By Louis Pelosi |

Contents:

 

How do I use the RT web interface?

Log into RT and click Home. You will see three frames that display various tickets.

First, look at the frame that displays "Unowned" tickets. These are tickets that recently arrived and have no owner. ("Owner" is an expert who works on a ticket). Look at those tickets, and if you find one that you think you should work on, take ownership of it. To take ownership, click Take.

The fact that a ticket is displayed in the list of unowned tickets means that the ticket belongs to a category to which you are assigned as an expert. This implies that you should, at the least, read this ticket and determine whether you can help to resolve the issue.

The other list of tickets, the one in the upper part of screen, shows "List of highest priority tickets I own". Those are tickets which you took ownership of or which were assigned to you. You should work on them and try to resolve them ASAP.

The third list, on the right side, shows the number of tickets per queue. If you want to see tickets in a queue, such as GridServices, click on the queue name.

 

How do I respond to a ticket?

 

To respond by e-mail:

Just "reply" to the message.

 

To respond via the web interface:

Select the ticket.

If you are the first expert to reply to this ticket, you may want to become an owner of this ticket. Click "Take".

Click "Reply" and fill in the form.

In the Update type field, select "Comment" or "Reply to requestors".

If you select "Comment," your response will not be sent to person who submitted the ticket, but it will be logged in RT. If you select "Reply to requestors," your response will be logged and sent to the ticket creator.

At the bottom of the page, you will see a list of experts who will receive further followups on this ticket. In many cases, not all of the experts may be interested in the ticket. Mark those who, in your opinion, should not receive updates, and click "Save".

Click "Update Ticket".

Done. Your response has been logged in RT and sent via e-mail to the ticket requestor.

 

How do I resolve (close) a ticket?

Login to RT, select the ticket, and click "Resolve". Fill in the form.

In the field "Update type," select "Comment" or "Reply to requestors".

If you select "Comment," your response will not be sent to person who submitted the ticket, but it will be logged in RT. If you select "Reply to requestors," your response will be logged and sent to the ticket creator.

 

What is the difference between "resolve ticket" and "delete ticket"?

"Resolve ticket" means that you have finished working on it and that you are closing the case. "Resolve ticket" means that ticket requestors and all other people connected to the ticket will receive notification that the ticket has been closed.

"Delete ticket" does not delete ticket from database, but marks it as "deleted", which means that it has been deemed invalid or to be closed without action. Ticket creators do not receive notification of a "delete ticket" action. You should use the "delete" command to nullify tickets originating from spam.

 

A user has submitted a ticket to the wrong queue (category). What should I do?

Change the queue to which the ticket belongs. See below.

 

How do I change a ticket's queue?

Select the ticket, and on the left side of the page, click "Basics". A panel with ticket information will be displayed.

In the queue field, select the new queue to which you would like to move the ticket from the drop-down menu.

Click "Save Changes".

 

How do I merge tickets?

Select the ticket you want to merge, and on the left side bar, click "Links".

In the field "Merge Into:" fill in the number of the ticket into which you want to merge the current ticket.

Click "Save Changes".

 

What does it mean when a ticket is "owned"? Who "owns" a ticket?

Each problem category (queue) has a team of experts assigned to it. Each of the experts receives notification when a new ticket appears in this category.

When a new ticket is created, it has no owner, meaning it is owned by the user "nobody". Unowned tickets appear in the main ticket panel. You should investigate this list of unowned tickets to determine whether you can help resolve an outstanding issue.

When an expert decides that a particular ticket corresponds to his or her area of responsibility, they may become owner of, or "take," this ticket. This is an indication to other experts that this particular ticket is now being worked on.

Taking ownership

Replying to a ticket will automatically make you the ticket's owner if:

  • The ticket is unowned,
  • You are an AdminCC watcher of the ticket or the ticket's queue, and
  • You are not the requester of the ticket.

 

If any of these checks fail, you will not be given ownership of the ticket. However, you will be added as a ticket watcher, either as a CC recipient, or as an AdminCC if you are a member of the ticket's administrative queue.

Experts can also "steal" a ticket, or take ownership of a tickets that is already owned by somebody else, via the web interface.

Some privileged users can also assign tickets to other users.

Can tickets be modified and closed via email?

Yes: an RT add-on has been installed; complete documentation can be found in perl's CPAN: 

http://search.cpan.org/~jesse/RT-Extension-CommandByMail-0.05/lib/RT/Extension/CommandByMail.pm

Basically, all email sent to RT will be scanned for known commands. These commands must be placed at the top of the message body and must start in the first column. A colon must be used to separate the command name from its new value (with optional whitespaces). Multiple commands can be sent in a single email message, RT will stop looking for commands once it sees a non-blank line that doesn't look like a command:value pair. Command names and values are case-insensitive and will not be removed from the message body. If RT finds a line that looks like a command, but it is not a known command, or if you do not have permission to execute the command, then RT will send an email error message back to the sender. Some common examples are:

  • To change the status of a ticket:

    Status: resolved

    Possible values are: new, open, stalled, resolved, rejected, & deleted.

  • To assign the ticket to a different queue:

    Queue: NewQueueName

    Where NewQueueName is the full name of the queue, not its email address.

  • To assign ownership of the ticket to someone (specify the RT username or email address of the new owner):

    Owner: rt_username

    Where rt_username is the RT username or email address of the new ticket owner.

  • To change the priority of a ticket:

    Priority: High

    Possible values are: None, Low, Medium, High, & Urgent