Demo Instructions
We provide a demo for use by potential partners. Login and usage information is below.
Logging in
URL: https://demo.digiresilience.org/
Username/email: [email protected]
Password: Contact CDR for the password.
Note: This is a shared demo instance, for people interested in setting up a CDR Link helpdesk. Any data submitted via Signal, Telegram, SMS, email, voice mail, and beyond is visible to others – including the phone numbers and email addresses used to submit tickets. Make sure any devices and/or accounts you use to test this platform are not leaking sensitive or mission critical data.
Finally, dedicated instances of Link will have two-factor authentication set up in the form of a Keycloak, an open-source identity and access management application.
Ticket creation
Tickets are created when messages are sent via the following channels:
- SMS, Signal, voice recording: +1 480 405 4910
- Telegram: linkdemo_bot
- Email: [email protected]
- WhatsApp: +1 646 422 9653
Options also exist to add web forms, chat bots, Twitter @ replies and DMs, and Facebook. Please let us know if you’d like to discuss adding these channels.
You can also create a ticket by clicking the “plus” sign at the bottom left corner.
Deleting tickets
It is easy to delete tickets from the database. Select the desired ticket, and then on the right-hand side of the page, tag a ticket with “delete,” and a background task running once every minute will delete any tickets with that tag.
In addition, all closed tickets will be deleted every 24 hours.
Users
Users are created or updated when tickets are submitted. If a phone number, email address, or Telegram username is new to the system, that data will be used to create a new user.
You can access a user’s profile in Settings > Manage > Users. You can add information like name, email address, phone/Signal/WhatsApp number, and more. New tickets will be associated with existing user data; for instance, messages sent from a Signal number associated with an existing user profile will be added to that user’s open ticket, or, if no open ticket exists, will be used to create a new ticket. New tickets will be used to create new users.
Usage details
All of these channels (except WhatsApp) work with the demo out of the box.
Try sending messages via the Signal/phone number, Telegram bot, and email. You’ll see them arrive in Zammad shortly after sending (in our experience Signal takes 15-30 seconds to come through).
Replies
To reply to tickets, click “reply” below the ticket to reply via the original channel (Signal, Telegram, email, etc.). Direct replies to ticket submissions are displayed in a plain white box.
To leave a note under a ticket (only visible by “Agents”), click the lock icon on the left-hand side. This will add an orange outline to the text box, indicating that the note is internal to the Link platform and not being shared with outside users.
Important note: The lock iconography can be confusing. The lock does not indicate whether a message is encrypted or unencrypted. Rather, the unlocked icon means that the note will be shared with the user who submitted the ticket, and the text box is white without a border. The locked icon means that the note will not be shared with the user, and is accompanied by a red border around the text box.
Account permissions
- Admin: View all tickets, add and remove users, change ticket states, add owners
- Agents: View all tickets, change ticket states, add owners
- Users: View their own tickets. Default permissions assigned to new accounts.
Ticket data
By default, three fields appear on the right of a ticket (though this can be customized):
- Owner: Agents and Admins can assign “owners,” or other agents, to tickets
- State: Closed, open, pending close, pending reminder. Selecting the last two will create new fields in which you can define when a ticket should close, or when you should be reminded about it.
- Priority: Set the priority level. This can be viewed and filtered in the “Overviews” section.
Dashboard, overviews, and reporting
- The dashboard (top left of the page) provides an overview of topline stats, including number of tickets assigned, tickets in process, escalated tickets, and more.
- Overviews (also top left of the page) provide a global view of all tickets (for admins and agents), including open, pending, assigned, and escalated tickets. Escalation occurs when tickets have been open and unaddressed over a period of time.
- Reporting (bottom left) can be useful to analyze trends and to provide stats for external reporting.
Security consideration: Database
All CDR Link data is stored on Greenhost servers located in the Netherlands. All network transfers are encrypted in transit using TLS. We don’t yet encrypt the servers themselves, but given that our servers are always online – and therefore would always be decrypted unless turned off – we believe that in-transit encryption is much more important. We also make daily, encrypted backups of all Link data using the Tarsnap service.
Security consideration: Notifications
Notifications can be great to get alerted to a new ticket that requires attention. However, given the integrations of end-to-end encrypted mediums, such as Signal, something coming in via a more secure means may not want to be forwarded along to a less secure one. With email notifications enabled, a message received from Signal could be relayed to an email, thus breaking the end-to-end encryption Signal affords.
Users can configure where and how they receive notifications by clicking on their avatar in the lower left corner of the window and selecting, “profile”. From there, select, “Notifications” and select the appropriate checkboxes in the, “Also notify via email” column.
