Freshdesk Support Widget

A Moodle local plugin that adds a floating Get Help button to every page, opening a support modal powered by your Freshdesk account.

• Floating Get Help button on every Moodle page
• Auto-suggested articles appear immediately when the widget opens, based on the current course name and activity type (e.g. quiz, forum, assignment)
• In-modal knowledge base search via the Freshdesk API
• Inline article viewer with option to open the full article in Freshdesk
• Native contact/ticket form — no iframe; submits via a Moodle AJAX server-side proxy so the API key never reaches the browser
• Contact form shows the submitting user's full name, Moodle username, and a profile link
• Auto-suggested related articles also appear inside the contact form
• Submitted tickets include page URL, course name, user role, Moodle username, profile URL, and Moodle user ID in the description
• User role detection (Staff / Student) based on Moodle course capabilities
• Hides automatically for guest/unauthenticated users
• Optional setting to hide the widget from site administrators
• Configurable portal URL, API key, and button colour

• Moodle 4.5 or later
• A Freshdesk account with API access

1. Copy the plugin folder into your Moodle installation:

   /path/to/moodle/local/freshdesk/
   

    

2. Log in as a site administrator and go to: Site Administration ' Notifications Moodle will detect the new plugin and run the installer.

3. Go to Site Administration ' Local plugins ' Freshdesk Support Widget to configure the plugin.

Prior to v2.0.0 the plugin was named local_freshdeskwidget and installed under local/freshdeskwidget/. To upgrade an existing site:

1. Move the plugin folder: mv local/freshdeskwidget local/freshdesk
2. Log in as admin and go to Site Administration ' Notifications to run the upgrade

Moodle treats the rename as a fresh install and runs db/install.php, which automatically detects and copies your existing settings (API key, portal URL, colour, etc.) from the old component name — no need to re-enter them.

Suggested articles are driven by the Freshdesk knowledge base search API. To maximise the chance of relevant articles appearing:

• Publish articles (drafts are not returned by the search API)
• Set the folder visibility to All Users (not Agents Only or Logged-in Users)
• Add tags to articles matching your course names and Moodle activity types (quiz, assign, forum, lesson, etc.)
• Keep article titles short and keyword-rich — the search API weights titles heavily

The widget searches with up to two terms simultaneously: the current course full name and the activity type from the page URL (e.g. on a quiz page inside a named course, it searches both Introduction to Moodle and quiz).