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Implementing a Documentation Referral System

The ticketing system can be further enhanced with a documentation referral system. The system searches automatically for relevant documentation based on a ticket’s content and description, thereby enhancing the customer support workflow.

Follow the steps to enable and deploy the referral system:

Navigate to the previous liferay-ticket-batch-object-definition client extension’s /batch/object-defintion.batch-engine-data.json file. In line 36, under the objectActions section, change the active value from false to true.
Redeploy the liferay-ticket-batch-object-definition client extension with the following command:
```
./gradlew :client-extensions:liferay-ticket-batch-object-definition:deploy
```
Note, the object action can also be enabled from the UI. In Liferay, navigate to Control Panel → Objects. Click on the Ticket object, and click the Actions tab. See the action is active.
Next, run the following command:
```
./gradlew :client-extensions:liferay-ticket-etc-spring-boot:deploy
```
Check your logs to verify successful deployment.
Next, run the following command to start the spring boot application:
```
./gradlew :client-extensions:liferay-ticket-etc-spring-boot:bootRun
```
The documentation referral system is now running.
Navigate back to the ticketing system site page. Click Generate a New Ticket. A new ticket is generated.
Navigate to Global Menu → _Control Panel → J3Y7 Tickets. Scroll to the right of the list of tickets. Click Options () for the ticket that was just generated and click View.

Scroll down to the suggestions field. See that the referral system has included links to relevant documentation.

Examine the Referral System Code

The documentation referral system is a microservice type client extension. Specifically, this sample is a Spring Boot application that is built with BootJar. The assemble block section of the client-extension.yaml identifies this as follows:

assemble: - fromTask: bootJar

See Assembling Client Extensions to learn more.

Microservice client extensions require an OAuth2 user agent configuration to interact with Liferay. Therefore the client-extension.yaml file includes both a oAuthApplicationUserAgent type client extension along with a objectAction type client extension.

The liferay-ticket-etc-spring-boot-oauth-application-user-agent client extension creates an OAuth2 application within Liferay for the referral system application to use for authorization. It is defined as follows:

liferay-ticket-etc-spring-boot-oauth-application-user-agent:
    .serviceAddress: localhost:58081
    .serviceScheme: http
    name: Liferay Ticket Etc Spring Boot OAuth Application User Agent
    scopes:
        - C_J3Y7Ticket.everything
    type: oAuthApplicationUserAgent

Note how the C_J3Y7Ticket.everything headless API is given access. The serviceAddress parameter defines where the service runs locally.

Next the liferay-ticket-etc-spring-boot-object-action-ticket client extension is a objectAction type client extension that triggers the microservice code when the object action occurs. It is defined as follows:

liferay-ticket-etc-spring-boot-object-action-ticket:
    name: Liferay Ticket Etc Spring Boot Object Action Ticket
    oAuth2ApplicationExternalReferenceCode: liferay-ticket-etc-spring-boot-oauth-application-user-agent
    resourcePath: /object/action/ticket
    type: objectAction

Note, the resourcePath parameter defines the endpoint at which the microservice is running. The oAuth2ApplicationExternalReferenceCode parameter references the previous OAuth2 application configuration.

See Object Action Yaml Configuration for an explanation of each property.

The relevant Spring Boot files for the application are contained in the /src folder. A full explanation of the Java code is beyond the scope of this tutorial, but there are a few things to note:

In the ObjectActionTicketRestController.java file, the @PostMapping annotation matches the resource path referenced in the YAML file above. When a new ticket object is created, the object action triggers the microservice at this path and the referral results are returned to Liferay.
The referral search logic also resides in this ObjectActionTicketRestController.java file. In the logic, relevant articles from learn.liferay.com are found and added to the ticket object entry.

Next: Ticket Management with Cron Jobs.