Hi James, James Pickard wrote: <snip>
What we are looking for is to have a webpage that users can go to, fill in some mandatory fields in a form, and submit a job request that way. I was hoping to not have to have the users log in to the system (ie create an account, log in etc etc.) as ours users are very basic and the less in their way, the better.
Please correct me if I'm wrong in my interpretation, but it appears that you are looking to provide an un-authenticated web-based interface for ticket creation.
One idea is to setup a webpage somewhere with the forms, have the users enter the data making all fields mandatory, and then having it submit, sending it via an email, to the OTRS system.
This is a good idea and by far the easist to implement. A simple PHP/Perl/etc. script could easily pass information to an SMTP subsystem. Your SMTP server can the deliver the email message to a POP client. OTRS will then read mail delivered to the POP client by running PostMasterPOP3.pl, which is a standard part of OTRS. Importantly, your idea of using a web page that creates and sends an email/ticket would leverage the existing OTRS infrastructure (i.e. POP gateway).
But then I thought, I’m sure OTRS can do this and it go straight into the system. But how? :0)
In addition to my prior statement, it seems that you would like an option to bypass the email system (SMTP, POP) and directly update the OTRS database. Off the top of my head, I would created a properly formatted email message and then try to pipe the text into the /opt/otrs/bin/PostMasterPOP3.pl script. This would still require the creation of an e-mail like format, but you would be able to bypass SMTP and POP. Caveat: I have never checked if PostMasterPOP3.pl can utilize information piped in via STDIN.
Is there an easy way to set this up? Does anyone have any other ideas for this scenario?
My suggestions require custom scripting/programming. This may or may not be easy. Personally, I think you could easily do this yourself or contact one of the professional OTRS support/services companies (http://otrs.org/support/).
James Pickard _IT Support Officer_ **St Hildas College**
Since you're at a college, you may want to have some of the CS students do this custom programming. I'm sure they'd enjoy the opportunity to do some real programming projects. Hope this helps, Akbar