HelpDesk — customer support center

The add-on is compatible with CS-Cart 4.3.1 and newer, with such editions as CS-Cart, CS-Cart Ultimate, Multivendor, Multivendor Plus, Multivendor Ultimate. Vendor-related features are only available in Multi-Vendor editions.

At the moment there is no information about incompatibility with any theme. In case of a conflict with your theme, please contact our support center.

After success payment, your order will be automatically marked as Paid within a few minutes. Once order changed to Paid status - add-on License activation passed success and you will received an e-mail with confirmation the receipt of payment and a second e-mail with a  download add-on link. You can also download the add-on in our License Management section of our website. To install the add-on on your website, please follow these steps:

1. Download the latest version of the add-on on our website in the "License Management" section or via the link sent by e-mail.
2. Go to Add-ons → Manage Add-ons and in the gear button, select Manual Installation.
3. Select the downloaded file and complete the installation of the add-on.

Add-on installation is completed. To go to the add-on settings page, select the installed add-on in the top menu Add-ons → CS-Commerce add-on

Once installed, the add-on adds three entry points to the admin panel:

• Customers → Helpdesk center — the ticket list, the main working page;
• Add-ons → CS-Commerce Addons → HelpDesk — the add-on settings;
• Administration → Statuses management → Ticket statuses — custom ticket statuses.

On the storefront, the Helpdesk center item appears in the customer account.

The sections below walk through the settings and the day-to-day work with tickets.

The settings are located in Add-ons → CS-Commerce Addons → HelpDesk.

Ticket status on create

The status assigned to a new ticket. The list comes from your ticket statuses — see the "Ticket statuses and priorities" section.

Ticket priority on create

The default priority for new tickets: Low, Normal, High or Urgent.

Do not change these statuses on a customer reply

Normally a customer reply returns the ticket to the default status, so that it gets back into the queue. Tickets in the statuses selected here keep their current status. Several statuses can be selected at once.

Default search statuses

The statuses the ticket list is filtered by when the page opens. Handy if in day-to-day work you only care about new and open tickets, for example, and do not need the closed ones.

Starred tickets always on top

Tickets marked with a star are shown at the beginning of the list regardless of the selected sorting.

WYSIWYG editor for the administrator / for the customer

Two independent checkboxes: the visual editor in the reply form can be enabled separately for managers and for customers.

Time tracking

Enables the time field in the reply form and the report page. See the "Time tracking" section for details.

Time report for customers

Shows the customer a monthly report of the time spent on their tickets. The setting only appears when "Time tracking" is enabled.

In Multi-Vendor editions the settings page is only available to the marketplace administrator. Vendors neither see nor change the add-on settings.

Statuses

Ticket statuses are your own — you create them yourself. They are managed in Administration → Statuses management → Ticket statuses — the same place as order statuses, and they work the same way.

For every status you set:

• a name (for every store language);
• a colour — the status is highlighted with it in the ticket list;
• the position in the list.

Once the statuses are created, choose in the add-on settings which one is assigned to a new ticket and which statuses must not be reset when the customer replies.

Priorities

Priorities are fixed and not configurable: Low, Normal, High, Urgent. The manager changes the priority in the ticket, and the default priority is set in the add-on settings.

Statuses and priorities are independent attributes. The status describes which processing stage the ticket is at, the priority describes how urgent it is. The list can be filtered by both.

The main page of the add-on is Customers → Helpdesk center.

Ticket list

The list is filtered by status, priority, message text, customer name and e-mail. When the page opens, the statuses selected in the "Default search statuses" setting are applied. A ticket can be starred — such tickets move to the top if the corresponding setting is enabled.

The ticket

The conversation is shown as a message thread. In the sidebar the manager sees customer details: registration date, order history, total spent and the number of tickets — without switching to the user profile.

Inside a ticket the manager can:

• reply to the customer, attaching files;
• change the status and the priority;
• assign a responsible manager (Not assigned by default);
• edit their own message;
• send a reply without notifying the customer by clearing the Notify user checkbox.

Creating a ticket on behalf of a customer

The Add new ticket button creates a ticket on behalf of a customer — after a phone call, for example. The ticket is linked to the selected user and is handled as usual afterwards.

Access rights

The add-on adds two permissions: viewing tickets and managing tickets. They are configured in user groups by standard CS-Cart means, so a staff member can be given read-only access.

A Helpdesk center item appears in the customer account. From there the customer creates tickets and keeps the conversation going.

What the customer sees:

• a list of their tickets with colour-highlighted statuses;
• the last activity time in a readable form — "2 hours ago", "3 days ago";
• the conversation as a chat with participant avatars;
• a reply form with file attachments.

The customer can upload their own avatar — it replaces the default image in the conversation.

Notifications

E-mails are sent about a new ticket and about new activity in a ticket. The e-mail templates are standard CS-Cart templates and can be edited in the notifications section.

A manager can reply without sending a notification: clear the "Notify user" checkbox in the reply form.

A customer reply and the ticket status

When the customer replies, the ticket returns to the default status so that it does not get lost. Statuses listed in the "Do not change these statuses on a customer reply" setting are the exception.

This section applies to Multi-Vendor editions only.

The marketplace administrator can forward a ticket to a vendor — if the question concerns their product, for example. The vendor receives a "A ticket has been forwarded to you" e-mail and sees the ticket in their panel under the seller tools.

What is worth knowing

• a vendor sees only the tickets forwarded to them — the rest of the store's tickets are not available to them;
• the administrator can take the ticket back at any moment; the vendor receives a "The ticket has been returned to the marketplace" e-mail;
• the ticket list has a Not forwarded to vendors only filter, handy for picking out what is still on the marketplace side;
• a vendor can create a ticket to the marketplace administration from their own panel — a channel for B2B questions;
• the add-on settings and ticket deletion are not available to vendors.

Forwarding a ticket does not move it to another vendor's customer and does not change the ticket author — only who works on the ticket changes.

Time tracking is enabled with the Time tracking setting. After that a field appears in the manager reply form for the time spent on solving the question.

The accumulated time is aggregated into a monthly report — the Time report page in the add-on section.

The report for customers

The Time report for customers setting gives the customer their own monthly report in their account: how much time specialists spent on their tickets. The setting is only available when time tracking is enabled.

The feature targets stores where support is billed by time or sold as a separate service. If that is not your case, time tracking can be left off — it does not affect the rest of the ticket workflow.

Files can be attached to a message by both the customer and the manager. The format and the size are validated before sending.

Allowed formats

• images — jpg, jpeg, png, gif, webp, bmp;
• video — mp4, mov, avi, mkv, webm, m4v;
• archives — zip, rar, 7z, tar, gz, tgz.

Size limits

• a single file — up to 5 MB;
• total attachment size — up to 100 MB;
• a user avatar — up to 2 MB.

The add-on limits work on top of the PHP limits on the server. If upload_max_filesize or post_max_size is lower than the values above, the lower one wins — check your hosting settings if large files fail to upload.

Attachments are stored in the var/csc_helpdesk/ folder, add-on images in images/csc_helpdesk/. Both folders are store data and must be included in backups.

In order to have access to add-on upgrades, you must have an active upgrade subscription. If the subscription period has expired, you will only have access to upgrades released before the expiration date of your subscription. You can renew your upgrades subscription in the "License Management" section on our website.

The add-on supports instant upgrades via the CS-Cart Upgrade Center. The built-in CS-Cart Notification Center (bell) will notify you about new versions release of the add-on. Upgrades via Upgrades Center will allow you to switch to a newer version without losing add-on data and settings.

Before start an upgrade process, it is highly recommended to make a full backup of the site (database and files) of your store using the server or hosting methods. 

 Upgrade through the Upgrade Center

1. In the top menu, go to Administration → Upgrade Center;
2. In the gear menu, click "Refresh available upgrades"
3. Find and add-on on list of available upgrades and click the Download button and than Install button;
4. Follow all the instructions that will be shown during the upgrade process;
5. It is recommended to clear the CS-Cart templates cache after the upgrades are installed by deleting the var/cache folder on your server or adding the ctpl parameter to the address bar (example: https://domain.com/admin.php?ctpl).

Addon Reinstallation by uninstall old and install new:

Reinstalling an add-on means deleting the add-on's settings and data. Reinstallation will allow you to get a clean installation of the latest addon version. To reinstall the add-on with saving the add-on settings and data, please contact us via our Support Center to provide this service.

To completely reinstall an add-on without saving data, follow these steps:

1. Go to Add-ons → Manage add-ons and find the old installed add-on.
2. Click the delete button in the gear menu of the add-on.
3. Download the latest version of the add-on on our website in the "License Management" section.
4. Go to Add-ons → Manage add-ons and in the gear menu select Manual Installation. Select the previously downloaded file and complete the installation of the add-on.

The technical support of the add-on is already included in its price. Before contacting the support center, please make sure you are using the latest released version of the add-on. Old versions of the add-on are not supported by technical support.

To use our technical support, follow these steps:

1. On our support center site https://helpdesk.cs-commerce.com/, log in with your account;
2. Click on the "Create ticket" button;
3. Fill in all the required fields and create ticket (you will receive a confirmation email);
4. Expect a response from a specialist (a notification will be sent to your e-mail about the response) in accordance with the regulations of the technical support service.

If you have not received an answer within the time frame specified in the regulations, write us a message to the e-mail [email protected] with the subject of the ticket and we will try to resolve your issue as soon as possible.

Technical support via chat on the site, direct phone calls or e-mail letters is not provided. All help discuss goes through the support center. Carefully study the documentation for the add-on and the terms of technical support before creating a ticket. 

We recommend that you familiarize with the general restrictions:

1. Fragments of code or some files of an add-on may have a private (encoded) part. The coded part does not create problems on add-on customizations;
2. The add-on will work only on those domains that are specified in the user's license. If you try to use the solution the domains of which are not included in the license, the add-on will be automatically disabled;
3. Installing on local machines is not allowed by the licensing system. For the add-on to work on an additional domain (alias), specify this alias on the license management page. Up to three aliases are allowed per domain for testing and development purposes. You can change the main license domain yourself on the license management page.

To have possibility to add or change license domains and aliases, the upgrade subscription must be active. To change the license domain of an expired upgrades subscription, you must first renew your subscription.  

Version 1.1.0 of September 11, 2026

• [+] Added a hook below the new ticket form on the storefront;
• [!] Fixed an error when creating a new ticket from the storefront: the customer got an error page instead of the form;
• [!] Fixed an error when working with tickets in the admin panel: opening a ticket failed for administrators without full permissions and for vendors;
• [*] Updated the version and subscription information block, added the "Support and rating" card;
• [*] Improved resilience of the connection to the update server: checking and downloading updates keep working when the main channel is unavailable.

Version 1.0 of September 1, 2026

This is the first release of the add-on