Request Tracker (RT) Usage

Introduction

Login to the CSE Request Tracker (RT) server to perform these procedures.

https://www.tracker.cse.buffalo.edu

How to Change Your Password

  1. In the left-hand side toolbar, select Preferences -> About Me
  2. Update your New Password and Retype Password fields.
  3. Save Changes

How to Manage a Ticket

When accepting and working on a reported problem, follow this procedure:

  1. "Take" the ticket. That's your lock saying you're looking into it. If you want to ask a few questions or make comments you don't need to lock it, but don't take any real action until it's owned by you.
  2. Set the keywords. The "Via" indicates how the request was received - most will be email, but staff and the helpdesk are likely to receive telephone and walk-in requests as well. The "area" allows you to select multiple keywords - select as many as you think you need to to define the ticket. If the ticket is vague, ask for additional information and then set the Areas.
  3. Set the due date. If they have a specific date they need it to be done by, set it. This will help priority escalation.
  4. "Open" the ticket. Once you start researching the problem it should be open. "New" is for tickets that haven't been worked on yet. Set 'Status' = "Stalled" if you are waiting on the requestor to do something and haven't seen a response in a long time, or are waiting for resources outside of CSE. Set 'Status' = "Deleted" if the ticket should be deleted (spam, etc.). When you think you have solved the problem, "Resolve" it. If the requestor replies to the ticket, the reply reopens the ticket and sets its status back to "Open".
  5. Work the problem as needed. If you take an action, try to summarize the useful bits of info via comments or replies as appropriate.

How to Manage Ticket Metadata by Email

We disabled this feature on January 17, 2013. Although managing tickets via email commands seems like a good idea, in practice it confuses people. People submit tickets beginning with: 


hi:
Dear:Maria
Kevin:Urgent

... then receive 'extended mailgate error' bounceback messages, which they interpret to mean that their request failed.

RT::Extension::CommandByMail is an RT module that enables you to change ticket metadata via email. 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.

Example: 

    Status: stalled
    Subject: change subject
    AddAdminCc: boss@example.com
    AddCc: dev1@example.com
    AddCc: dev2@example.com

    Here goes comment/reply

See the CommandByMail README (below) for syntactical examples of setting RT ticket metadata by email.

How to Merge Tickets

You can merge redundant tickets into a single ticket:

  1. Select the ticket to be merged.
  2. Select Links
  3. Type the number of the master ticket (to which the ticket to be merged will join) into the Merge into: field.
  4. Save Changes

How to Create Parent-Child Dependency Relationships Amongst Tickets

You can establish parent-child relationships among tickets:

  1. Select a ticket.
  2. In the toolbar on the left-hand side, select 'Links'.
  3. Input appropriate RT ticket numbers into the 'Depends on:' and/or 'Depended on by:' fields.
  4. Save Changes

How to Perform an Operation on Multiple Tickets

  1. Login to RT.
  2. Select Tickets -> New Query.
  3. Input Selection Criteria (example: Status=new, Owner=Nobody).
  4. Click Search.
  5. Click Update multiple tickets.
  6. You're now in the 'Bulk ticket update' screen. Select an operation to apply to the tickets you've selected (example: Make Status=deleted).
  7. Click Update All.

How to Query the Underlying Database

  1. Login to the backend MySQL server: 
    [alice] db% sudo mysql rt3 -p
Password:
Enter password:
  2. Count tickets created per year: 
    mysql> select year(created), count(year(Created)) from Tickets group by year(created);
+---------------+----------------------+
| year(created) | count(year(Created)) |
+---------------+----------------------+
|          2000 |                   27 | 
|          2001 |                 4299 | 
|          2002 |                 4207 | 
|          2003 |                 5007 | 
|          2004 |                 3671 | 
|          2005 |                 3042 | 
|          2006 |                 2576 | 
|          2007 |                 2456 | 
|          2008 |                 2578 | 
|          2009 |                 3411 | 
|          2010 |                 1045 | 
+---------------+----------------------+
11 rows in set (0.06 sec)

References

  1. http://wiki.bestpractical.com/view/HomePage
  2. http://wiki.bestpractical.com/view/UserManual
  3. http://search.cpan.org/~jesse/RT-Extension-CommandByMail-0.05/lib/RT/Ext...
  4. http://cpansearch.perl.org/src/JESSE/RT-Extension-CommandByMail-0.05/README