ManualApprovals

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Appendix 5

Creating Approvals

Approvals are a useful way to get tickets OK'd by management without creating a new system. A supervisor's approval can be a ticket; another ticket can depend on that ticket being resolved.

The custom programming to create tickets involves the Create Tickets scrip action and a template that asks a supervisor to look at the ticket asking for approval.

Here is an example of the process by RT's head honcho, Jesse Vincent:

NAME

hjghjh RT::Action::CreateTickets

Create one or more tickets according to an externally supplied template.

SYNOPSIS

===Create-Ticket: codereview
 Subject: Code review for {$Tickets{'TOP'}->Subject}
 Depended-On-By: TOP
 Content: Someone has created a ticket. you should review and approve it, so they can finish their work
 ENDOFCONTENT
 

DESCRIPTION

Using the "CreateTickets" ScripAction and mandatory dependencies, RT now has the ability to model complex workflow. When a ticket is created in a queue that has a "CreateTickets" scripaction, that ScripAction parses its "Template"

FORMAT

CreateTickets uses the template as a template for an ordered set of tickets to create. The basic format is as follows:

===Create-Ticket: identifier
 Param: Value
 Param2: Value
 Param3: Value
 Content: Blah
 blah
 blah
 ENDOFCONTENT
 ===Create-Ticket: id2
 Param: Value
 Content: Blah
 ENDOFCONTENT
 
 

Each ===Create-Ticket: section is evaluated as its own Text::Template object, which means that you can embed snippets of perl inside the Text::Template using {} delimiters, but that such sections absolutely can not span a ===Create-Ticket boundary.

After each ticket is created, it's stuffed into a hash called %Tickets so as to be available during the creation of other tickets during the same ScripAction. The hash is prepopulated with the ticket which triggered the ScripAction as $Tickets{'TOP'}; you can also access that ticket using the shorthand $TOP.

A simple example:

===Create-Ticket: codereview
 Subject: Code review for {$Tickets{'TOP'}->Subject}
 Depended-On-By: TOP
 Queue: ___Approvals
 Type: approval
 Content: Someone has created a ticket. you should review and approve it, so they can finish their work
 ENDOFCONTENT
 
 

A convoluted example:

     ===Create-Ticket: approval
     { # Find out who the administrators of the group called "HR"
       # of which the creator of this ticket is a member
        my $name = "HR";

        my $groups = RT::Groups->new($RT::SystemUser);
 $groups->LimitToUserDefinedGroups();
        $groups->Limit(FIELD => "Name", OPERATOR => "=", VALUE => "$name");
        $groups->WithMember($TransactionObj->CreatorObj->Id);

        my $groupid = $groups->First->Id;

        my $adminccs = RT::Users->new($RT::SystemUser);
        $adminccs->WhoHaveRight(
            Right => "AdminGroup",
            Object =>$groups->First,
            IncludeSystemRights => undef,
            IncludeSuperusers => 0,
            IncludeSubgroupMembers => 0,
        );

         my @admins;
         while (my $admin = $adminccs->Next) {
             push (@admins, $admin->EmailAddress);
         }
     }
     Queue: Approvals
     Type: approval
     AdminCc: {join ("\nAdminCc: ",@admins) }
     Depended-On-By: {$Tickets{"TOP"}->Id}
     Refers-To: {$Tickets{"TOP"}->Id}
     Subject: Approval for ticket: {$Tickets{"TOP"}->Id} - {$Tickets{"TOP"}->Subject}
     Due: {time + 86400}
     Content-Type: text/plain
     Content: Your approval is requested for the ticket {$Tickets{"TOP"}->Id}: {$Tickets{"TOP"}->Subject}
     Blah
     Blah
     ENDOFCONTENT
     ===Create-Ticket: two
     Subject: Manager approval
     Depended-On-By: {$Tickets{"TOP"}->Id}
     Refers-On: {$Tickets{"approval"}->Id}
     Queue: Approvals
Content-Type: text/plain
     Content:
     Your approval is requred for this ticket, too.
     ENDOFCONTENT

ACCEPTABLE FIELDS

A complete list of acceptable fields for this beastie:

 *  Queue           => Name or id# of a queue
    Subject         => A text string
  ! Status          => A valid status. defaults to 'new'
    Due             => Dates can be specified in seconds since the epoch
                       to be handled literally or in a semi-free textual
                       format which RT will attempt to parse.

    Starts          =>
    Started         =>
    Resolved        =>
    Owner           => Username or id of an RT user who can
                       and should own this ticket
+   Requestor       => Email address
+   Cc              => Email address
+   AdminCc         => Email address
    TimeWorked      =>
    TimeEstimated   =>
    TimeLeft        =>
    InitialPriority =>
    FinalPriority   =>
    Type            =>
 +! DependsOn       =>
 +! DependedOnBy    =>
 +! RefersTo        =>
 +! ReferredToBy    =>
 +! Parents         =>
 +! Children        =>
    Content         => content. Can extend to multiple lines.

Everything within a template after a Content: header is treated as content until we hit a line containing only ENDOFCONTENT

ContentType     => the content-type of the Content field
CustomField-<id#> => custom field value

Fields marked with an * are required. Fields marked with a + man have multiple values, simply by repeating the fieldname on a new line with an additional value.

Fields marked with a ! are postponed to be processed after all tickets in the same actions are created. Except for 'Status', those fields can also take a ticket name within the same action (i.e. the identifiers after ==Create-Ticket), instead of raw Ticket ID numbers.

When parsed, field names are converted to lowercase and have -s stripped. Refers-To, RefersTo, refersto, refers-to and r-e-f-er-s-tO will all be treated as the same thing.

For another explanation, see ApprovalCreation.

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