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New Features in RT - June 2008

Overview

This page describes the new features for MIT's Request Tracker system (https://help.mit.edu/), introduced in June, 2008.

These enhancements are a result of feedback from the MIT's RT user community, and of the upgrade of the RT software to version 3.6.5.

Home Page Customization

You can now customize the RT home page in a portal-like manner by adding or removing page components (e.g. Quick Search, Saved Searches, My Tickets etc). In addition, some of the components can be customized individually (e.g. you can choose which queues show in Quick Search).

By default, the home page layout is the same as in pre-June 2008 RT. You can customize your home page by going to:

Preferences -> RT at a glance .

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Extended Simple Search

The Simple Search page has been enhanced to provide a Google-like interface, labeled "Full-text Search". You can use this feature to search by ticket number, queue name, ticket owner, requestor, ticket subject, and by full ticket history content.

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Call Center screen replaces Side By Side screen

The "Side By Side" ticket screen has been merged into the "Call Center" screen. The new screen is called "Call Center", and it can be customized through user preferences to look like either the old Call Center or old Side By Side screen.

This means that "Side By Side" will no longer appear on the menu bar - use "Call Center" instead.

If your default ticket page (user preferences) was set to 'Side By Side', your preferences will automatically be set so that your new Call Center layout matches the old Side by Side format. Otherwise, your new Call Center layout will match the old Call Center layout.

To customize the layout of this screen, go to Preferences and scroll down to the Call Center Update Page Preferences section. The options are:

  • Show Requestor Section (Yes/No). This will show or hide the Requestor section (as in the old Call Center screen) at the top of the page. the section displays a summary of requestor information, and allows requestor searches when adding a requestor to a ticket.
  • Show Requestor 'Change' Button (Yes/No). This setting is effective only if you choose to show the Requestor Section on the page. It will show or hide a 'Change' button, allowing you to remove an existing requestor from the ticket, and then add a new requestor.
  • Message Box Position (Bottom Left/Upper Right). This controls the position of the Reply/Comment section on the screen. 'Bottom Left' is where the old Side By Side screen placed the section, while 'Upper Right' is where it appeared on the old Call Center screen.
  • Show Ticket Time Fields (Yes/No). This will show or hide various time (and priority) fields in the Ticket Basics section of the page. The fields are: Time Estimated, Time Worked, Time Left, Priority, Final Priority.

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Changes in Call Center Screen

There are some changes to the Call Center ticket screen:

  1. Ticket Owner now appears in the Ticket Basics section.
  2. The following time & priority fields can appear in the Ticket Basics section, depending on your Call Center Update Page Preferences (see the description for the "Show Ticket Time Fields" preference above).

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New "Look and Feel" Option

RT now offers a radically different "look and feel". You can choose to use this new look through a personal preference, but the default look is the old ("classic") style.

The new look and feel is very different - the major difference is that the menu bar is horizontal along the top rather than vertical down the left side.

To try the new look & feel, go to Preferences and set the "RT Look & Feel" to "Shiny New Look (RT 3.6)". To see the new look you should save the changes and navigate away from the Preferences page. To reset to the old design, go back to Preferences and choose "Classic Look (RT 3.4)".

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Miscellaneous Changes

  • The menu bar label for "Query Builder" has been renamed to "Edit Search".
  • Query Builder now allows you to sort on more than one column.
  • After a search is performed, there is a "Bulk Update" link in the menu bar.
  • The user preference for specifying the list of "Quicksearch Queues" has moved from the Preferences page to
    Preferences -> RT at a glance -> Quick search. There is a link from the old location on Preferences page to the new location.

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Email Bounce Handling

This change addresses the problem of email sent from RT to an address that feeds back into RT, and as it was considered to be a bug, was actually put in place in May 2008, earlier than the other enhancements.

Up to now, these messages have been intercepted by RT when they feed back in, and have been forwarded to a non-RT email list, "help-administrators@mit.edu". No tickets are created or updated by these looped email messages. This can lead to a communication gap - the sender of the mail may assume that the intended group of people received their message, when in fact the message went only to the help-administrator list.

The change handles loops/bounces like this:

  1. For mail sent from an RT ticket to a queue other than the ticket's queue, a ticket is created in the new queue and a comment is appended to the originating ticket. So both the originating ticket and the intended group should now have visibility of the email communication. Mail is no longer sent to the help-administrator list.
  2. For mail sent from an RT ticket to the same queue as the ticket, no action is taken.

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New Reports and Charts

  • Limited reporting is now available (Tools -> Reports). The following reports are on the menu:
    • Tickets resolved by owner
    • Tickets resolved in date range
    • Tickets created in a date range

  • Charts can be displayed based on search results. Perform a search and use the chart controls at the bottom of the results page to display the chart. You can group the chart in different ways (e.g. by Status, by Month Created) and you can choose between pie and bar chart formats.

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Validation For Custom Fields

You can now define validation rules for Custom Fields. These rules are applied when you change a custom field value in a ticket. So now you can do things like required fields, date fields etc. The provided validation rules are:

  • No validation
  • Currency-Mandatory (nnnn.nn)
  • Currency-Optional (nnnn.nn)
  • Date-Mandatory (MM/DD/YY)
  • Date-Optional (MM/DD/YY)
  • Digits-Mandatory (nnnn)
  • Digits-Optional (nnnn)
  • Mandatory
  • Number-Mandatory (nnnnn.nnn)
  • Number-Optional (nnnnn.nnn)
  • Year-Mandatory (YYYY)
  • Year-Optional (YYYY)

For queue administrators: a custom field's validation rules can be chosen on the field's "Basics" page:

Configuration -> Queues -> [your queue name] -> Ticket Custom Fields -> [custom field name]

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Configuration Dashboard For Queue Administrators

To help queue administrators to keep track of their queue configurations, we are introducing a new "Configuration Dashboard" screen. It is displayed by using the "Configuration" link on the menu bar. An example of this new screen can be seen here.

This screen summarizes different aspects of a queue's configuration:

  • Queue Basics
  • Queue Access
  • Custom Fields
  • Email Notification/Scrips
  • Email Templates

For each of these sections, basic information is displayed, and links to more detailed configuration screens are provided.

If you administer more than one queue, you can switch between your queues by using the drop-down list at the top of the screen.

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Moira Group Control of RT Group membership

The membership of an RT group can now be controlled via a moira group. The RT group's "Members" page allows specification of a moira group name. If a moira group is specified, the "user" portion of the RT group's membership will be refreshed hourly, based on the moira group membership. The "groups" portion of the RT group membership will be unaffected by this feature.

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Canned Replies For Queues

Frequently used email messages can now be stored in queue templates, and these messages can be included in a ticket reply (via the Reply screen) by selecting from a drop-down list of templates. Canned replies can also be sent to multiple tickets via the "Bulk Update" screen.

Ticket variables, e.g. {$Ticket->Subject}, can be included in templates used for this feature, but transaction variables (e.g. {$Transaction->Description} ) cannot.

This is a queue preference that can be turned on by a queue administrator.

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Performance Enhancements

Two sets of screens used by queue administrators have until now been notoriously slow to display. These screens have modified to improve display time:

  • Queue Ticket Custom Fields. This screen used to display custom fields attached to the queue, followed by a complete list of custom fields that are not attached to the queue. The screen has been modified to hide the "unattached" fields. If desired, these fields can be displayed by using the provided link.
  • Group Rights. These screens show permissions assigned to groups for various kinds of RT objects - queues, custom fields etc. They used to show a complete list of RT groups. The screen has been modified to show only those groups that have some kind of access - groups without access are not shown. A search facility is provided to locate and display groups with no access - this feature would be used if you wanted to grant access to your queue to a new group.

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