[otrs] Customer Follow Up Emails Turn Off Reminders

[Brett Davis]

Hey Shawn.  Thanks for the reply.  I apologize for the long post.  I'll give you that there is unneeded stuff in there yes but I was just trying to make sure that my request was clear.  It appears I didn't quite get there.

Please understand that my intent is in no way to "ignore" my customers' follow ups and, no also please take no offense but, the current way that it insists on turning of my reminders "does not make good sense".  It's kind of like someone sneaking in my bedroom and turning off my alarm clock at night just because they came in to turn the TV off.  I do have it set to notify me on follow ups so the system sends me the "you got follow up" emails which I still always want it to do anytime there is follow up.  What I want though is for the state of the ticket to remain "pending reminder" if that is its current state when the customer sends in their follow up.  Basically:

get customer follow up
if current ticket state = 'pending reminder'
  notify owner of follow up
  next ticket state = current ticket state
else
  notify owner of follow up
  next ticket state = 'open'   # basically this branch would be exactly what OTRS does now.
endif

Of course that's not going to be the actual code but that should make what I'm talking about more clear.  Maybe this isn't possible, I haven't dove in to look yet.  I figured I'd start here to see if the default behavior bothered anyone else and see if there was already a known workaround for it.  If I'm the only one in world that believes this is the way the system should work, so be it.  We all know the life of the Sys Admin is a lonely life so I'm used to that.  ;-)  I will be attempting to make my system work this way though (don't you just LOVE open source?).  If I get it and anyone else is interested, I'll gladly post it.


Brett Davis

-----Original Message-----
From: otrs-bounces at otrs.org [mailto:otrs-bounces at otrs.org] On Behalf Of Shawn Beasley
Sent: Friday, March 14, 2008 08:36
To: User questions and discussions about OTRS.org
Subject: Re: [otrs] Customer Follow Up Emails Turn Off Reminders

Hi Brett,

First off, please be so kind as not to send such a large block of text,
it makes it hard to read and will lead to people ignoring your
questions. So, thanks in advacne.
> I have my system set up so that follow up emails from customers will
> reopen tickets that we've closed.  That is all good and exactly how I
> want it to work.  A problem I've noticed though is that if a customer
> sends an email in to a ticket that I have set to a "pending reminder"
> state, OTRS switches that ticket's state back to "open" and I never
> get my reminder.  That's not so good and not at all what I want it to
> do.  It makes sense to have the follow up switch the ticket back to
> "open" if I have it set to "pending auto close" because I wouldn't
> want the ticket to auto close if the user sends a follow up that might
> potentially be stating that the problem has not been resolved.  So
> that's cool.  But, when I set a ticket to pending reminder, it's
> because I want/need and am really counting on the system to send me an
> email to remind me to do something for that ticket.  I've had several
> instances now where that plan has been foiled by a customer sending an
> email follow up to a ticket that I needed a reminder on.  Example, I
> have a ticket open for turning up a T1 at one of my remote
> facilities.  I want a reminder for me to follow up with the carrier in
> 2 weeks regarding turn up day but in the meantime, I also need to
> discuss some of the details with my onsite contact who will be
> responsible for giving the installer access to the demarc.  I want
> that discussion to be entries in to the ticket's history.  I can't set
> a reminder on this ticket because every reply from him will turn the
> reminder right back off on me.  AHHHH!  ;-)  I've casually looked but
> haven't found a setting to control this behavior yet.  I'm aware of
> the "Follow up Option" in the queues' settings that control whether to
> reopen, reject, or create a new ticket on follow up but that's not
> granular enough for what I'm talking about here.  Is there a setting
> to ONLY allow customer follow ups to change a ticket's state to
> "open" if and only if its current state is either "closed" or "pending
> auto close" (but NOT if it's set to "pending reminder") or do I need
> to hack the code to fix this?  It would be ideal if the "pending
> reminder" state would be the default "next ticket state" in the web
> interface for any ticket that is set to "pending reminder" too so a
> customer (or another agent for that matter) doesn't unknowingly turn
> my reminders off through the web interface.  Then if they do turn off
> my reminder, I'll know it was intentional and I can grab my bat and go
> pay them a little visit.  ;-)
To your question, the only thing I can say is that it does not make good
sense to ignore follow-ups from your customers. I know that it may be
annoying, but if you are the owner of the ticket, and if you have set
the setting about receiving emails when there is a follow-up, then
nothing can go wrong. The whole idea is that tickets do not get ignored
when the customer makes a follow-up. So in the words of the great
Leonard Nemoy in his roll as Mr. Spock "The needs of the many outweigh
the needs of the few, or the needs of the one".

No, all joking aside, that is the reason that this type of resetting
happens. Not everyone is attentive to their tickets :) You can set your
default after follow up to pending, but the pending will runout after 24
hours, so in the same respect, you will have to set your pending time
again :(

Greetz!

--
Shawn Beasley
((otrs)) :: OTRS AG :: Norsk-Data-Straße 1 :: 61352 Bad Homburg
    Fon: +49 (0) 9421 56818 0 :: Fax: +49 (0) 9421 56818 18
      http://www.otrs.com/ :: Communication with success!


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