DEL BEM

Service tracker STO

Service tracker STO provides a way to keep track of all services provided

Summary – Most questions regarding this plugin will be answered here

  • Common use case
  • On Installation
  • Usage
  • WooCommerce integration
  • User notification
  • On deactivation
  • On uninstall
  • Support
  • Issues with code

Common use case

Imagine you use your WordPress site for more than writing blog posts. It is likely that in this situation your site is also an important part of your business. That is true for numerous business. These commercial websites can sell goods and also services, like, let’s say a lawyer. This fictional attorney may find the need to provide regular updates for the clients, and that can be time consuming. Also, our attorney may want to have a single source of truth for his business regarding the current situation of all of his ongoing cases. All that can be achieved with Service Tracker STO. With it you will be able to provide substantial feedback to the customers and organize all of the services being worked on.

On Installation

Service Tracker STO will create three tables on your sites database. That means that the data Service Tracker STO manages is completely separated from the rest of your WordPress website. That said, usual WP functions won´t work to retrieve and manipulate content created by this plugin. If you are a developer you will need to use WordPress db functions to work on that. This may change in the future as the plugin evolves.

It is also very important to know that Service Tracker STO relays on the WordPress API AND in the postname permalink structure. See image below:

Usage

Service Trackerr STO is divided in two columns, by the left hand side there is a menu:

And by the right hand side there is the content, there are two layers:

Every costumer listed has to have the role of costumer, that is a role used by WooCommerce to refer to the buyers of a store. However you do not have to have WooCommerce installed in your site. Service Tracker will create that role in case WooCommerce is not installed.

Every case has two possible states, open or closed. If a case or service is finished you can close it by clicking the toggle button. It is also possible to delete a case, bare in mind that this deletion will cascade to the progress statuses related to that case.

If you click a case you will be able to access that case progress statuses. See the image:

A progress status supports long texts, so you are free to write as much as needed. Every new progress triggers an email notification that will inform your customer of that progress with the exact text you write here. Consider this a direct message to you and you customer, so be informative.

Sending emails through WordPress can be tricky. You should consider using a SMTP plugin so your emails do not go to the spam box. That is not an issue with this plugin if emails end up there.

WooCommerce integration

It is not necessary to have WooCommerce installed to use Service Tracker STO. Basically, for integration purposes Service Tracker STO will use a user role that is also known by WooCommerce, which is the role customer. If you have WooCommerce installed, all your customers will show up in Service Tracker STO’s menu.

In the future we may improve integration between this plugin and WooCommerce.

User notification

Every new progress status added to a case will trigger an email message to the customer that owns that case. It is advised to use an SMTP email so to avoid emails going to spam box.

On deactivation

Nothing will happen on deactivation. All tables will persist in your database as a deactivation may be necessary for troubleshooting your website. So, when reactivating all cases and progress statuses will be there.

On uninstall

Uninstalling the Service Tracker STO will cause the entire removal of all plugin files and the permanent removal of its tables from the database. This is a hard deletion, bear that in mind.

Support

Support will be provided on wordpress.org, emails sent to me personally will be ignored.

Issues with code

If you found a bug in the code, please open an issue on this repo https://github.com/rdelbem/service-tracker