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Integrating OTRS with e-mail more easily
by Moshe Leibovitch (SoftLink) 29 Jan '03

29 Jan '03

Hi, > This is definitely going to have to be thought about. Every one of this > opinions have merit and everyone has something they can use out of it. > I guess the biggest issue here is what is really going to work for the > masses. Obviously, OTRS is working great for all of us because we > continue to use it. We need to thank those people such as Martin and > others who have taken the time to better our lives with this program. I thank him now on a regular basis. Please understand - I am bringing up a problem, and I am willing to help. I am not demanding, whining or anything like this. > The other part of this is, how do you work the ideas into a program > without over complicating it? Think of the install and the setup issues > we are going to run into when you start thinking about controlling otrs > from email or a variation thereof. I view this addition as a big help in migrating from existing email based system (like we currently have), and as "last resort" option, like answering from PDA/Cellular. Looking at it this way, I do not expect full control over each and every option of the system. I think that a combination of LOCK email and the sanity mechanism of automatic lock and disposal of multiple answers is very easy to implement, makes the migration process easier and in many ways add powerful functionality to the system. Most (if not all) of the components for this already exist in the system. Actually, for implementing agent answer without lock, the only thing that needs to be done is the assigment to the agent based on the email. Other then that, it works even today (but the answer is inserted as customer email). > The biggest question out of all I guess is how do you prevent more than > one person from working a ticket at a time and more importantly, how do > you make sure a ticket is being taken care of? The mentioned above mechanism is good enough, IMHO. The "how do you make sure" is the same as with regular web system. You get email notifications if certain time has passed and no one answered. Moshe

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A Few Questions...
by L. Mark Stone 27 Jan '03

27 Jan '03

I've set up RC2 on a SuSE 8.1 system. All the basics work, so now I'm trying to customize the system for a particular use, and although I've now read the manual several times, I am clearly missing something--probably embarrassingly basic! Here's what I am trying to accomplish: 1. OTRS will be (hopefully!) the front line of a help desk for all domain users at argenttrading.com. 2. The OTRS system is setup on a different domain (lmstone.com) in a different physical location than Argent. 3. Argent's email system is Exchange 2000, so, I set up a new User account in Exchange called "Trouble(a)argenttrading.com". In this way Argent users with a problem can send an email to this address (and get OTRS to auto-reply). 3. I customized OTRS via the Root account by adding an Argent queue, a new OTRS user, a POP3 account (trouble(a)argenttrading.com) and also a few Salutations, Signatures and auto-response messages. 4. I added (I think correctly) the new OTRS user to all three default groups (by holding down CTRL and selecting all three groups). 5. I sent a test message to trouble(a)argenttrading.com. I can log in via Outlook Web Access and see that the message arrived. But, now I have two problems: First, OTRS doesn't seem to have gone and collected the test message. Second, when I log in to OTRS as the new user I created, the Argent queue doesn't appear on the front page. It's not clear to me if I need to somehow "attach" the Argent queue to the new user. Or something else perhaps! I feel like I haven't understood the "Zen" of OTRS fully, so any suggestions would be greatly appreciated! Thanks, Mark -- ___________________________________________________________________ A Message From... L. Mark Stone http://www.lmstone.com

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RE: [otrs] Integrating OTRS with e-mail more easily
by Gene Parks 27 Jan '03

27 Jan '03

This is definitely going to have to be thought about. Every one of this opinions have merit and everyone has something they can use out of it. I guess the biggest issue here is what is really going to work for the masses. Obviously, OTRS is working great for all of us because we continue to use it. We need to thank those people such as Martin and others who have taken the time to better our lives with this program. The other part of this is, how do you work the ideas into a program without over complicating it? Think of the install and the setup issues we are going to run into when you start thinking about controlling otrs from email or a variation thereof. The biggest question out of all I guess is how do you prevent more than one person from working a ticket at a time and more importantly, how do you make sure a ticket is being taken care of? Gene -----Original Message----- From: Moshe Leibovitch (SoftLink) [mailto:moshe@softlink.com] Sent: Monday, January 27, 2003 7:30 AM To: 'otrs(a)otrs.org' Subject: Re: [otrs] Integrating OTRS with e-mail more easily Hi, We are not trying to complicate things, just make them more effective. If you allow the "race" condition between two agents, you can also work with "reply" to the otrs user. The system will process the email as "agent response" and reject the second email. This is more reasonable (IMHO). It is also the easiest modification to the source. You can detect the agent by its email address, so it is really simple. Moshe --__--__-- Message: 3 Date: Mon, 27 Jan 2003 11:00:04 +0100 From: Stefan Wintermeyer <stefan(a)wintermeyer.de> To: otrs(a)otrs.org Subject: Re: [otrs] Integrating OTRS with e-mail more easily Reply-To: otrs(a)otrs.org Hi Guys, On Mon, Jan 27, Gene Parks wrote: > I have been thinking about this on and off and maybe some of the > functions from Big Brothers mail interface can be of use here. I don't think that the LOCK e-mail as proposed by Moshe is a good idea. I think this is an unnessesary work overhead. I don't wanna send a LOCK e-mail each time I answer a ticket. Most people use the OTRS to handle large amounts of e-mails. So this is not a feasable idea (IMHO). But I see the point, so lets find a good solution. One could be to offer an IMAP port to the OTRS and to take the risk that two people waste the same amount of time to answer a single ticket. The system could dump the second answer to /dev/null because it is allready answered. So first come, first get. Of course this system has to set some default rules (e.g. an answered ticket would be a closed ticket). Or you could send basic commands by an X-Header. But guys, let's don't make things more complicated as nessesary. Many OTRS users don't have a clue what an X-Header is and we are proud that we can offer them a solution which is so easy that anybody can use it. But anyway IMAP could be a good idea. Do we have an IMAP guru here to implement an IMAP port? I don't think this port should be enabled by default, but it is indeed a nice feature for some people and it can be mixed with the standard HTML interface. take care Stefan -- Stefan Wintermeyer Don't say thing like that! Of course we'll see Master Luke again. He'll be quite all right, you'll see. (C3PO) "Star Wars (The Epire Strikes Back)" --__--__-- _______________________________________________ otrs mailing list otrs(a)otrs.org http://lists.otrs.org/cgi-bin/listinfo/otrs End of otrs Digest _______________________________________________ OTRS mailing list: otrs - Webpage: http://otrs.org/ Archive: http://lists.otrs.org/pipermail/otrs To unsubscribe: http://lists.otrs.org/cgi-bin/listinfo/otrs

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RE: [otrs] Error when replying to ticket
by Gene Parks 27 Jan '03

27 Jan '03

Thanks Martin. That took care of it. Gene -----Original Message----- From: Martin Edenhofer [mailto:martin@edenhofer.de] Sent: Monday, January 27, 2003 11:31 AM To: otrs(a)otrs.org Subject: Re: [otrs] Error when replying to ticket Hi Gene, On Mon, Jan 27, 2003 at 10:08:07AM -0500, Gene Parks wrote: > The system is working fine for everything except when we reply to a > ticket i.e. empty answer at the top next to both emails is a '*' > saying invalid with (mx)! At the end. > > Can anyone shed some light on this? OTRS checks the mx record and email syntax for From, To and Cc. It's helpfully to check if the sender or recipient mail exchanger exists of if your sender or recipient email address(es) syntax is valid. But if your OTRS machine can't resolve external DNS records (mostly in big companies), disable this feature: Kernel/Config.pm [...] $Self->{CheckMXRecord} = 0; [...] PS0: An invalid email address is also otrs@localhost. Change this address in your admin interface. PS1: Sometimes Kernel/cpan-lib/Email/Valid.pm is not working correctly for mx checks, update it from CVS. > Thanks > Gene Martin -- Martin Edenhofer - <martin at edenhofer.de> - http://martin.edenhofer.de/ -- Old programmers never die. They just branch to a new address. _______________________________________________ OTRS mailing list: otrs - Webpage: http://otrs.org/ Archive: http://lists.otrs.org/pipermail/otrs To unsubscribe: http://lists.otrs.org/cgi-bin/listinfo/otrs

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Attaching files from the server to agent response
by Moshe Leibovitch (SoftLink) 27 Jan '03

27 Jan '03

Hi Martin, Not exactly. the problem is that we have large number (~100) files that can be attached (all sort of documents, whitepapers, etc). we sync this repository with the server. it would have been nice if the agents could attach files from a directory on the the server itself . this will save the problem of manually updating all the attachments all the time. Moshe Martin wrote: I think you are looking for default attachment!? You can define default attachments for each response. AgentFrontend -=> Attachment (add some attachments) -=> Responses (you will have attachments to select) You will have "default" attchements on compose screen (from the otrs repository). And you still have the other option to attache a attachment via http upload. Is is what you want?

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Error when replying to ticket
by Gene Parks 27 Jan '03

27 Jan '03

The system is working fine for everything except when we reply to a ticket i.e. empty answer at the top next to both emails is a '*' saying invalid with (mx)! At the end. Can anyone shed some light on this? Thanks Gene

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OTRS_TICKET_ID in Autoresponse
by Moshe Leibovitch (SoftLink) 27 Jan '03

27 Jan '03

Hi, For some reason, this field is missing in the substitution. I have added it in Kernel/System/Ticket/SendAutoResponse.pm: $Param{Body} =~ s/<OTRS_TICKET_ID>/$Param{TicketID}/gi; (after the OTRS_TICKET_NUMBER replace) this allows me to send the user Auto response that includes a direct link to the ticket: http://www.softlink.com/otrs/customer.pl?Action=CustomerZoom&TicketID=16 is this the right way of doing this? Regards, Moshe

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Attaching files from the server to agent response
by Moshe Leibovitch (SoftLink) 27 Jan '03

27 Jan '03

Hi, First, I apologize for the flood of ideas I have. I just recently installed OTRS on our server and I find it terrific. I would like to suggest the option of attaching files from the server, not using http upload, but from a common repository (like documents, patches etc). the reason for this is that our server and HQ are geographically remote and bandwidth is OK, but not terrific. having to attach the same things over and over again is a waste of bandwidth. I know that you can make a "response" with the file attached. this has two cons: 1. if the repository updates frequently, you have to remember to update the emails as well 2. if there are many files that can be attached, in many combinations the number of messages will be overwhelming. Thanks for the great software, Moshe

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Different approach to the e-mail problem
by Stefan Wintermeyer 27 Jan '03

27 Jan '03

Hi Guys, maybe this could be a solution for the e-mail discussion. Tell me what you think about it: An agent has to use the browser interface to "get" the tickets but the system sends the tickets to his e-mail account. There could be a "lock ticket and send this ticket to me by e-mail" functionality. We did have such an approach at the STTS (the trouble ticket system at SuSE). In case an agent doesn't answer this e-mail within a period of time it gets unlocked again automaticly. Pro: Every agent can use his favorate e-mail client. Con: Every agent has to use a browser and an e-mail client (two tools). BUT, one of the key features of the OTRS is the possibility to create standard responses and to answer these tickets very very fast. To use an e-mail client to answer the tickets is kind of bypassing this idea. take care Stefan Wintermeyer -- Stefan Wintermeyer What am I, a doctor or a moon shuttle conductor? (McCoy) "Star Trek"

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Re: [otrs] Integrating OTRS with e-mail more easily
by Moshe Leibovitch (SoftLink) 27 Jan '03

27 Jan '03

Hi, We are not trying to complicate things, just make them more effective. If you allow the "race" condition between two agents, you can also work with "reply" to the otrs user. The system will process the email as "agent response" and reject the second email. This is more reasonable (IMHO). It is also the easiest modification to the source. You can detect the agent by its email address, so it is really simple. Moshe --__--__-- Message: 3 Date: Mon, 27 Jan 2003 11:00:04 +0100 From: Stefan Wintermeyer <stefan(a)wintermeyer.de> To: otrs(a)otrs.org Subject: Re: [otrs] Integrating OTRS with e-mail more easily Reply-To: otrs(a)otrs.org Hi Guys, On Mon, Jan 27, Gene Parks wrote: > I have been thinking about this on and off and maybe some of the > functions from Big Brothers mail interface can be of use here. I don't think that the LOCK e-mail as proposed by Moshe is a good idea. I think this is an unnessesary work overhead. I don't wanna send a LOCK e-mail each time I answer a ticket. Most people use the OTRS to handle large amounts of e-mails. So this is not a feasable idea (IMHO). But I see the point, so lets find a good solution. One could be to offer an IMAP port to the OTRS and to take the risk that two people waste the same amount of time to answer a single ticket. The system could dump the second answer to /dev/null because it is allready answered. So first come, first get. Of course this system has to set some default rules (e.g. an answered ticket would be a closed ticket). Or you could send basic commands by an X-Header. But guys, let's don't make things more complicated as nessesary. Many OTRS users don't have a clue what an X-Header is and we are proud that we can offer them a solution which is so easy that anybody can use it. But anyway IMAP could be a good idea. Do we have an IMAP guru here to implement an IMAP port? I don't think this port should be enabled by default, but it is indeed a nice feature for some people and it can be mixed with the standard HTML interface. take care Stefan -- Stefan Wintermeyer Don't say thing like that! Of course we'll see Master Luke again. He'll be quite all right, you'll see. (C3PO) "Star Wars (The Epire Strikes Back)" --__--__-- _______________________________________________ otrs mailing list otrs(a)otrs.org http://lists.otrs.org/cgi-bin/listinfo/otrs End of otrs Digest

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