Introduction :

             Forums Integration is an effort to bring in a unified approach to handle requests irrespective of the channel from which the request is generated.  Contacts/Users can now post their queries to the forums & these are automatically converted into requests in SupportCenter.  SupportReps now can reply to these queries from the SupportCenter application, saving them the effort to login to multiple applications to handle requests.

Steps to configure phpBB forums to work with SupportCenter

1. Installing phpBB

Download & Install phpBB version 2.0.22 from the following location :

Quick Steps to Install

• Unzip the phpBB product zip under the document root
• DB Configuration
  • Select the Host, DBName, Username, Password for the install
• Provide write permission for [phpBB_Home]/config.php
• Connect to http://server_name/<phpBB_Home>/index.php & provide the database details
• Click on install
• After install please rename the install & contrib directories

2. Installing M2F

• Install Mail2Forum (M2F) module in your phpBB forums using the information provided at the following url : http://www.mail2forum.com/wiki/Main_Page
• Change a line in the M2F file (m2f_mailinglist.php) :
  • Find the line below in the file [search for the word  "Mail In-Reply-To header", and find this line below it ]  :  

$mail_msg->headers['Subject'] = $headers['Subject'];  

And replace the line by  :

$mail_msg->headers['Subject'] = "[FORUM : " . $topic_id . "] " . $headers['Subject'];

3. Basic Configuration

• Login to the phpBB forums as the administrator
• Click on the link at the bottom Go to Administration Panel
• In the admin page, Go to Mail2Forum section :
  • Configuring a Mailing list
    • Provide the list name
    • Provide the list email address (email that is used by SupportCenter application to fetch mails)
  • Configuring a Distribution List
    • Select the configured mailing list (that was created in the earlier step)
    • Select the forum name
    • Click on Link & Create Distribution List
    • In the table below click on configure
      • Configuring the Incoming mail transport
        • Chose the POP3 account radio button
        • Provide the Host, Port, User & Password for POP3 account & configure the incoming emails for the forum
      • Configuring Email Settings
        • Select the option Email address of the poster
      • Save the Settings using the button Save Settings

4. Now the forums is ready to be integrated with SupportCenter