Brimir is a simple helpdesk system that can be used to handle support requests via incoming email. Brimir is currently used in production at Ivaldi.
Brimir is a rather simple Ruby on Rails application. The only difficulty in setting things up is how to get incoming email to work. See the next section for details.
Any Rails application needs a web server with Ruby support first. We use Phusion Passenger (mod_rails) ourselves, but you can also use Thin, Puma or Unicorn. Phusion Passenger can be installed for Nginx or Apache, you can chose wichever you like best. The installation differs depending on your distribution, so have a look at their Nginx installation manual or their Apache installation manual.
After setting up a webserver, you have to create a database for Brimir and modify the config file in config/database.yml to reflect the details. Set your details under the production section. We advice to use adapter: postgresql or adapter: mysql2 for production usage, because those are the only two adapters and database servers we test.
Next up: configuring your outgoing email address and url. This can be set in config/environments/production.rb by adding the following lines before the keyword end:
config.action_mailer.default_options = { from: '[email protected]' }
config.action_mailer.default_url_options = { host: 'brimir.yoururl.com' }
Now install the required gems by running:
bundle install --without development:test --deployment
Next, load the database schema and precompile assets:
rake db:schema:load RAILS_ENV=production
rake assets:precompile RAILS_ENV=production
Last thing left to do before logging in is making a user and adding some statuses. You can do this by running:
rails console production
u = User.new({ email: '[email protected]', password: 'somepassword', password_confirmation: 'somepassword' }); u.agent = true; u.save!
Incoming emails can be posted to the tickets url by using the script found in scripts/post-mail. Create an alias in your /etc/aliases file like this:
brimir: "|/bin/bash /path/to/your/brimir/repo/script/post-mail http://yoururl.com/tickets.json"
Now sending an email to [email protected] should start curl and post the email to your brimir installation.
We appreciate all contributions! If you would like to contribute, please follow these steps:
- Fork the repo.
- Create a branch with a name that describes the change.
- Make your changes in the branch.
- Submit a pull-request to merge your feature-branch in our master branch.
Some users have made requests for the following features. If you would like to contribute, you could add any of these.
- Allowing customers to update ticket status, with correct email notifications.
- Switchable property to support threads by using special tags in the subject line instead of relying on mail headers.
- Support for hosted incoming mail services (Sendgrid, Mandrill), possibly using griddler gem.
Brimir is licensed under the GNU Affero General Public License Version 3.