RT Reporting - We need your wishlists

Jesse_Vincent · February 14, 2008, 2:52pm

Hi Everybody,

I have an RT hacker working on a new, expanded reporting tool for RT.
While I can’t promise that we’ll implement every report you want, we
could really use your wishlists.

What reporting and statistics do you want to get out of RT?

Traiano_Welcome · February 14, 2008, 3:10pm

Problem Trending

I understand the difficulties of implementing this, not least that problem
categories vary in definition from company to company, but basically: A
report based on a custom fields in a ticket, where the organisation creates
a custom field for problem categories and then draws a bar chart report on
all tickets based on the “problem type” field.

Regards,
T.On Thu, Feb 14, 2008 at 4:52 PM, Jesse Vincent jesse@bestpractical.com wrote:

There is no Spoon.

Ruslan_Zakirov1 · February 14, 2008, 3:23pm

Afaiu it’s in RT already

Tickets → build search with defined queue condition → show results
→ chart grouped by custom field xxx → goOn Thu, Feb 14, 2008 at 6:10 PM, Traiano Welcome traiano@gmail.com wrote:

Best regards, Ruslan.

Traiano_Welcome · February 14, 2008, 3:28pm

Oooo! Cool, thanks!

T.On Thu, Feb 14, 2008 at 5:23 PM, Ruslan Zakirov ruz@bestpractical.com wrote:

There is no Spoon.

Roy_Depp · February 14, 2008, 3:32pm

Ability to generate reports on tickets history.
For instance:
1- How much time a staff member worked on all tickets in the last month.
2- All open tickets which were replied from Jan to Mar.
3- All open tickets with specific custom field that was changed from Sep to Dec.
4- Who was the owner of Ticket X on date Y.On Thu, Feb 14, 2008 at 4:52 PM, Jesse Vincent jesse@bestpractical.com wrote:

Mike_Peachey · February 14, 2008, 5:05pm

Jesse Vincent wrote:

This is what I was asked for here (verbatim) and I responded with some
cronned scripts:

Number of Tickets per week (Traffic)
Number of Untaken tickets older than 1working day (Responsiveness)
Number of unresolved Tickets older than 5 working days (Effectiveness)
Kind Regards,

Mike Peachey, IT
Tel: +44 114 281 2655
Fax: +44 114 281 2951
Jennic Ltd, Furnival Street, Sheffield, S1 4QT, UK
Comp Reg No: 3191371 - Registered In England

Stephen_Turner · February 14, 2008, 5:38pm

At Thursday 2/14/2008 09:52 AM, Jesse Vincent wrote:

Reporting by requestor metadata (e.g. Organization). QB allows for
filtering, but not for including these fields in the result set.
Various time-period measurements (e.g. time from ticket creation to
first open; time from creation to resolution etc).
Escalation tracking, meaning tickets that originate in my queue but
are moved to another. So, questions like:
- How many tickets do we escalate, and to whom?
- How long do tickets remain open after escalation?
Tracking of time that tickets are actively being worked on and time
that they are ‘inactive’ (e.g. in a ‘stalled’ status, or waiting for
a client’s response).

Our reporting strategy is actually to move data nightly into our Data
Warehouse, with a simplified schema that facilitates easier
reporting. We are almost ready for production on this. Some obstacles
remain, though - custom fields are hard, and multiple requestors
muddy the waters.

Thanks,
Steve

Stephen Turner
Senior Programmer/Analyst - SAIS
MIT Information Services and Technology (IS&T)

Steve_McStravick · February 14, 2008, 6:28pm

Historical looking reports:

-Status History per ticket (Default new->open->stalled->resolved)
-Geneology (show the status history of a ticket along with it’s nested
children & grand children or other dependancy tickets (great for
tracking approvals!))
-A report that spits out the history of a ticket (in printable
format!)…for the auditors & contractors who aren’t users of the system
-Time worked per ticket owner (if a ticket gets passed around I want to
see the accumulated time worked broken down)

Steve

“This email is confidential. Any unauthorized use or disclosure is
strictly prohibited.”

Helmuth_Ramirez · February 14, 2008, 7:33pm

To be able to report on the custom fields and their breakdowns. For
example we have:

Help Requests → email related
→ telecomm
→ printers

Work Orders → email related
→ telecomm
→ new hires

I would like a report that displays the total of each category and
subcategory with options such as date range and groups/individuals.
For example:

Date: Begin - End
Group: Helpdesk
Tech: ALL

Type of Request Category Opened Closed Total

Help Requests
email related 5 2
7
telecomm 2 6
8
printers 3 7
10
Total Help Requests 10 15
25

Work Orders
email related 4 7
11
telecomm 8 1
9
new hires 6 2
8
Total Work Orders 18 10
28-----Original Message-----
From: rt-users-bounces@lists.bestpractical.com
[mailto:rt-users-bounces@lists.bestpractical.com] On Behalf Of Jesse
Vincent
Sent: Thursday, February 14, 2008 9:53 AM
To: Users rt-Users
Subject: [rt-users] RT Reporting - We need your wishlists

Hi Everybody,

I have an RT hacker working on a new, expanded reporting tool for RT.
While I can’t promise that we’ll implement every report you want, we
could really use your wishlists.

What reporting and statistics do you want to get out of RT?
http://lists.bestpractical.com/cgi-bin/mailman/listinfo/rt-users

Community help: http://wiki.bestpractical.com
Commercial support: sales@bestpractical.com

Discover RT’s hidden secrets with RT Essentials from O’Reilly Media.
Buy a copy at http://rtbook.bestpractical.com

Greg_Evans1 · February 14, 2008, 8:03pm

I like that one a lot. That would be great report for me to use here at
work.

Greg EvansFrom: rt-users-bounces@lists.bestpractical.com
[mailto:rt-users-bounces@lists.bestpractical.com] On Behalf Of Traiano
Welcome
Sent: Thursday, February 14, 2008 7:10 AM
To: Jesse Vincent
Cc: Users rt-Users
Subject: Re: [rt-users] RT Reporting - We need your wishlists

Problem Trending

I understand the difficulties of implementing this, not least that problem
categories vary in definition from company to company, but basically: A
report based on a custom fields in a ticket, where the organisation creates
a custom field for problem categories and then draws a bar chart report on
all tickets based on the “problem type” field.

Regards,
T.

Nicolas_GUIOT · February 15, 2008, 10:19am

Hi,

I’m a recent user/admin of rt, which was already setup in my new
company, so I don’t know much about the historical of RT.

What I’m wishing, I don’t even know if it’s technically feasible, is
that when you reply to a ticket, the email that it sends is interpreted
as a “reply”, so that my mail reader can sort them with hierarchy (I
hope I’m clear…).
If you think it’s a bad idea, could you please explain me why (I can
also accept if you say “not important enough to spend time on this”…)

Thanks for your efforts.

NicolasOn Thu, 14 Feb 2008 09:52:52 -0500 Jesse Vincent jesse@bestpractical.com wrote:

Emmanuel_Lacour · February 15, 2008, 10:54am

here is a list of things we made here (some already exists with current
Reports module in 3.6.x):

(many charts use our ‘Customer’ customfield value for grouping)

Count of open tickets for the current month grouped by CF “customer”
Count of open tickets for the current month for a named value of CF “customer”,
grouped by CreatedDaily
Count of Tickets unresolved since at least 1 month grouped by CF
“customer”
Count of Tickets unresolved since at least 1 month for a named value
of CF “customer”, grouped by CreatedDaily
Count of Tickets unresolved since at least 1 week grouped by CF
“customer”
Count of Tickets unresolved since at least 1 week for a named value of
CF “customer”, grouped by CreatedDaily
Count of Tickets, grouped by CF “responsability”
TimeWorked sum for current month tickets, grouped by CF “customer”

Charts wanted which we didn’t did (need to much work):

Average time to resolve tickets grouped by CF “customer”
Ticket count grouped by Priority and CF “responsability”

Mostly, the current lack on Reports module is to easily charts times
(some like TimeWorked can be done by Modifying Search/Chart and
Search/Elements/Chart (tip: s/COUNT/SUM/ ;)), but creating reports with
a difference between for example OpenDate and ResolveDate seems more
difficult).

It would be nice also to have a link for downloading the generated datas
as csv on the Chart page.

Hope this can help making a powerfull RT reporting tool :)).

Steve_Holmes1 · February 15, 2008, 1:49pm

Jesse,
What my group really wants is a way to generate weekly status reports from
RT. I.e. a report of ticket/task activity with all the transaction comments.
Not a finished report, but something that could be dropped into a text
editor and cleaned up for the public.
I know I could do this with the rt command, but it isn’t straight forward.
An easy way to do it would be great. Of course the word ‘weekly’ is key. We
would want to be able to say ‘from date - to date’ or ’ since date’ or ‘last
7 days’.

Thanks!
Steve HolmesOn Thu, Feb 14, 2008 at 9:52 AM, Jesse Vincent jesse@bestpractical.com wrote:

Sven_Sternberger · February 15, 2008, 2:33pm

Hi!

I would like a report for a year, which
report how long tickets with the subject
“foo*” in the Queue x were in the states new,
open or stalled

All these tickets could have sub tickets (children)
in the queue y and z. All these direct children
should also be evaluated.

The report should consider the total time for tickets in x,
and the shares/fractions in the queue y and z.

The result should show
the average time over the period for tickets in x,y and z
and in percent. Maybe x is 100%, than (x-(y+z)), y and z.

In the end I need something which says.

You had 1000 Tickets with subject foo*
in queue x. In queue x they stayed 4240 h
in new, open or stalled. The depending
tickets in y stayed 1020 h in new, open or stalled
in z 2900 h in new, open or stalled, in x
(without the time of y and z) they stayed 320 h.

best regards!On Do, 2008-02-14 at 09:52 -0500, Jesse Vincent wrote:

Kenneth_Marshall · February 15, 2008, 2:40pm

Here are typical reports that we use here at Rice:

Case Load Trending. - Year to year trending view, by month of tickets
logged. Each month’s total consists of tickets closed during that month
and currently open tickets. These are gathered on a per queue basis, then
summed to provide a departmental overview.

Response Time.

Response to new tickets is tracked. Time is calculated by
subtracting the “Started " field from the " Business Time Start” field.
Responses to Urgent tickets are also tracked as a subset. Tickets with the
word “Urgent” in the subject line are sorted into this subset.

Problem Resolution Time.

Pie chart breakdown of resolution times. Current segmentation is same
day, 1-3 days, 3 - 7 days, Greater than a week. These buckets are
arbitrary and should be user selectable.

Resolution Time - Median

The median resolution time for issues are tracked by queue on a
monthly basis. Used for trend analysis .

Category Breakdown

Pie Chart to show the distribution of the type of issues being
reported/resolved. This is a compilation of the information entered in the
custom “Resolution Category” field. The report should allow the user to
select time windows. The ability to show trends (year to year shifts)
would also be great.

Regards,
Ken

Kenn_Crocker · February 15, 2008, 5:01pm

Jesse,

I would add to the time-tracking part. Perhaps a new table or two that

contain various time totals (hours for a ticket per CF Org code for a
month/year, etc.) so the actual time spent on a ticket per month can be
tracked to show monthly/yearly trends/statistics.

Kenn
LBNLOn 2/14/2008 9:38 AM, Stephen Turner wrote:

Kenn_Crocker · February 15, 2008, 5:33pm

Jesse,

A couple thoughts. If a report module was just that, a completely

independent set of code and DB Tables, then historical milestones of
data (like monthly, yearly, etc.) could be stored, creating a tremendous
foundation for many types of reports. As a “self-contained” module, it
would also be easy to add to older versions (other than setting up a
callback).
It would also be nice to have a better way to print charts than to take
a screen shot and save it on Word.

Kenn
LBNLOn 2/14/2008 6:52 AM, Jesse Vincent wrote:

Ole_Craig · February 15, 2008, 6:34pm

Hallelujah and glory be, thank you thank you thank you!

Jesse, that’s the best (work-related) Valentine’s day email I’ve ever
gotten.

RT as it stands is an absolute lifesaver at the tactical, day-to-day
level, but management is constantly on my case (and I understand why)
for reports to inform more strategic decisionmaking. I’ve actually been
trying to figure out what I could do along these lines if I had time,
and also what I might be able to convince my company to pay Best
Practical to implement.

Here’s an abbreviated wishlist:

 A. Per-ticket cumulative time spent in one or more of an
    arbitrarily-selected list of states ('Status' field) broken down
    by selected tickets, Requestors, Queues, Owners, &etc
 B. Same as (A) but in 'business time'
 C. Similar to (A) and (B) but indicating averages by ticket owner 
 D. number of times a ticket was resolved/reopened
 E. lowest/average/highest amount of time between email from
    customer and response back to customer, broken down by ticket,
    Requestor, Owner, or some combination thereof
 F. Daily/weekly/monthly/quarterly/yearly statistics:
          * # of tickets opened
          * # of tickets resolved
          * average times spent in various states (cf. (A) and (B)
            above)
          * # of tickets 'currently' in each state as of report
            end-date cutoff
            
            (all of these bullet items should of course be
            filterable by any/multiple/all of: Owner, Requestor,
            Queue, Custom Fields, AdminCc, &etc. 
 G. Trending (including comparison between arbitrary time periods,
    e.g. quarter on quarter or month on month as well as just e.g.
    this month vs. last month)
 H. number of "touches" per ticket
          * # of Requestor emails
          * # of Comments
          * # of Corresponds
          * # of people involved in ticket
                  * Requestors
                  * AdminCcs
                  * Ccs

I realize I’ve probably cluttered this up by putting some filtering
criteria into the bullet points, but really I think you’d want to be
able to filter any reports based on some or all of the following
criteria:
Owner, Requestor, AdminCcs, Queue, various Custom Fields, time worked,
creation date, open date, resolved date, reopen date, time of day, day
of week, week of month, week of quarter, month of year, &etc.

Also, auditability and constraint by time period: if I run a report
today that shows statistics (or activity or whatever) for the past week,
in six months I’ll need to be able to run a report starting with the
same criteria but specifying begin- and end-dates for this week, and
those two reports should show exactly the same results.

More thoughts as they occur,
	Ole

/Ole Craig
Security Engineer
Team lead, customer support

ocraig@stillsecure.com
303-381-3802 main support line
303-381-3824 my voicemail
303-381-3880 fax

www.stillsecure.com

Samuel_P_Howard · February 15, 2008, 7:47pm

Hi Jesse!

I’ve seen a lot of really great ideas come from this request so far, so
hopefully I can ask for something good, too.

Following on a request from a previous e-mail, we could really use the
ability to report on tickets and get a breakdown in “Time Worked” per RT
user/technician.

Since a lot of our techs are contractors, we need to find a way to track
their time as they’ve entered it in RT … no entry, no money … helps
with keeping RT updated! In a lot of cases, however, a single tech may
not work the entire ticket, so that’s why we need the breakdown for each
tech for each ticket (say in “resolved” status).

Currently, we use a custom field to indicate if the ticket has been
billed out yet (“Customer Billed?”), but that just gives us the overall
Time Worked. We still have to dredge through each ticket to look for
multiple tech’s time.

It’s painful now, but will be much worse as we continue to grow.

If anyone knows a way to do it with the existing tools, I’m all ears, BTW!!!

Thanks for giving us such an awesome product … I’ve been an RT
advocate since RT v2.x. If my perl didn’t suck so much, I’d love to be
a contributor, but I don’t think you want my perl …

Thanks,
Sam

Jesse Vincent wrote:

Mathew_Snyder3 · February 16, 2008, 8:26pm

The ability to create customized reports. Perhaps by selecting the fields we want, the criteria to match against, type of graph, etc. Having a large set of predefined reports is great and will be highly appreciated on our end but sometimes you want a one-off or something that isn’t provided.

Also, the ability to cronify these reports and have them run automatically and be emailed to someone.

Mathew

Jesse Vincent wrote:

Keep up with my goings on at http://theillien.blogspot.com