# Introduction

hostware already has the built in support system where customers can open and answer tickets in the storefront. The admins can then fully manage the tickets in the administration.

However, some customers already have an existing external ticket system which they use before moving to hostware. Examples are the following:

* FreeScout (<https://freescout.net/>)
* Superchat (<https://www.superchat.de/>)

hostware has the capability to integrate external support systems. The main benefit here is that the customers can still create and manage support tickets in the storefront - the customer does not see any difference and does not have to manage between multiple portals.

For this, hostware has solid interface classes for adding external support systems. This contains method for creating a new ticket, adding a customer answer to an existing ticket or close the ticket. In the following pages, you get all the details for that.

### Order of Development

We would suggest the following order of development to start as quickly as possible:

1. Copy an existing support integration and remove most of the code.
2. Start with the get Departments. This is good to test if the api connection is working properly.
3. Continue with the status configuration
4. Continue with Create new Ticket
5. Answer and close Ticket
6. The rest

### Important files

An important file is the app/Console/Commands/System/Support/SynchronizeTicketProviders.php. Take a look here and try to understand what is happening.