Add quick search to SelfService page?

RT Users
1

Hi,

We’re using RT to track ongoing issues with our new building.
Tickets are submitted via email and are sorted manually into one of
several queues depending on subject matter.

I have set up the SelfService web interface so that users can see
their own tickets, and this is working well.

However it has recently been decided that users should be able to see
ALL tickets in certain queues, not just their own tickets. I could
achieve this by adjusting permissions for the “Everyone” group for
the queues which are to be made public, and by making every user
"privileged".

But I don’t really want to have to go through several hundred
existing user accounts one by one to make each one “privileged”! It
sounds like a maintenance nightmare. So I’m looking for an easier
way. Could I for instance alter the SelfService interface to provide
search facilities so that unprivileged users can see all of the
tickets in certain queues? Or can you suggest a better way of
showing unprivileged users all the tickets in certain queues?

I’ve adjusted permissions for “Everybody” so that unprivileged
users can see tickets in the public queues by going direct to each
ticket’s URL. But of course the users won’t be able to find out the
ticket URLs from the SelfService web interface as it currently is.

I haven’t been able to find an answer to this on the list archives or
the wiki.

Can anyone help?

-- Chris Cooke.

Computing Officer, School of Informatics, University of Edinburgh.

The University of Edinburgh is a charitable body, registered in
Scotland, with registration number SC005336.

2

Chris,

I believe you can just add the “See Queue” permission to unprivileged
users for the queues you’d like them to see. Please clarify your
request if I’m missing something…

Forrest

Chris Cooke wrote:

3

I believe you can just add the “See Queue” permission to
unprivileged users for the queues you’d like them to see. Please
clarify your request if I’m missing something…

Hi Forrest,

Thanks a lot for your reply! OK, I’ll try to be clearer :slight_smile:
In our RT service, “Everyone” has global rights CreateTicket,
ModifySelf and ReplyToTicket, so they can submit and reply to tickets
by email.

Recently it has been decided that some of the RT queues should have
every ticket visible to all users.
We have hundreds of unprivileged users and I want them all to be able
to see and search all the tickets in the more “public” queues, but
not have access to other peoples’ tickets in the other more private
queues.

So, for queues in which every ticket is to be visible to everyone,
group “Everyone” now has these rights:
SeeQueue, ShowOutgoingEmail, ShowTicket and ShowTicketComments.

Currently when the unprivileged users go to our RT web interface,
they see the SelfService page at
https://RT/SelfService/

But that only shows you your own tickets. It doesn’t provide a
way for you to search for and view other peoples’ tickets, even when
Everyone has permission to see tickets in those queues. The search
facility is missing.

I have checked that unprivileged users can actually view all tickets
in those queues: they can. In other words if an unprivileged user
displays one of their own open tickets via SelfService:

e.g.
https://RT/SelfService/Display.html?id=10

and then changes the “id” number to be the number of someone else’s
ticket in a “public” queue with the above-mentioned queue permissions:

e.g.
https://RT/SelfService/Display.html?id=282

… then the unprivileged user can see that ticket - even though it
was requested by somebody else.

That’s great - that’s what I want.

The problem is: how can the unprivileged user search for these
tickets? They’re not psychic so they can’t just know the right
ticket numbers for the queues they’re interested in. They’ll want to
browse or search the contents of the queues which are to be made public.

So my question is, how can this be done? How can unprivileged users
get access to some sort of search facility to see all tickets in
certain queues?

For instance, can unprivileged users somehow be given access to “RT
at a glance” instead of “SelfService”?
Or can “SelfService” have a “quicksearch” facility added to it?
Or what?
Any help gratefully received.

I know (because I’ve tried it with a test user) that one way to
achieve this would be to convert all of our hundreds of unprivileged
users into privileged ones, thus giving them access to “RT at a
glance” rather than “SelfService” - but this strikes me as a
nightmare both to do (clicking through each user one by one to click
“Let this user be granted rights”) and to maintain (since new users
will still be automatically created unprivileged). So I’m hoping for
an easier way, hoping to bend RT to my needs rather than vice versa,
as it were.

-- Chris Cooke.

Computing Officer, School of Informatics, University of Edinburgh.

The University of Edinburgh is a charitable body, registered in
Scotland, with registration number SC005336.

4

I forgot to add in my earlier message that we’re using RT 3.6.6 on
Linux (Scientific Linux 5.2).On 19 Sep 2008, at 10:21, Chris Cooke wrote:

On 18 Sep 2008, at 20:59, Forrest Blount wrote:

I believe you can just add the “See Queue” permission to
unprivileged users for the queues you’d like them to see. Please
clarify your request if I’m missing something…

Hi Forrest,

Thanks a lot for your reply! OK, I’ll try to be clearer :slight_smile:
In our RT service, “Everyone” has global rights CreateTicket,
ModifySelf and ReplyToTicket, so they can submit and reply to tickets
by email.

Recently it has been decided that some of the RT queues should have
every ticket visible to all users.
We have hundreds of unprivileged users and I want them all to be able
to see and search all the tickets in the more “public” queues, but
not have access to other peoples’ tickets in the other more private
queues.

So, for queues in which every ticket is to be visible to everyone,
group “Everyone” now has these rights:
SeeQueue, ShowOutgoingEmail, ShowTicket and ShowTicketComments.

Currently when the unprivileged users go to our RT web interface,
they see the SelfService page at
https://RT/SelfService/

But that only shows you your own tickets. It doesn’t provide a
way for you to search for and view other peoples’ tickets, even when
Everyone has permission to see tickets in those queues. The search
facility is missing.

I have checked that unprivileged users can actually view all tickets
in those queues: they can. In other words if an unprivileged user
displays one of their own open tickets via SelfService:

e.g.
https://RT/SelfService/Display.html?id=10

and then changes the “id” number to be the number of someone else’s
ticket in a “public” queue with the above-mentioned queue permissions:

e.g.
https://RT/SelfService/Display.html?id=282

… then the unprivileged user can see that ticket - even though it
was requested by somebody else.

That’s great - that’s what I want.

The problem is: how can the unprivileged user search for these
tickets? They’re not psychic so they can’t just know the right
ticket numbers for the queues they’re interested in. They’ll want to
browse or search the contents of the queues which are to be made
public.

So my question is, how can this be done? How can unprivileged users
get access to some sort of search facility to see all tickets in
certain queues?

For instance, can unprivileged users somehow be given access to “RT
at a glance” instead of “SelfService”?
Or can “SelfService” have a “quicksearch” facility added to it?
Or what?
Any help gratefully received.

I know (because I’ve tried it with a test user) that one way to
achieve this would be to convert all of our hundreds of unprivileged
users into privileged ones, thus giving them access to “RT at a
glance” rather than “SelfService” - but this strikes me as a
nightmare both to do (clicking through each user one by one to click
“Let this user be granted rights”) and to maintain (since new users
will still be automatically created unprivileged). So I’m hoping for
an easier way, hoping to bend RT to my needs rather than vice versa,
as it were.

– Chris Cooke.

Computing Officer, School of Informatics, University of Edinburgh.

–
The University of Edinburgh is a charitable body, registered in
Scotland, with registration number SC005336.

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-- Chris.

The University of Edinburgh is a charitable body, registered in
Scotland, with registration number SC005336.