Overview
Customizing your Kayako Classic templates gives your team control over the appearance – and in some cases, the functionality of your emails and support center. Any time you update, upgrade or reinstall your help desk, you will need to back up and re-implement any template modifications you have made.
This article provides an overview of the template backup and restoration process and explains how to restore your template modifications after an update.
Contents
- Understanding How to Maintain Your Template Modifications
- Preserving Your Template Modifications
- Backing up Your Modifications
- Restoring Fresh Template Versions
- Comparing, Merging and Pasting in Your Modifications
Process
Step 1: Understanding How to Maintain Your Template Modifications
The safest way to do this is to follow these steps:
- Before you start the update process, export a backup copy of any modified templates.
- Run through the update, which includes a fresh copy of all of Kayako Classic's templates – but it will not overwrite any of your changes.
- Once you are up and running, go into the Admin Control Panel and review your templates. Any templates you have modified will be marked as Out-of-date.
- After double-checking that you have all your backups in hand, click Restore to accept the fresh templates and overwrite your modified ones. (Do not worry, though – they will not be gone for long.)
- For each template that has been updated, export a copy, which gives you a local version of both the updated template and your modified version of the previous template.
- Using a Diff & Merge tool, review your changes, and incorporate them into the updated template.
- Once you merge your changes, copy your modified, up-to-date template, and paste it into Kayako Classic.
- Repeat the compare and merge process for any templates you have modified until you are fully up-to-date.
Now that you have a sense of the steps involved, let us get into the details.
Step 2: Preserving Your Template Modifications
For these steps, you will need admin access to your Kayako Classic help desk, as well as your server, if you are running Download.
Step 3: Backing up Your Modifications
Your first step is to make sure you have full local backups of any templates that you have modified:
- Sign in to the Admin Control Panel.
- Click Templates and click Import/Export in the sidebar.
- From the Template group to export drop-down, select the group you want to back up.
- From the Export type drop-down, choose Export modified templates.
- Click the Export XML button.
- Save your backup somewhere handy.
Step 4: Restoring Fresh Template Versions
Once you have finished updating, it is time to go in and review your templates. For any that you have modified, you will need to manually overwrite them with the fresh templates that came over while you were updating.
- Sign in to the Admin Control Panel.
- Click Templates and then Restore in the sidebar.
- From the Template group drop-down, select the group you want to update.
- Next to Out of date, select Yes to find a list of all of your out-of-date templates.
- Click the Search button.
- You will see a list of any of the templates that you had modified that need to be updated to the newest versions. Select all the templates by clicking the checkbox in the header row.
NOTE: This is an excellent opportunity to make double-sure you have local backups of your modified templates. - When you are ready, click the Restore button on the page to overwrite your modified templates with the new versions.
Step 5: Comparing, Merging and Pasting in Your Modifications
The complexity of this final step will depend on how heavily modified your templates are. If there are just a few one-line changes, it should be pretty quick. More substantial changes might take longer to incorporate.
But whichever boat you are in, the process is the same:
- Go to the Admin Control Panel > Templates > Import/Export.
- From the Template group to export drop-down, select the group you want to modify.
- Leave the Export type drop-down set to 'Export all templates.'
- Click the Export XML button.
- Save your exported files to the same place you have your modified template backups.
- If you do not have one already, download a Diff tool, which will help you compare the two versions of each template.
NOTE: Many development tools like Xcode, Eclipse, Visual Studio, etc. – have different utilities built-in, but you can also use standalone tools like Meld (free, OS X), Kaleidoscope (paid, OS X), or Beyond Compare (paid, cross-platform). - For each template you have modified, run a Diff between the customized version and the new default version.
- Scan through the Diff and merge your changes into the fresh template.
NOTE: You may need to edit your modifications to reconcile them with the new template. - When you have incorporated all your modifications into the updated template, save the XML file.
- Repeat the previous three steps for every template you have modified.
- Go back to the Kayako Classic Admin area > click Templates > Templates sub-option to edit your templates directly.
- From the Template group drop-down, select the group you want to update.
- Find your first modified template in the list and click to open it.
- Select the entire template contents and delete them.
- In your local XML file with the modified, up-to-date template contents, select everything and copy it.
- Paste it into the Template Contents text area in Kayako Classic.
- In the Describe your changes text box, enter a changelog message, such as
Restoring template modifications after upgrading to 4.80. - Click the Save & Reload button to save your changes.
- Repeat the previous six steps for every template you have modified.
- When you have made all your template updates, you have one last step – rebuilding your help desk cache, which you can do by clicking Diagnostics in the sidebar and then Rebuild Cache.
Confirmation
Your template modifications are now reflected across your help desk and support site.