I have been trying to set up my EXIM email service on Bluehost.com (my host) so I can receive and send responses via email instead of being locked to a computer.
 
I set up the forwarding, which seems to work ok since helpdesk tickets arrive in my support@edsets.com email account.
 
However, I can't respond via email. There are several things that have to be in place, and after several conversations with Viart staff, the solution is to buy Viart hosting. But that is not a real solution for me as I have several domains aside from my Viart cart, and moving them is NOT going to happen.
 
If there are any technical folks that use Bluehost and EXIM email service, I would like to speak with you offline. You can contact me by email at ed@edsets.com.
 
I think it's just a small thing with settings inside the support_receiver.php file that I can't get right. For example, "#!/usr/local/bin/php -q" is the first line, and I've tried other paths, none work, so it may not be a problem there, or it may be that none of them work and I need something else there.
 
The Viart instructions are almost usefull, but fall far short of giving a generic guide on what needs to be done.
 
I found the website where Viart seems to have nearly identical instructions from. Most especially the parts on Setting up email piping on Ezxim and cPanel. Here's the site:
 
http://wiki.kayako.com/pages/viewpage.action?pageId=13928278
 
I'd like to work this out and post a more complete instruction so this is not so difficult to do. Most hosts are pretty much the same, but the small details are key. The more we know, the better it is for everyone.
 
As an aside, I have a small beef with Viart's corporate culture wherein they advertise a feature (email for helpdesk) but then try to coerce customers to pay to install or configure things that they advertise as features. Just be honest and say it's a paid option instead of a 'feature' if you want money to make it work.
 
Not picking on you, Viart, but that's not a good relationship. Your documentation is outdated, and cost me several days of work before one of your techs told me those instructions were outdated because Zend is not used now for that function.
 
Not a happy camper, but not going to leave Viart either. I want to get this done.
 
Ed

I'm going to play around with this over the weekend. I'm using GoDaddy, but it still should be similar functionality in nature.

2 other things I found when playing around with the email system in Viart and i realise, after re-reading your note, thats its not entirely in line with your question, but maybe this can also be covered in your final 'solution' for an end-to-end setup for both email send/recieve and system send/receive. And Yes, VIART docs are way behind and I have chatted them about that before.
 
1. I didnt need to set up the email host settings in viart at all. My emails were not going through either until i cleared these settings
Global Settings -> SMTP
Uncheck the [Enable SMTP]
 
I know, sounds wierd, but it worked.
Seems that on some hosts that the VIART system uses built in 'localhost' style defaults for sending emails.
 
 
2. I found that for some reason with certain $email_headers parameters set (eg CC, BCC, return_path] that emails would either not go through my email system even thought the email reported as being able to be sent. Or worse they would be marked as SPAM/Junk at the recipients end
So I comment out all of those non-mandatory type fields in contact_us.php and it seemed to improve things

Also, from my very limited understanding, PIPING only applies to incoming email?? Am I correct??
 
If you get this working it will be great

dmOZ, TOCDCO,
 
As far as I know, piping does apply to incoming mail, but that's ok, because all traffic on support@edsets.com goes to the pipe and is sorted out by support_receiver.php, which is the actual target of the pipe. The script generates an OUTPUT which is data to the SQL DB and includes the elements of the email 'reply' to the customer via the help-desk. I get how that all works, and the problems in implementing it are rich.
 
My site has never "Enabled SMTP", but I may at least try it out... I just don't really know why it is there, suppose I will have to look in the manual for why it's there and how to use it.
 
FWIW, all my email is SMTP.
 
The only obvious error I have found since my original post is that I had renamed my 'admin' folder to 'xx_yyy_zz' a while back.
 
So, I went into the admin panel for helpdesk and in the notifications changed the path to reflect the correct path to the admin_support_reply.php script. I loaded that URL in a browser and it came up and showed me the original ticket that I was supposed to reply to. At least I know the script will work if I can get the replies working.
 
https://www.edsets.com/xx_yyy_zz/admin_support_reply.php?support_id=1451
 
------------------------------------------
-----------------------------Ticket-Body-End---------------------------------------
{site_url}es_adm_12/admin_support_reply.php?support_id={support_id}
Ticket ID is {support_id}
VC: {vc}
------------------------------------------
 
Also, my hosting tech told me to use "#!/usr/php/54/usr/bin/php-cli" inside support_receiver.php. "#!/usr/bin/php -q" was what I started with, neither seems to work.
 
I thought those changes would help, but it didn't, so now I think I can at least focus on why they didn't make any difference.
 
Recall, I get the original notification email ok, but when replying, something keeps the support_receiver.php script from running, I think.

I just tried enabling SMTP, and my emails didn't work. Unchecked it, then the helpdesk will send the notification email.
 
Also I wanted to point out that I get both the original email when customer posts the ticket, and when I reply, I get a copy of the email that goes to the pipe for processing by support_receiver.php, but the helpdesk is never updated.
 
That's what we need to focus on. Why isn't support_receiver.php playing nice with the other scripts??
 
Ed

Thanks to Viart staff, the helpdesk is working now. I even changed from support@edsets.com to 'helpdesk@edsets.com' without any problems. My problems were that I changed my email in the helpdesk departments, apparently didn't "save", after that and a code change (no 'CD...' to a directory).
 
Because of the plethora of emails that the piping generates, it's difficult to manage all of them and there are so many copies each time a request or reply occurs.
 
One thing I want to 'simplify' is the emails that are sent back and forth. Each helpdesk ticket generates two emails, one to the admin and the other to the customer.
 
If I don't want the admin email, the email responses don't work, but if I restore the admin email, it works again.
 
Is there any way to whittle it all down to one email per exchange?
 
Ed