Workflow question: RT on both ends of a ticket

RT Users
1

Hi,

We’ve been using RT for a couple of years (currently on 3.2). I’m just
looking for some suggestions on how to solve a problem we have - it’s a
workflow thing rather than a techical issue!

One part of our business organises workshops at venues around the
country - we use RT tickets to communicate with the contact at the venue
we’re hiring and also tickets to communicate with people like catering
contractors. That’s working great - RT saves us a lot of hassle.

Additionally we have our own venue here at Newcastle which we hire out
to other people. Again we use RT to communicate with the person hiring
and also with catering contractors when we’re asked to organise food on
behalf of the hirer. Again, this works great. RT is just the job.

The fun starts when we want to run a workshop at our own venue:
Following the plan above, our RT system ends up on both ends of the
ticket. Ideally the workflow process would be the same whether we’re
using our venue of one elsewhere, but at the moment our team have to
treat these tickets differently (tickets are linked
refers-to/referred-by and you have to check both for the full picture).

I’ve kind of resigned myself to run a separate RT for our venue
management operation - then the two RTs can talk to each other. I’d also
considered writing something to rewrite the headers to fool RT into
thinking it was talking to a separate RT instance - though I don’t know
how hard that would be.

Does anyone else have a suggestion to smooth out this abnormality in our
workflow?

Cheers

Carl

 Carl Vincent             http://www.netskills.ac.uk/ (URL)
 Systems Manager                       0191 222 5003 (voice)
 Netskills, Newcastle University       0191 222 5001  (fax)
 Training  -  Accreditation  -  Consultancy  -  Development
2

Hi Carl,

try out bps RT-Extension-ExtractRTNames, which will do what you need.

Torsten-----Ursprüngliche Nachricht-----
Von: rt-users-bounces@lists.bestpractical.com [mailto:rt-users-bounces@lists.bestpractical.com] Im Auftrag von Carl Vincent
Gesendet: Montag, 12. März 2007 11:55
An: rt-users@lists.bestpractical.com
Betreff: [rt-users] Workflow question: RT on both ends of a ticket

Hi,

We’ve been using RT for a couple of years (currently on 3.2). I’m just
looking for some suggestions on how to solve a problem we have - it’s a
workflow thing rather than a techical issue!

One part of our business organises workshops at venues around the
country - we use RT tickets to communicate with the contact at the venue
we’re hiring and also tickets to communicate with people like catering
contractors. That’s working great - RT saves us a lot of hassle.

Additionally we have our own venue here at Newcastle which we hire out
to other people. Again we use RT to communicate with the person hiring
and also with catering contractors when we’re asked to organise food on
behalf of the hirer. Again, this works great. RT is just the job.

The fun starts when we want to run a workshop at our own venue:
Following the plan above, our RT system ends up on both ends of the
ticket. Ideally the workflow process would be the same whether we’re
using our venue of one elsewhere, but at the moment our team have to
treat these tickets differently (tickets are linked
refers-to/referred-by and you have to check both for the full picture).

I’ve kind of resigned myself to run a separate RT for our venue
management operation - then the two RTs can talk to each other. I’d also
considered writing something to rewrite the headers to fool RT into
thinking it was talking to a separate RT instance - though I don’t know
how hard that would be.

Does anyone else have a suggestion to smooth out this abnormality in our
workflow?

Cheers

Carl

 Carl Vincent             http://www.netskills.ac.uk/ (URL)
 Systems Manager                       0191 222 5003 (voice)
 Netskills, Newcastle University       0191 222 5001  (fax)
 Training  -  Accreditation  -  Consultancy  -  Development

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3

Carl,

Are all these tickets in the same Queue? I don't understand why using

different Queues wouldn’t work.

Kenn
LBNL

Carl Vincent wrote:

4

Kenneth Crocker wrote:

The fun starts when we want to run a workshop at our own venue:
Following the plan above, our RT system ends up on both ends of the
ticket. Ideally the workflow process would be the same whether we’re
using our venue of one elsewhere, but at the moment our team have to
treat these tickets differently (tickets are linked
refers-to/referred-by and you have to check both for the full picture).

I’ve kind of resigned myself to run a separate RT for our venue
management operation - then the two RTs can talk to each other. I’d also
considered writing something to rewrite the headers to fool RT into
thinking it was talking to a separate RT instance - though I don’t know
how hard that would be.

Does anyone else have a suggestion to smooth out this abnormality in our
workflow?

Are all these tickets in the same Queue? I don't understand why

using different Queues wouldn’t work.

I think he has separate queues but wants the email response going out of
one of the queues to be accepted back into a different queue where it
will reach the right people. If you had different RT instances you
could find the different RT names in the subject line and each could
have different ticket numbers, but I don’t think there is a handy way to
do this in a single instance. You can manually move the ticket into the
right queue before responding (if you have rights to do both), but then
it becomes a special case instead of just replying.

Les Mikesell
lesmikesell@gmail.com

5

I am also trying to figure out what the problem is …
Carl can you explain a bit more sounds like an interesting problem,
Roy

Les Mikesell wrote:

6

The fun starts when we want to run a workshop at our own venue:
Following the plan above, our RT system ends up on both ends of the
ticket. Ideally the workflow process would be the same whether we’re
using our venue of one elsewhere, but at the moment our team have to
treat these tickets differently (tickets are linked
refers-to/referred-by and you have to check both for the
full picture).

I’ve kind of resigned myself to run a separate RT for our venue
management operation - then the two RTs can talk to each
other. I’d also
considered writing something to rewrite the headers to fool RT into
thinking it was talking to a separate RT instance - though
I don’t know
how hard that would be.

Does anyone else have a suggestion to smooth out this
abnormality in our
workflow?

Are all these tickets in the same Queue? I don't understand why

using different Queues wouldn’t work.

I think he has separate queues but wants the email response
going out of
one of the queues to be accepted back into a different queue where it
will reach the right people. If you had different RT instances you
could find the different RT names in the subject line and each could
have different ticket numbers, but I don’t think there is a
handy way to
do this in a single instance. You can manually move the
ticket into the
right queue before responding (if you have rights to do both),
but then
it becomes a special case instead of just replying.

Thanks Les, that’s exactly the situation - one RT instance, two queues,
two groups of people dealing with them, but they want to communicate as
they would with “external” people.

Is there any mileage in writing a filter outside RT to rewrite the
headers? I’m thinking it shouldn’t be too hard to have a filter before
rt which takes a subject like:

[Netskills #1234] {Netskills #1236} Workshop booking details 10 Apr

and translates it to:

[Netskills #1236] {Netskills #1234} Workshop booking details 10 Apr

before passing it on to RT. Would that be worth a go do you think?

Cheers

Carl

 Carl Vincent             http://www.netskills.ac.uk/ (URL)
 Systems Manager                       0191 222 5003 (voice)
 Netskills, Newcastle University       0191 222 5001  (fax)
 Training  -  Accreditation  -  Consultancy  -  Development
7

Hi Carl;
Have you investigated having relationship between the 2 tickets
(parent/child or refer to etc) then applying a scrip when an update to
one submits an update to the other??
Roy

Carl Vincent wrote:

8

From: Roy El-Hames [mailto:rfh@pipex.net]
Sent: 13 March 2007 10:55
To: Carl Vincent
Cc: rt-users@lists.bestpractical.com
Subject: Re: [rt-users] Workflow question: RT on both ends of a ticket

I think he has separate queues but wants the email response
going out of
one of the queues to be accepted back into a different
queue where it
will reach the right people. If you had different RT instances you
could find the different RT names in the subject line and
each could
have different ticket numbers, but I don’t think there is a
handy way to
do this in a single instance. You can manually move the
ticket into the
right queue before responding (if you have rights to do both),
but then
it becomes a special case instead of just replying.

Is there any mileage in writing a filter outside RT to rewrite the
headers? I’m thinking it shouldn’t be too hard to have a
filter before
rt which takes a subject like:

[Netskills #1234] {Netskills #1236} Workshop booking details 10 Apr

and translates it to:

[Netskills #1236] {Netskills #1234} Workshop booking details 10 Apr

before passing it on to RT. Would that be worth a go do you think?

Have you investigated having relationship between the 2 tickets
(parent/child or refer to etc) then applying a scrip when an update to
one submits an update to the other??

I’d not thought of that - there’s already some ticket relationships
going on, so the scrip would have to figure out if the related ticket
was in the apppropriate queue or not before choosing to update it.

Cheers

Carl

9

Carl;

Have you investigated having relationship between the 2 tickets
(parent/child or refer to etc) then applying a scrip when an update to
one submits an update to the other??

I’d not thought of that - there’s already some ticket relationships
going on, so the scrip would have to figure out if the related ticket
was in the apppropriate queue or not before choosing to update it.

I would use cfs to distinguish which tickets to auto update the related
ticket …
We have a process not so different from yours, the way we did it, on a
cf change a new ticket is forked out from the original as Depends on,
however what we do is only comments are propagated, correspondence are
kept separate in each ticket.
Roy

10

Carl Vincent wrote:

I think he has separate queues but wants the email response
going out of
one of the queues to be accepted back into a different queue where it
will reach the right people. If you had different RT instances you
could find the different RT names in the subject line and each could
have different ticket numbers, but I don’t think there is a
handy way to
do this in a single instance. You can manually move the
ticket into the
right queue before responding (if you have rights to do both),
but then
it becomes a special case instead of just replying.

Thanks Les, that’s exactly the situation - one RT instance, two queues,
two groups of people dealing with them, but they want to communicate as
they would with “external” people.

Is there any mileage in writing a filter outside RT to rewrite the
headers? I’m thinking it shouldn’t be too hard to have a filter before
rt which takes a subject like:

[Netskills #1234] {Netskills #1236} Workshop booking details 10 Apr

and translates it to:

[Netskills #1236] {Netskills #1234} Workshop booking details 10 Apr

before passing it on to RT. Would that be worth a go do you think?

One approach would be to make a 3rd queue that has the combined set of
users (fairly easy if you manage the users by putting them in groups and
then using the groups for the queue permissions and watchers). It
wouldn’t be completely transparent because you would either have to
create the ticket in this new queue or someone would have to recognize
the sender and push it there, but after that the right things would
happen. On the other hand, depending on the relationship between the
groups you might not want them both to have complete access to the
ticket (one end may want it closed before the other, etc.).

Les Mikesell
lesmikesell@gmail.com

11

-----Original Message-----
From: Les Mikesell [mailto:lesmikesell@gmail.com]
Sent: 13 March 2007 12:48
To: Carl Vincent
Cc: rt-users@lists.bestpractical.com
Subject: Re: [rt-users] Workflow question: RT on both ends of a ticket

Carl Vincent wrote:

I think he has separate queues but wants the email response
going out of
one of the queues to be accepted back into a different
queue where it
will reach the right people. If you had different RT instances you
could find the different RT names in the subject line and
each could
have different ticket numbers, but I don’t think there is a
handy way to
do this in a single instance. You can manually move the
ticket into the
right queue before responding (if you have rights to do both),
but then
it becomes a special case instead of just replying.

Thanks Les, that’s exactly the situation - one RT instance,
two queues,
two groups of people dealing with them, but they want to
communicate as
they would with “external” people.

Is there any mileage in writing a filter outside RT to rewrite the
headers?

Thanks for all the suggestions. I’ve installed
RT-Extension-ExtractRTNames but am experimenting with my “filter script”
solution.

I’ve written the filter and it seems to work as hoped. We’ll see how
robust it is in the longer term.

I’ve posted the solution on the wiki:
http://wiki.bestpractical.com/index.cgi?RtTalkToSelf

Thanks again for the support (and for RT!)

Cheers

Carl

 Carl Vincent             http://www.netskills.ac.uk/ (URL)
 Systems Manager                       0191 222 5003 (voice)
 Netskills, Newcastle University       0191 222 5001  (fax)
 Training  -  Accreditation  -  Consultancy  -  Development