Ticket creation timeline

At what point during the process of ticket creation via e-mail does the
ticket and its fields exist?

Specifically, should custom fields in a new ticket be available in an
Autoreply template? I’m trying to populate custom fields using my
Autoreply template and I’m getting an error that “sounds like” the ticket
doesn’t exist.

The error message is:
[error]: Template parsing error: Can’t call method “TicketObj” on an
undefined value at template line 10.

And the offending line is:
my $T_Obj = $self->TicketObj;

Would it be a better idea to do this using a scrip? Maybe use an On Create
condition to populate the custom fields with the “prep” code and then use
my template to send an e-mail that references the custom field data?

Thanks,
Gene

Gene LeDuc, GSEC
Security Analyst
San Diego State University