there may be additional configuration required - see additional <ifmodule> blocks. You may also want to add another VirtualHost for SSL.

pre_virtualhost_include Expand

Method 2

This method is experimental and is known to have issues with SSL, however does not require any special permissions to the cPanel server:

Create CNAME record as instructed above
Register a sub-domain for your brand domain (within cPanel), for example: support.mybrand.com
Create a Trusted Proxy within SupportPro for your brand's server IP address
Browse to the "Document Root" of the newly created sub-domain and create a .htaccess with the following contents, replacing YOUR.DEFAULT.BRAND with your default brand URL.

.htaccess Expand

Plesk

If you use Plesk to manage your websites, a CNAME record may not be necessary, but other steps are involved:

Start to create a subdomain for your brand URL, e.g. support.mybrand.com.
Point the folder to the same folder as the main brand installation, e.g. /support.supportpro.com/.
Finish the set up of the subdomain and give it a few minutes to process.
If your DNS is hosted externally, ensure to set up an A record for the subdomain to point to the Plesk server, similar to the main domain.
Check to ensure the same PHP version has been set for the subdomain as the main brand.

DirectAdmin

Admin Access Required
Admin level access is required in order to setup brands within SupportPro. You may need to contact your web hosting company if you do not have admin level access.

Ultimately our aim is to add a domain or sub-domain to the existing apache VirtualHost which controls access to SupportPro. It should simply be a case of following https://help.directadmin.com/item.php?id=3.

SupportPro Settings

General

Setting Name	Description
Name	The name of your brand, which appears on the help desk frontend and on all email sent by the system.
System URL	Enter your system URL as should be accessed by users, the URL given is used when generating links when sending emails to users among other areas.
Enable SSL	If you wish to force access to the help desk, frontend, operator panel and API, by SSL for this brand, enable this option. Please ensure that your SSL works before enabling it, as it may otherwise lead to issues with accessing the website.
Enabled	Disabled brands cannot be utilised and won't count as part of the brands allowed on your license, disabling can be used to temporarily hide a brand and/or retain information. It's not possible to disable the default brand.
Operator Groups	Operators in the selected groups will be able to create, update and delete (depending on role permissions) tickets and other content in this brand.

Branding

Setting Name	Description
Colour	Select a colour for your brand, which will be used for the colour scheme on both the frontend and operator template. Leave blank to use the default colour scheme (blue). Use the preview option to view how the colour will look.
Favicon	The favicon appears in the browser tab and is used to identify your website, set this to make it visible on both the frontend and operator. For best results use a .ico file that is square and scales well from 32x32px to 310x310px.
Frontend Logo	The frontend logo can be easily replace with your own logo by setting this field to a URL. If using the Enable SSL, we recommend to use a HTTPS link to ensure that secure pages work without any warnings.
Frontend Dark Mode Logo	If your logo was designed to work on a light background only, you can set a different logo to be shown in dark mode only. If using the Enable SSL, we recommend to use a HTTPS link to ensure that secure pages work without any warnings.
Website URL	Add a link back to your main website in the support portal header.
Frontend Template	The template shown to users on the frontend. To preview a template before making it live, you can use the template parameter, such as http://www.yourdomain.com/support/?template=new
Operator Logo	The operator logo (icon) is shown in the top left of the operator panel, set this to replace it with your own icon.
Operator Template	The template shown to operators in the operator panel. Can be overridden by an operator's personal settings.

Email

Setting Name	Description
Default Email Address	The email address that is used on most emails sent by the system, only ticket emails will use the department emails instead.
Global Email Header	The entered content is prepended to all emails sent by the system. HTML is accepted and we recommend to test an outgoing email after setting this field to ensure it looks as you wish.
Global Email Footer	The entered content is appended to all emails sent by the system. HTML is accepted and we recommend to test an outgoing email after setting this field to ensure it looks as you wish.
Email Method	The method used for sending email by the system, defaults to the PHP mail() function. SMTP is also available and requires setting up further fields to connect with your SMTP server.

Locale

Setting Name	Description
Default User Country	The country that is selected by default for the country field on the register forms.
System Timezone	The default timezone that the system operates in, set to the timezone that your company operates in.
Date Format	The format of all dates displayed by the system.
Time Format	The format of all times displayed by the system.
Default Language	Set the default language for both the frontend and operator panel.
Language Dropdown	If users and operators should have the option to change their language.

Deleting a Brand

We strongly recommend that brands are disabled rather than deleted. Deleting a brand is a permanent action that will also remove all associated data, for example tickets and users.

Only additional (not default) brands can be deleted. To delete a brand, follow the below steps:

Visit Settings -> Core -> Brand.
Search for the brand you wish to delete (see Searching for Brands).
Click the delete (cross) icon located on the right of the table.
Check all checkboxes shown, ensuring you understand that all this related data will be removed along with the brand.
Click on the button, "Yes, Delete Brand", that pops up confirming you would like to delete the brand and it will now be deleted.

Article Number: 35
Author: May 17, 2024
Last Updated: Jul 26, 2024

Online URL: https://docs.supportpro.vn/article/brands-35.html