RTIR - going beyond incidents, incident reports, investigations, blocks

RTIR
1

Hi all,

This is my second post. I’ve been exploring RT/ RTIR for the past 1 or 2
months, trying to determine how it can be customised to fit our workflow.
Conditions, scrips, and templates are great for building in much
customisation and they have been helpful in my quest.

Now, I have a problem to which I’ve not been able to identify a suitable
solution.

In our workflow, we normally generate reports at the end of an incident to
document findings and recommendations etc. Reports will go through
revisions and management approvals, so I’ve been thinking how to fit this
into RT/ RTIR. One idea I’ve been thinking about over the past few days is
to create a new queue and associated lifecycle, say called Reports, use the
___Approvals queue for the approval workflow. However, I’ve no idea how I
can allow one to associate the tickets in this new Reports queue to an
Incident ticket like how Incident reports, Investigations and Blocks are
associated with Incidents. Also, how is it possible to allow one to create
a Reports ticket from the Incident display view, just like what we can do
for Investigations, Blocks, etc. Is it possible to do something like this
without having to go into the internals of RT/ RTIR?

Another alternative is to just build on the Blocks ticket, which I’ve
managed to build an Approval workflow around it (every block ticket
generates an Approvals ticket which needs to be approved before the Block
ticket is allowed to proceed). Not ideal and most elegant but I think it
should work.

If someone can point me in the right direction, I thank you in advance.

PJ

2

Hej!

pj loh skrev 2014-07-10 05:21:

I’ve been thinking about over the past few days is to create a new
queue and associated lifecycle, say called Reports, use the

I imagine it’s non-trivial to integrate one more queue in the UI. Have
you considered to store these reports in the otherwise pretty
“unemployed” Incident Queue? Regarding the approval, another custom
field may help you or perhaps (no idea what the side effects are,
though) another state (along the lines of open → resolved → aproved).

Regards,

Alexander Talos-Zens

Alexander Talos-Zens
IT-Security - ACOnet-CERT
Zentraler Informatikdienst

Universit�t Wien
Universit�tsstra�e 7
1010 Wien
T +43-1-4277-14351
at@univie.ac.at
GPG-Key-Id: 0x757A494B

3

PJ, I did much the same in our RT environment using the “spawn ticket in queue” extension.

In our case, I wanted to be able to create Deficient Reports via Post Incident Review Items, and create separate, trackable action items for deficiency remediation. So, I applied the created a queue (with an associated workflow) for PIR Items, and use the extension to create linked tickets in the PIR Items queue from the Incident Links view.

See the output in the screenshot below. Note there’s a ton of other customization here, but pay attention to the Links view at the bottom right:

[cid:image001.jpg@01CF9C32.ACB1B920]

RobFrom: rtir [mailto:rtir-bounces@lists.bestpractical.com] On Behalf Of pj loh
Sent: Wednesday, July 09, 2014 11:21 PM
To: rtir@lists.bestpractical.com
Subject: [Rtir] RTIR - going beyond incidents, incident reports, investigations, blocks

Hi all,

This is my second post. I’ve been exploring RT/ RTIR for the past 1 or 2 months, trying to determine how it can be customised to fit our workflow. Conditions, scrips, and templates are great for building in much customisation and they have been helpful in my quest.

Now, I have a problem to which I’ve not been able to identify a suitable solution.

In our workflow, we normally generate reports at the end of an incident to document findings and recommendations etc. Reports will go through revisions and management approvals, so I’ve been thinking how to fit this into RT/ RTIR. One idea I’ve been thinking about over the past few days is to create a new queue and associated lifecycle, say called Reports, use the ___Approvals queue for the approval workflow. However, I’ve no idea how I can allow one to associate the tickets in this new Reports queue to an Incident ticket like how Incident reports, Investigations and Blocks are associated with Incidents. Also, how is it possible to allow one to create a Reports ticket from the Incident display view, just like what we can do for Investigations, Blocks, etc. Is it possible to do something like this without having to go into the internals of RT/ RTIR?

Another alternative is to just build on the Blocks ticket, which I’ve managed to build an Approval workflow around it (every block ticket generates an Approvals ticket which needs to be approved before the Block ticket is allowed to proceed). Not ideal and most elegant but I think it should work.

If someone can point me in the right direction, I thank you in advance.

PJ

This communication is confidential. We only send and receive email on the basis of the terms set out at Wireless, Internet, TV, Home Monitoring, and Home phone - Rogershttp://www.rogers.com/web/content/emailnotice

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4

Hi Rob,

Thanks for the reply. I’ve installed the plugin, and restarted the server,
but nothing seems to have changed. Not sure if it’s because I’m using RT-IR
plugin, which has something that overrides what this plugin does.

I’ve attached a screenshot showing what I have after installing in the
plugin.

Any idea what went wrong?

Thanks,
PJOn 10 July 2014 23:32, Rob Moerman Rob.Moerman@rci.rogers.com wrote:

PJ, I did much the same in our RT environment using the “spawn ticket in
queue” extension.

In our case, I wanted to be able to create Deficient Reports via Post
Incident Review Items, and create separate, trackable action items for
deficiency remediation. So, I applied the created a queue (with an
associated workflow) for PIR Items, and use the extension to create linked
tickets in the PIR Items queue from the Incident Links view.

RT::Extension::SpawnLinkedTicketInQueue - quickly spawn linked tickets in different queues - metacpan.org

See the output in the screenshot below. Note there’s a ton of other
customization here, but pay attention to the Links view at the bottom
right:

Rob

From: rtir [mailto:rtir-bounces@lists.bestpractical.com] *On Behalf Of *pj
loh
Sent: Wednesday, July 09, 2014 11:21 PM
To: rtir@lists.bestpractical.com
Subject: [Rtir] RTIR - going beyond incidents, incident reports,
investigations, blocks

Hi all,

This is my second post. I’ve been exploring RT/ RTIR for the past 1 or 2
months, trying to determine how it can be customised to fit our workflow.
Conditions, scrips, and templates are great for building in much
customisation and they have been helpful in my quest.

Now, I have a problem to which I’ve not been able to identify a suitable
solution.

In our workflow, we normally generate reports at the end of an incident to
document findings and recommendations etc. Reports will go through
revisions and management approvals, so I’ve been thinking how to fit this
into RT/ RTIR. One idea I’ve been thinking about over the past few days is
to create a new queue and associated lifecycle, say called Reports, use the
___Approvals queue for the approval workflow. However, I’ve no idea how I
can allow one to associate the tickets in this new Reports queue to an
Incident ticket like how Incident reports, Investigations and Blocks are
associated with Incidents. Also, how is it possible to allow one to create
a Reports ticket from the Incident display view, just like what we can do
for Investigations, Blocks, etc. Is it possible to do something like this
without having to go into the internals of RT/ RTIR?

Another alternative is to just build on the Blocks ticket, which I’ve
managed to build an Approval workflow around it (every block ticket
generates an Approvals ticket which needs to be approved before the Block
ticket is allowed to proceed). Not ideal and most elegant but I think it
should work.

If someone can point me in the right direction, I thank you in advance.

PJ

This communication is confidential. We only send and receive email on the
basis of the terms set out at www.rogers.com/web/content/emailnotice

Ce message est confidentiel. Notre transmission et réception de courriels
se fait strictement suivant les modalités énoncées dans l’avis publié à www.rogers.com/aviscourriel

5

I attempted to install the plugin to our RTIR environment and found the same condition as you report below.

We do use this plugin within our RT 4.2.5 environment, which we’ve customized in support of incident management.From: pj loh [mailto:optimints@gmail.com]
Sent: Thursday, July 10, 2014 11:48 PM
To: Rob Moerman
Cc: rtir@lists.bestpractical.com
Subject: Re: [Rtir] RTIR - going beyond incidents, incident reports, investigations, blocks

Hi Rob,

Thanks for the reply. I’ve installed the plugin, and restarted the server, but nothing seems to have changed. Not sure if it’s because I’m using RT-IR plugin, which has something that overrides what this plugin does.

I’ve attached a screenshot showing what I have after installing in the plugin.

Any idea what went wrong?

Thanks,
PJ