Using RT to track outgoing requests

RT Users
1

Hi all,

I imagine this is a common problem, but I can’t find anything by searching the archives - I’ve tried a number of different search terms but don’t hit anything useful.

I support a number of customers who I look after various IT things for. I often want to send an email to someone who I need to work with for a customer, for example, I manage a web/email server for a customer and need to email the company who runs the customer’s desktop machines etc. as a new request initiated by me (“I’ve noticed this problem, here’s what we should do to fix” type of thing).

If I create a new ticket in the web interface and add the 3rd party as a requestor, they get a somewhat confusing Autoreply message back. That’s not ideal.
If I create a new ticket in the web interface and add the 3rd party as a CC, and myself as a requestor, that works OK but I have to reply to a ticket in order to get the email to the customer.

I could also create a ticket with email, and CC the other person, but they’ll hit reply to all (or just reply) and emails will go outside the ticketing system and/or create new tickets which is not ideal.

I have wanted to do this in the past in other situations, for example as an ISP I’ve wanted to send a message to another ISP, or to a transit provider or something, to arrange a change in our interconnection/peering. I’d prefer these thing to be tracked in RT, instead of my personal mail.

What are other people doing for this sort of thing?

Nathan Ward

2

Nathan:

There are different ways of dealing with the scenario you have.
What I do in here in a set up very similar to yours, is create a ticket with the customer contact as a requestor,
When 3rd party supplier needed I create a linked/child ticket in queue that does not send a standard auto-responder and instead an email similar to correspondence.
I like to separate my supplier and customer communication , hence the use of a linked ticket, but I have a scrip that trickle the updates from the child ticket to the parent as a comment, this allows me to have all correspondence on the issue in one single ticket.

Roy

3

Nathan:

There are different ways of dealing with the scenario you have.
What I do in here in a set up very similar to yours, is create a ticket with the customer contact as a requestor,
When 3rd party supplier needed I create a linked/child ticket in queue that does not send a standard auto-responder and instead an email similar to correspondence.
I like to separate my supplier and customer communication , hence the use of a linked ticket, but I have a scrip that trickle the updates from the child ticket to the parent as a comment, this allows me to have all correspondence on the issue in one single ticket.

This approach sounds good, but I’m not sure it will work for me. I often need to create a ticket with a customer, for example “We need to move this around in such a way” or “We need to free up some hard drive space” or something.
I also often deal with suppliers that are not my supplier, but the customers’ supplier - for example today I have a problem where a customer’s outbound email relay at their ISP is blacklisted, and I’ve noticed this, so I need to raise a ticket with the people who run their in-house exchange server and manage moving their mail to relay through a host I provide them.
I could go to my customer and have them relay information for me, but that’s a pain when they are not technical and don’t pass information on quite right - I prefer to deal direct.

Nathan Ward

4

Nathan Ward wrote:> On 27/04/2011, at 10:15 PM, Raed El-Hames wrote:

Nathan:

There are different ways of dealing with the scenario you have.
What I do in here in a set up very similar to yours, is create a ticket with the customer contact as a requestor,
When 3rd party supplier needed I create a linked/child ticket in queue that does not send a standard auto-responder and instead an email similar to correspondence.
I like to separate my supplier and customer communication , hence the use of a linked ticket, but I have a scrip that trickle the updates from the child ticket to the parent as a comment, this allows me to have all correspondence on the issue in one single ticket.

This approach sounds good, but I’m not sure it will work for me. I often need to create a ticket with a customer, for example “We need to move this around in such a way” or “We need to free up some hard drive space” or something.
I also often deal with suppliers that are not my supplier, but the customers’ supplier - for example today I have a problem where a customer’s outbound email relay at their ISP is blacklisted, and I’ve noticed this, so I need to raise a ticket with the people who run their in-house exchange server and manage moving their mail to relay through a host I provide them.
I could go to my customer and have them relay information for me, but that’s a pain when they are not technical and don’t pass information on quite right - I prefer to deal direct.

This is exactly the boat I’m in as well. I need to send an email to a
3rd party, either as a new ticket, or from within an existing ticket.
We are piloting RT as a way to keep track of utility work.

The other day I had the need to request a contractor provide a price for
a service for an existing project. I ended up sending the email through
Outlook, getting the quote back, sending that to RT as a new ticket, and
then merging the tickets. Yuck. I can do that; I can’t train my users
to do that.

I need some way to send a fairly ordinary looking email to an outside
party that is not on the ticket, from within RT and attached to a ticket.

–Yan

My car is Japanese. My Vodka is Russian. My pizza is Italian. My kebab is Turkish. My democracy is Greek. My wine is French. My coffee is Brazilian. My language is English. My movies are American. My music is African. My beers are German. My shirt is Indian. My oil is Saudi Arabian. My tv is Taiwanese. My country’s politics are Byzantine. My rifle is Czech. My shoes are Chinese. My math is Arabic, my writing Latin. And you complain that your neighbor is Mexican?

5

Another way you could do it would be to setup a separate queue that has
a different Scrip for “On Create Notify CCs” and a different template
that you would setup to your liking. You would have to remove the
default “On Create Notify CCs” Scrip from the Global configuration, and
then apply it to your other queues individually, but it would allow you
to make your 3rd party as a CC through the web interface for the queue
in question and they would be none the wiser.

Luke Kwiecinski-----Original Message-----
From: rt-users-bounces@lists.bestpractical.com
[mailto:rt-users-bounces@lists.bestpractical.com] On Behalf Of Nathan
Ward
Sent: Wednesday, April 27, 2011 12:39 AM
To: RT-Users@lists.bestpractical.com
Subject: [rt-users] Using RT to track outgoing requests

Hi all,

I imagine this is a common problem, but I can’t find anything by
searching the archives - I’ve tried a number of different search terms
but don’t hit anything useful.

I support a number of customers who I look after various IT things for.
I often want to send an email to someone who I need to work with for a
customer, for example, I manage a web/email server for a customer and
need to email the company who runs the customer’s desktop machines etc.
as a new request initiated by me (“I’ve noticed this problem, here’s
what we should do to fix” type of thing).

If I create a new ticket in the web interface and add the 3rd party as a
requestor, they get a somewhat confusing Autoreply message back. That’s
not ideal.
If I create a new ticket in the web interface and add the 3rd party as a
CC, and myself as a requestor, that works OK but I have to reply to a
ticket in order to get the email to the customer.

I could also create a ticket with email, and CC the other person, but
they’ll hit reply to all (or just reply) and emails will go outside the
ticketing system and/or create new tickets which is not ideal.

I have wanted to do this in the past in other situations, for example as
an ISP I’ve wanted to send a message to another ISP, or to a transit
provider or something, to arrange a change in our
interconnection/peering. I’d prefer these thing to be tracked in RT,
instead of my personal mail.

What are other people doing for this sort of thing?

Nathan Ward

6

Nathan,

Also, you could modify the “Notify on Create” to have the condition “User
defined” and put code in it that specifies the creator must be the
Requestor. Then create another scrip for when the creator is NOT the
requestor and have a different template that says what you want, like “This
ticket was created for you by so & so. … do NOT respond to this email …
or whatever”.

Kenn
LBNLOn Wed, Apr 27, 2011 at 9:23 AM, Kenneth Crocker kfcrocker@lbl.gov wrote:

Nathan,

I’d do one of the following:

  1. Setup a Notify Cc’s on Create scrip for that RT Queue OR
  2. Use regular email, but put your customer as the “To:” and put the RT
    email address as a “BCc:”.

#2 works well because as long as you have no ticket number referenced in
the Subject line, RT will get the email and create a new ticket.

Also, keep in mind, on ANY Notify Scrip, you can customize the template so
that if you choos to send the email straight to RT with the customer as the
requestor, they COULD get a better email notice, depending on what template
you use.

Hope this helps.

Kenn
LBNL

On Wed, Apr 27, 2011 at 6:16 AM, Techmon Techmon < techmon@petfooddirect.com> wrote:

Another way you could do it would be to setup a separate queue that has
a different Scrip for “On Create Notify CCs” and a different template
that you would setup to your liking. You would have to remove the
default “On Create Notify CCs” Scrip from the Global configuration, and
then apply it to your other queues individually, but it would allow you
to make your 3rd party as a CC through the web interface for the queue
in question and they would be none the wiser.

Luke Kwiecinski

-----Original Message-----
From: rt-users-bounces@lists.bestpractical.com
[mailto:rt-users-bounces@lists.bestpractical.com] On Behalf Of Nathan
Ward
Sent: Wednesday, April 27, 2011 12:39 AM
To: RT-Users@lists.bestpractical.com
Subject: [rt-users] Using RT to track outgoing requests

Hi all,

I imagine this is a common problem, but I can’t find anything by
searching the archives - I’ve tried a number of different search terms
but don’t hit anything useful.

I support a number of customers who I look after various IT things for.
I often want to send an email to someone who I need to work with for a
customer, for example, I manage a web/email server for a customer and
need to email the company who runs the customer’s desktop machines etc.
as a new request initiated by me (“I’ve noticed this problem, here’s
what we should do to fix” type of thing).

If I create a new ticket in the web interface and add the 3rd party as a
requestor, they get a somewhat confusing Autoreply message back. That’s
not ideal.
If I create a new ticket in the web interface and add the 3rd party as a
CC, and myself as a requestor, that works OK but I have to reply to a
ticket in order to get the email to the customer.

I could also create a ticket with email, and CC the other person, but
they’ll hit reply to all (or just reply) and emails will go outside the
ticketing system and/or create new tickets which is not ideal.

I have wanted to do this in the past in other situations, for example as
an ISP I’ve wanted to send a message to another ISP, or to a transit
provider or something, to arrange a change in our
interconnection/peering. I’d prefer these thing to be tracked in RT,
instead of my personal mail.

What are other people doing for this sort of thing?

–
Nathan Ward

7

I imagine this is a common problem, but I can’t find anything by searching the archives - I’ve tried a number of different search terms but don’t hit anything useful.

I support a number of customers who I look after various IT things for. I often want to send an email to someone who I need to work with for a customer, for example, I manage a web/email server for a customer and need to email the company who runs the customer’s desktop machines etc. as a new request initiated by me (“I’ve noticed this problem, here’s what we should do to fix” type of thing).

If I create a new ticket in the web interface and add the 3rd party as a requestor, they get a somewhat confusing Autoreply message back. That’s not ideal.
If I create a new ticket in the web interface and add the 3rd party as a CC, and myself as a requestor, that works OK but I have to reply to a ticket in order to get the email to the customer.

I could also create a ticket with email, and CC the other person, but they’ll hit reply to all (or just reply) and emails will go outside the ticketing system and/or create new tickets which is not ideal.

I have wanted to do this in the past in other situations, for example as an ISP I’ve wanted to send a message to another ISP, or to a transit provider or something, to arrange a change in our interconnection/peering. I’d prefer these thing to be tracked in RT, instead of my personal mail.

What are other people doing for this sort of thing?

We produced a template called AutoreplyOrCorresponence. It checks to see if the creator is the same as one of the requestors on ticket creation. If so it just loads and processes the Autoreply template searching first in the current queue and if there isn’t one there resorting to our global version.

If the requestor is not the creator then it processes the Correspondence template instead doing the same search as above.

The effect of using this template is that if a ticket is created on behalf of a customer they receive the message you create (on ticket creation) as if it is a reply rather than the default cryptic auto-reply. I think this is exactly what you are looking for?

If so we’ll spend a bit of time adding a few comments and document our setup on the RT Wiki.

Cheers
Adam Clarke
www.strategicdata.com.au

smime.p7s (4.15 KB)

8

I’m following up on this thread:

http://lists.bestpractical.com/pipermail/rt-users/2011-April/070205.html

I am very interested in making this work. We often need to communicate
with outside agencies and being able to “push” a ticket to an outside
agent would be very useful.

–Yan

My daughter is racing a triathlon to raise money for her swim club. Want
to help?

http://akari.seiner.com