Dealing with autocompletion failures in msg compose by remote users

RT Users
1

So, one “nice” feature of RT is that messages go out as being from, e.g.

"Joe Blow via RT" <rt@foo.bar>

Unfortunately, we’ve been getting several cases of a user who has recieved RT correspondence having their e-mail client autocomplete “Joe Blow” into the RT address, rather than true address of “Joe Blow” (ldap lookup or personal address book, etc). (I’m sure they get a list, but probably blindly accept the first match)

Thus, a message that should have been sent to a particular user, instead gets turned into a useless ticket.

Okay, this is user error on the part of the sender, but that battle cannot be won.

Anyone have any process of dealing with this neatly? I suppose i could modify RT to not put out the “Nice” From format. I suppose that RT could also reject any messages that come in in that form that are NOT a current ticket thread.

I’m using RT 3.4.0. Has this been addressed in subsequent RT releases? I guess i’d have to consider this a design flaw. A more appropriate format might instead be:

  "RT : Joe Blow"

or something that presumably wouldn’t have as high of an autocompletion match ranking.

thanks,
–stephen
Stephen Dowdy - Systems Administrator - NCAR/RAL
303.497.2869 - sdowdy@ucar.edu - http://www.ral.ucar.edu/~sdowdy/

2

So, one “nice” feature of RT is that messages go out as being from, e.g.

“Joe Blow via RT” rt@foo.bar

Unfortunately, we’ve been getting several cases of a user who has recieved RT correspondence having their e-mail client autocomplete “Joe Blow” into the RT address, rather than true address of “Joe Blow” (ldap lookup or personal address book, etc). (I’m sure they get a list, but probably blindly accept the first match)

Thus, a message that should have been sent to a particular user, instead gets turned into a useless ticket.

Okay, this is user error on the part of the sender, but that battle cannot be won.

Anyone have any process of dealing with this neatly? I suppose i could modify RT to not put out the “Nice” From format. I suppose that RT could also reject any messages that come in in that form that are NOT a current ticket thread.

I’m using RT 3.4.0. Has this been addressed in subsequent RT releases? I guess i’d have to consider this a design flaw. A more appropriate format might instead be:

  "RT : Joe Blow"

or something that presumably wouldn’t have as high of an autocompletion match ranking.

thanks,
–stephen

This doesn’t make sense to me. RT is specifically designed so that correspondence
generated through RT goes back to RT when the user clicks reply in their e-mail
client. A new ticket should not be created as long as the subject line remains
in tact, referencing the ticket number

-Todd

3

Stephen Dowdy wrote:

Anyone have any process of dealing with this neatly? I suppose i could modify RT to not put out the “Nice” From format. I suppose that RT could also reject any messages that come in in that form that are NOT a current ticket thread.

There are two config options you could twiddle to fix your problem.
From etc/RT_Config.pm:

By default, RT sets the outgoing mail’s “From:” header to

“SenderName via RT”. Setting this option to 0 disables it.

Set($UseFriendlyFromLine , 1);

sprintf() format of the friendly ‘From:’ header; its arguments

are SenderName and SenderEmailAddress.

Set($FriendlyFromLineFormat , “"%s via RT" <%s>”);

You could either disable the friendly From: completely with the first
option, or change the format of it with the second. To get your “RT:
Joe Blow” example, you would set $FriendlyFromLineFormat like so:

Set($FriendlyFromLineFormat , “"RT: %s" <%s>”);

Hope that helps,
Tom

4

You can set the from line to be formatted however you like in the
RT_SiteConfig.pm file.

Here’s a snip of the area you need to change:

sprintf() format of the friendly ‘From:’ header; its arguments

are SenderName and SenderEmailAddress.

Set($FriendlyFromLineFormat , “"%s via RT" <%s>”);

Regards,
ErekOn Tue, 2006-01-17 at 14:28 -0700, Stephen Dowdy wrote:

So, one “nice” feature of RT is that messages go out as being from, e.g.

“Joe Blow via RT” rt@foo.bar

Unfortunately, we’ve been getting several cases of a user who has recieved RT correspondence having their e-mail client autocomplete “Joe Blow” into the RT address, rather than true address of “Joe Blow” (ldap lookup or personal address book, etc). (I’m sure they get a list, but probably blindly accept the first match)

Thus, a message that should have been sent to a particular user, instead gets turned into a useless ticket.

Okay, this is user error on the part of the sender, but that battle cannot be won.

Anyone have any process of dealing with this neatly? I suppose i could modify RT to not put out the “Nice” From format. I suppose that RT could also reject any messages that come in in that form that are NOT a current ticket thread.

I’m using RT 3.4.0. Has this been addressed in subsequent RT releases? I guess i’d have to consider this a design flaw. A more appropriate format might instead be:

  "RT : Joe Blow"

or something that presumably wouldn’t have as high of an autocompletion match ranking.

thanks,
–stephen

5

Erek Dyskant wrote:

You can set the from line to be formatted however you like in the
RT_SiteConfig.pm file.

sprintf() format of the friendly ‘From:’ header; its arguments

are SenderName and SenderEmailAddress.

Set($FriendlyFromLineFormat , “"%s via RT" <%s>”);

Erek,

Doh! That never made it to my RT_SiteConfig.pm, because i’m sure that at the time i scanned RT_Config.pm i passed over that with “Hmm, that’s nice” and continued on.

Thanks!,
–stephen

Stephen Dowdy - Systems Administrator - NCAR/RAL
303.497.2869 - sdowdy@ucar.edu - http://www.ral.ucar.edu/~sdowdy/