Can RT support this type of workflow

RT Users
1

Hi all,

I’m currently considering RT for a client, but I’m not sure how to
implement the following type of workflow / scenario; any thoughts /
suggestions welcome (or if it’s just flat out impossible or trying to
put a square peg in a round hole please tell me too). I’m very
familiar with RT3.8 series, but not 4 so not sure if some of these
things are easier to achieve in 4… (we would implement current
latest stable for them).

The client has several types of workflows. Most of these are based
around case management type workflows, and will work reasonably well
with an “out of the box” RT implementation. One case I can’t work out
is:

  • They want to store information about passes that have been issued to
    customers for vendor X,Y,Z
  • There are rules about how often, and how many passes may be issued
    to a customer. For example a customer may not be issued more than 3
    passes for vendor X in any 6 month period.
  • They need to be able to report on how many passes have been issued:
    to a customer; for vendor X

Maybe I could store this as custom fields, but I can only see custom
fields for queues and tickets. Maybe that’s OK because a particular
"transaction" (real world transaction not RT transaction) would
involve entering the quantity of vouchers issued for Vendor X,Y,Z.
But… what type of custom field would be most appropriate for this?
And

The next thing is that we would need to rework the RT interface to
make it more customer centric rather than ticket centric. By this I
mean that when a case is opened the first thing they do is capture a
lot of information about the customer OR they are searching for a
customer by name, address etc etc. Looking at the dashboard I can’t
see an easy way to do this - I think that we’d need to modify one or
several templates but I’m not sure where to start looking at for this,
so that the top panel for example was a search that returned RT users
and allowed them to modify the users, and then easily create a ticket
given a selected user.

Actually there are custom fields that are specific to a user and not
ticket or queue that we need, sorry just thought of some. If I look at
a user I can see a section for “custom fields” but no way of assigning
any…?

Thanks all,

Chris

2

Chris,

I see no reason why this wouldn’t work on RT 3.X or 4.x.

The Custom Fields could easily be Global, that way they could be seen
whenever a ticket is moved from one Queue to another Queue.

I’d create CF’s for all the Customer info and to keep the display screen
clean, grant SeeCustomField only to groups of users that would need to see
that info, not just everybody.

I’d create a set of CF’s for each Vendor. For Vendor X; Count, Last Date
Issued. Vendor Y; Count, Last Date Issued. This would enable you to chack
on if a pass was issued in the last 6 months, the total count, etc for each
Vendor. Again, to keep the Display Screen more usable, try to grant
permissions at the group level. you can control who sees what when they
look at a screen more easily and therefore not everyone sees a cluttered
display screen. If you have a group defined for sets of users with the same
access/process needs, this will help with future maintenance as well.

Dashboards/home page can be set up to display certain searches at the top
and in a certain order. Set up a search by user and put that search at the
top of the home page.

I hope this helps. If you need more info, let me know.

KennOn Thu, Jul 5, 2012 at 5:30 AM, Chris Herrmann chrisherrmann7@gmail.comwrote:

Hi all,

I’m currently considering RT for a client, but I’m not sure how to
implement the following type of workflow / scenario; any thoughts /
suggestions welcome (or if it’s just flat out impossible or trying to
put a square peg in a round hole please tell me too). I’m very
familiar with RT3.8 series, but not 4 so not sure if some of these
things are easier to achieve in 4… (we would implement current
latest stable for them).

The client has several types of workflows. Most of these are based
around case management type workflows, and will work reasonably well
with an “out of the box” RT implementation. One case I can’t work out
is:

  • They want to store information about passes that have been issued to
    customers for vendor X,Y,Z
  • There are rules about how often, and how many passes may be issued
    to a customer. For example a customer may not be issued more than 3
    passes for vendor X in any 6 month period.
  • They need to be able to report on how many passes have been issued:
    to a customer; for vendor X

Maybe I could store this as custom fields, but I can only see custom
fields for queues and tickets. Maybe that’s OK because a particular
“transaction” (real world transaction not RT transaction) would
involve entering the quantity of vouchers issued for Vendor X,Y,Z.
But… what type of custom field would be most appropriate for this?
And

The next thing is that we would need to rework the RT interface to
make it more customer centric rather than ticket centric. By this I
mean that when a case is opened the first thing they do is capture a
lot of information about the customer OR they are searching for a
customer by name, address etc etc. Looking at the dashboard I can’t
see an easy way to do this - I think that we’d need to modify one or
several templates but I’m not sure where to start looking at for this,
so that the top panel for example was a search that returned RT users
and allowed them to modify the users, and then easily create a ticket
given a selected user.

Actually there are custom fields that are specific to a user and not
ticket or queue that we need, sorry just thought of some. If I look at
a user I can see a section for “custom fields” but no way of assigning
any…?

Thanks all,

Chris