On Sat, Sep 14, 2002 at 04:52:08PM +0200, Stefan Wintermeyer wrote:
That is quit funny for me because we had the same "problem" at SuSE. The STTS (which is a trouble ticket system used at SuSE) had this feature but it became a bit complicated with locked tickets and with tickets which became very old. Many agents locked a ticket (which ment that the system bounced it to their account) and than didn't answer it or answer it to late (we are all just humans).
So I think the "one interface for all" idea has some advantages. The system (OTRS) knows whats going on and you can not trick it. Of course I do see the advantages of a normal e-mail client, but believe me one of the main features of the OTRS is the standard response feature. You have to think about a good queueing system and than create standard responses for each queue. And THAN it will be much quicker to answer them by one click in the OTRS but to bounce and answer them with a normal e-mail client.
I sort of agree. In my current situation I want to replace the current use of mailing list and bugzilla (which not everyone used anyway) with OTRS but need to make some compromises. Think of it as a migration aid. Once they start to experience OTRS they will probaby send answers from within it but until then it would help if they could also use email directly.
I know it is very hard to believe but think about it and give it a try!
We are trying it (only for a week so far) but not as a compulsory system yet since things very fluid.
I know OTRS can do notifications on new tickets etc. but this means agent has read notification email and then click on link to get into OTRS web interface which is not always easy to do depending on where agent is reading their email (e.g. home).
I think it will be better to have everything handled in one system. I know it is not very fancy and using a webbased e-mail client will never be perfect but you can track everything and you have full power to escalate things. Anyway please keep us up to date how you solved it.
One thing that I find cumbersome in OTRS at the moment is there is no exploded view of the entire history of the ticket and followups and you have to zoom to each article to see it. One work around is to just search on the ticket number but that requires typing in the ticket number. I just want to click on an "Everything" link and see it all in 1 page. Also we miss an "statusview" style brief listing of all open tickets in the system (1 per line). This would probably look a bit like the customer history list format but show _all_ open tickets in the system so duty support person could keep an eye on who was doing what. I also had to change the view options to make it show locked tickets as no-one really liked the idea of them "dissappearing" from general view. If there was a simple statusview listing this would probably not bo so much of a problem.
PS. The only way of bringing both world together (and I know Martin will kill me about bringing that idea up) is to create an IMAP interface to the OTRS. So that you could connect from any e-mail client via IMAP to the OTRS. This would make it possible to still keep everything in one system and to use your favorate e-mail client. But it is quite fare fetched.
How would that handle agent sending outgoing email? I thought IMAP was only for incomming. I suppose you could just ensure the support email was added as a Bcc but you really want to rewrite the agent's personal from address with the support email address on the way out. -- Phil Davis