Can a single ticket be in multiple queues?
We sometimes get tickets that require actions by people in queues X,
Y, and Z. The three queues are otherwise unrelated. The ticket has
"intertwined" requests: if the admins of queue X take a certain
action, it will affect what the admins of Y and Z need to do.
Ideally, the ticket would belong to all three queues: X admins would
see it as “native” to queue X, Y admins would see it as native to
queue Y, etc. X admins could see comments made by Y and Z admins, and
so on.
Is there a way to do this?
Several ways that don’t work well:
-
Create a new ‘XYZ’ queue + move tickets like this to that
queue. The admins of XYZ would be the union of the admins of X, Y, and
Z. This would do exactly what I want, but the number of queues would
explode combinatorially. For the X, Y, and Z queues, we’d have to
create “XY”, “XZ”, “YZ”, and “XYZ”. For 5 queues, we’d have to create
26 new queues. -
Have the end user send 3 separate emails to X, Y, and Z (or even
create an alias like “xyz: x,y,z”). Wouldn’t work: the X admins
wouldn’t know what the Y admins are doing, and what the X admins need
to do may depend on what the Y admins have done. -
Put the ticket in queue X, and admincc queues Y and Z. I’m pretty
sure RT discourages/prohibits queues from sending each other
email. Even if RT allowed this, the “[Foo Ticket #x]” in the subject
would confuse queues Y and Z. -
Put the ticket in queue X, let the X admins do their part, pass it
to queue Y, and so on. Because of intertwining, Y may pass it back to
X, X may pass it to Z, back to Y, etc, before the ticket is finally
resolved. This is what we’re doing now. It works, but is ugly and
results in delays. Example: Z admins are ready to work on more
tickets, but don’t have any. They don’t realize there’s an ticket
currently in queue X that they’ll be getting as soon as X admins (who
are behind) do their part. It’d be nice if whoever could get to the
ticket first did their part, and everyone else could do their part
when they got around to it.
We’re just a Bunch Of Regular Guys, a collective group that’s trying
to understand and assimilate technology. We feel that resistance to
new ideas and technology is unwise and ultimately futile.