RT Essentials

Description

In a typical organization, there's always plenty that to do such as: pay vendors, invoice customers, answer customer inquiries, and fix bugs in hardware or software. You need to know who wants what and keep track of what is left to do.

This is where a ticketing system comes in. A ticketing system allows you to check the status of various tasks: when they were requested, who requested them and why, when they were completed, and more. RT is a high-level, open source ticketing system efficiently enabling a group of people to manage tasks, issues, and requests submitted by a community of users.

RT Essentials, co-written by one of the RT's original core developers, Jesse Vincent, starts off with a quick background lesson about ticketing systems and then shows you how to install and configure RT. This comprehensive guide explains how to perform day-to-day tasks to turn your RT server into a highly useful tracking tool. One way it does this is by examining how a company could use RT to manage its internal processes. Advanced chapters focus on developing add-on tools and utilities using Perl and Mason. There's also chapter filled with suggested uses for RT inside your organization.

No matter what kind of data your organization tracks--from sales inquiries to security incidents or anything in between--RT Essentials helps you use RT to provide order when you need it most.

 

Table of Contents

Preface

1. What Is Ticketing?

      Why "Ticket"?

      A Dissected Ticketing System

      Uses for a Ticketing System

      Features of a Ticketing System

      Ticketing Helps Everybody

      Getting Started

      Why RT?

2. Installation

      Requirements

      Starting the Installation

      Site Configuration

      Configuring Your Web Server

      Serving RT Behind a Proxy Webserver

      Configuring Outbound Email

      Configuring Inbound Email

      Installation Problems

      Installation Complete

3. Getting Started

      Logging in to RT

      Creating a New Ticket

      Ticket Display Page

      Replying to (and Commenting on) a Ticket

      Escalating a Ticket

      Assigning a Ticket

      Resolving a Ticket

      Merging Duplicate Tickets

      Associating Related Tickets

      Searching for Tickets

      Updating Many Tickets at Once

      Email Interface

4. Command-Line Interface

      Running the CLI

      Creating a Ticket

      Finding a Ticket

      Replying to a Ticket

      Editing a Ticket

      Searching for Tickets

      Command-Line Help

      The Shell

      Scripting RT

5. Administrative Tasks

      Creating and Updating Users

      Groups

      Queues

      Custom Fields

      Day-to-Day Management

      Backing Up RT

      Restoring RT

6. Scrips

      How Scrips Work

      Gritty Details

      Examples

7. Example Configurations

      Network and Server Operations

      Helpdesk

      Software Engineering

      Customer Service

      Emergency Support

      Sales Inquiries

      Human Resources

      Finance

      The Paperless Office

      Personal To-Do Lists

      Conclusion

8. Architecture

      Quick Overview

      Filesystem Layout

      Unicode

      Logical and Object Model

9. API

      How It Works

      RT Codebase

      Database Considerations

10. Development Environments

      DevelMode

      Modifying RT's Codebase

      Access Control

      Profiling

      Debugging

      RT's Test Infrastructure

      Internationalization

      RT Community

      Packaging and Releasing an RT Extension

A. Glossary
B. Command-Line Action Reference
C. Configuration
D. Required Perl Module Dependencies
E. Configuration File Reference
Index