Step by Step

Download the sql scripts required for installation
  1. Download either the complete source or the compiled ready to go version of the system and extract the files somewhere
  2. Create a database on your sql server called whatever you like (e.g. CustomerContactSystem)
  3. Add a login for the database with owner access.
  4. Open the CustomerContactSystem_CreateTables.sql file in Management Studio and execute against your new database.
  5. Open the CustomerContactSystem_InitData.sql file in Management Studio and execute against your database. This will insert some default data in your database to allow you to get up and running. You can edit this data later if you wish.
  6. Copy the compiled version of the website to a folder on your intranet web server, typically your iis folder wwwroot but wherever you wish to host the site. (e.g. C:\inetpub\wwwroot\CustomerContactSystem)
  7. Create a document folder at the root of the website (e.g. Docs). This is where the app will save uploaded files.
  8. Create a virtual directory in IIS pointing to the new website and call it what you want the name to be when users browse to it (e.g. CustomerContactSystem for a url of http://myintranet/CustomerContactSystem)
  9. Open the file Web.config in notepad or your chosen text editor and update the settings to your specifics. See below for a description of the settings and their meaning.
  10. Edit the Nhibernate connection string setting (value of the element <property name="connection.connection_string">) in the web.config to your database connection details. You will see in other Nhibernate settings that this is set as Sql Server 2005. You can if you wish try and use Sql Server 2000 by changing this but that will not be supported by us.
  11. Browse to the sites SettingsCheck.aspx page. This will check your connection to Fix Your Street (testzone or live depending on your setting), your database and other vital settings in the web.config.
  12. Browse to the sites login.aspx page and you should be able to login using the created sysadmin/pass0rd login
  13. You will then need to populate the departments, categories, classifications and sources as well as setup users as required. At a minimum you will need categories to match with the Fix Your Street categories and a 'FixYourStreet' source as well as at least one user to set as a default submitter/referee for imported incidents be it the existing sysadmin or other. Some of this is done for you in the data init file included.

Application Settings

Application settings are located in the <appSettings> element of the web.config

Fix Your Street Id/Category Names

Setting up the Poller

The polling application is a simple windows console application that can be setup in task scheduler to run on a regular basis. A windows service would be a more apt solution for polling but in the interest of making something available to do the job this is sufficient for now.

The poller does the following:-
  1. get new incidents from Fix Your Street, add them to the Customer Contact System and email the relevant users to notify them.
  2. get new comments from members of the public and add them to the appropriate enquiry in the CCS
  3. send any comments from the CCS to Fix Your Street
  4. send any Status updates to Fix Your Street where enquiries have been received, are in progress (first comment sent out) or closed etc.
  5. process any pending emails.

Enquiry Emails, Comments for Fix Your Street and Status Updates for Fix Your Street are all stored in the database first and then sent by the poller. This allows for a certain amount of protection. If their is a failure when the poller is running it will catch them next time and so on.

The poller is an exe located in the Poller folder of the CCS (it is a seperate project if you have downloaded the source) and you just need to edit the config file and ensure the url pointing to the web service is correct depending on how you setup the CCS in IIS. e.g. if the CCS runs at http://intranet/CustomerContactSystem then the service will be at http://intranet/CustomerContactSystem/Services/CustomerContactSystemService.asmx.

Then set up a task in the server's task scheduler to run that exe every 5 minutes for example. It is recommended to run it at least every 5 minutes so that emails are sent as soon as possible.