__Approvals

Good morning,

I am playing around with RT4 and want to utilize it for three purposes
right now:

Change Management
System Access Requests
Policy ratification workflow.

I have read RT Essentials & also grabbed the e-book by Ken Crocker. I have
decided my first crack at it will be utilizing the __Approvals queue.

I am currently working off of this document:
http://requesttracker.wikia.com/wiki/ApprovalCreation

I am starting with the Change Management workflow & expect that the other
two will be pretty much the same with some minor tweaks.

What I would like to happen is have a queue for each department that might
request a change. Say Operations, Development, Business Intelligence, &
Security.

I want to have a Custom Field called Impact that can be Minor, Low, Medium,
High, & Critical. From there I would like to define a workflow based on
the queue it is in.

I am trying to figure out how to lay out the groups for approvers. Is
there a way to define a manager/leader for a group? For instance, to cover
the approvals I would like the following groups:

Operations → Operations people & the Operations Manager
Development → Developer & the Developer Manager
Business Intelligence → B.I. folks & the B.I. Manager
Security → InfoSec guys & the InfoSec Manager
Managers → All the above people with Manager in their title
Executive → CIO, CISO

So for all changes, I would like to have the requester, someone else in the
group, & the manager of that group have to approve it. However, the impact
will involve other people. A Low impact might involve the Operations
Manager & someone from the security group. A medium impact might include
All Managers & the infosec team, Critial would include approvals from the
CIO/CISO as well.

So it seems like with logic I can grab the custom field value then create a
series of approvals. However, how would I identify the manager of the
group? Would that be another custom field?

Also, sorry if I am being overly verbose, I am kind of working this out in
my head as I am learning the product…

Thanks for all your help.

Kevin

OK, so after re-reading again, I have a question. Can anyone who has
access the __Approvals Queue approve anything in there? I would like to
specifically grab people and groups depending on the ticket.

So for instance, I would like to have the following occur:

1.) Ticket Created in Development Queue
2a.) If impact is Minor, create an __Approvals ticket that only Manager of
Development can approve, create an __Approvals ticket that anyone in the
group Development Team can approve & tie both to the original ticket.
2b.) If the impact is Low, same as above but also a third ticket that
requires a user of the manager’s group that isn’t the Mgr of Dev.
2c.) If the impact is Medium, same as above but a fourth ticket requiring a
second person from the Manager’s group.
2d.) High Impact - Everyone in the Manager’s group (so loop through group
members creating individual __Approval tickets).
2e.) Critical Impact - Same as 2d - but add in the CIO user.

So I guess my question is when I create an __Approvals ticket & assign an
owner (either the group or an individual), is that the only person or group
that can approve it?

Thanks.

Kevin

Kevin Holleran
Master of Science, Computer Information Systems
Grand Valley State University
Master of Business Administration
Western Michigan University
SANS GCFA, SANS GCFE, CCNA, ISA, MCSA, MCDST, MCP

“Do today what others won’t, do tomorrow what others can’t” - SEALFit

“We are what we repeatedly do. Excellence, then, is not an act, but a
habit.” - AristotleOn Mon, Mar 18, 2013 at 8:57 AM, Kevin Holleran holleran.kevin@gmail.comwrote:

Good morning,

I am playing around with RT4 and want to utilize it for three purposes
right now:

Change Management
System Access Requests
Policy ratification workflow.

I have read RT Essentials & also grabbed the e-book by Ken Crocker. I
have decided my first crack at it will be utilizing the __Approvals queue.

I am currently working off of this document:
http://requesttracker.wikia.com/wiki/ApprovalCreation

I am starting with the Change Management workflow & expect that the other
two will be pretty much the same with some minor tweaks.

What I would like to happen is have a queue for each department that might
request a change. Say Operations, Development, Business Intelligence, &
Security.

I want to have a Custom Field called Impact that can be Minor, Low,
Medium, High, & Critical. From there I would like to define a workflow
based on the queue it is in.

I am trying to figure out how to lay out the groups for approvers. Is
there a way to define a manager/leader for a group? For instance, to cover
the approvals I would like the following groups:

Operations → Operations people & the Operations Manager
Development → Developer & the Developer Manager
Business Intelligence → B.I. folks & the B.I. Manager
Security → InfoSec guys & the InfoSec Manager
Managers → All the above people with Manager in their title
Executive → CIO, CISO

So for all changes, I would like to have the requester, someone else in
the group, & the manager of that group have to approve it. However, the
impact will involve other people. A Low impact might involve the
Operations Manager & someone from the security group. A medium impact might
include All Managers & the infosec team, Critial would include approvals
from the CIO/CISO as well.

So it seems like with logic I can grab the custom field value then create
a series of approvals. However, how would I identify the manager of the
group? Would that be another custom field?

Also, sorry if I am being overly verbose, I am kind of working this out in
my head as I am learning the product…

Thanks for all your help.

Kevin

OK, so after re-reading again, I have a question. Can anyone who has
access the __Approvals Queue approve anything in there? I would like to
specifically grab people and groups depending on the ticket.

You should assign your rights appropriately then. RT will let ticket
watchers do whatever rights those roles are granted globally or
specifically at the ___Approvals queue level.

You should read
Customizing/Approvals - RT 5.0.5 Documentation - Best Practical.

OK, so after re-reading again, I have a question. Can anyone who has
access the __Approvals Queue approve anything in there? I would like to
specifically grab people and groups depending on the ticket.

You should assign your rights appropriately then. RT will let ticket
watchers do whatever rights those roles are granted globally or
specifically at the ___Approvals queue level.

You should read
Customizing/Approvals - RT 5.0.5 Documentation - Best Practical.

Thanks for the help, I read that first, then read a bunch of other stuff,
now going back & re-reading it, it makes a lot more sense.

So, if you don’t mind me clarifying…

In the template, to create multiple tickets, I can put some perl logic that
grabs the queue it came from & my custom impact field, then I can loop,
creating tickets with:

===Create-Ticket: Manager approval
Depended-On-By: TOP
Queue: ___Approvals
Owner: {$ticket_approver}
Requestors: {$Tickets{TOP}->RequestorAddresses}
Type: approval
Content-Type: text/plain
Due: {time + 32460*60}
Content: Please approve me.

Thanks.
ENDOFCONTENT

passing in the various owners to assign the approval ticket to. Then
its a matter of proper permissions on the queue to ensure that who the
ticket is assigned to is the only person that can approve it.

Am I on the right track then? Can I do it this way? I was expecting
my logic to be in a scrip…

Thanks again.

Kevin