Best practice to add link or custom field

RT Developers
1

Hi,

We have been using RT for multiple years and had written our own inhouse
custom module for tracking customers. It’s based on rt 3.6 so very much
out of date.

We now have a custom built customer portal and need to link RT 4.4 to it.

I have been considering multiple approaches, one is to use a custom
field and the other is to create a RT link type that lets us link tickets
to the external portal.

I know that the custom field approach is well documented and using
categories I think I can almost achieve what I’m after but not 100%
sure.

I want to be able to associate a ticket with multiple customer sites and
then to be easily able to remove them if desired.

The idea would be that you add a new link or custom field value by first
choosing the customer then selecting from a list of their sites.

If I do this with a custom link type as we used to do then I have a
check box that can be used to remove any I no longer want.

I’m not sure how to achieve the same with a custom field.

Firstly, is it possible to do what I want using the existing custom
field infrastructure?

Is it a good or bad idea to do it using a custom link type?

Thanks for any pointers.

I couldn’t find any good documentation other than the code on how to
create new link types so thought it may be not considered best practice?

Kind regards
Bart

Bart Bunting

2

Hey Bart,

Hi,

We have been using RT for multiple years and had written our own inhouse
custom module for tracking customers. It’s based on rt 3.6 so very much
out of date.

We now have a custom built customer portal and need to link RT 4.4 to it.

I have been considering multiple approaches, one is to use a custom
field and the other is to create a RT link type that lets us link tickets
to the external portal.

I know that the custom field approach is well documented and using
categories I think I can almost achieve what I’m after but not 100%
sure.

I want to be able to associate a ticket with multiple customer sites and
then to be easily able to remove them if desired.

The idea would be that you add a new link or custom field value by first
choosing the customer then selecting from a list of their sites.

I am nearly 100% sure that this used to exist. It may still, but I
can’t find it. IIRC, there is/was a cascading style select boxes where
you choose a category in the first select box and that populates the
next level of select boxes with values based on that category.

If I do this with a custom link type as we used to do then I have a
check box that can be used to remove any I no longer want.

For custom fields (CFs), there are different types. For instance, I
think you’ll probably want to go with “Select Multiple Values”. There
is a “render as” option for “Select Multiple Values” where you can
choose “List” and then it will render as checkboxes. The down-side is
that I don’t believe that “categories” work with “render as list”. You
could always build a customer abbreviation into the list values:

McD - Sales Department
McD - Potato Division
McD - Recruitment
KFC - Coleslaw Research Division
.
.
.
etc.

I’m not sure how to achieve the same with a custom field.

Firstly, is it possible to do what I want using the existing custom
field infrastructure?

This is just my wild guess of an opinion…

Out of the gate with no customizations, I think you could probably get
80% of what you want. Perhaps your staff would be willing to tweak
their workflow meet at that 80%.

With customizations, I’m sure you could get 100% of what you want with CFs.

Is it a good or bad idea to do it using a custom link type?

I’m not sure. Sorry.

-m