Revision as of 05:17, 22 October 2011

Prev: ManualBasicAdministration --- Up: UserManual --- Next: ManualAdministration

RT has a web interface that works in just about every web browser - including screen readers for the blind - and is easy to use. How easy? You're about to find out. Remember, though, that RT is very configurable; if you're reading this to learn how to use a local installation at your site, remember that your administrator could have made changes that will make things look differently than they do here; don't let it throw you.

RT has a powerful QueryBuilder that generates TicketSQL and configures the output format. This that can be configured using a GUI or in advanced mode.

If you see any unfamiliar terms in this chapter, you should find them defined in th RT Concepts section of ManualIntroduction, or in RTGlossary.

This manual is being updated to 3.8; we're going to snip out references to things that were markedly different in older -- particularly pre-3.x -- releases. If you have one of those... you really need to think about upgrading.

Logging In

Your administrator will tell you where your login page is, and what username and (usually) temporary password to use. The login screen looks like this: screenshot needed.

Type your username in the Username text box, type your password in the Password text box, and then click the Login button, or hit ENTER.

Home Page

Immediately after logging in, you'll be looking at the home page: screenshot needed.

NOTE: You'll find that many items are clickable hotlinks in the RT interface, such as ticket numbers and queues, but the default interface configuration does not highlight these using the usual blue color or underline. Move your mouse around; things which are links will get an underline when you hover the mouse over them. Clicking on these items takes you pretty much where you might expect it would.

Also, note that your installation may have been customized by the administrator, and because of that, things may be in different places than we describe here.

RT AT A GLANCE

Let's start with the center section of the page on the white background. This main part of the page, called "RT at a Glance", will contain a collection of panels, each of which can be minimized, and some of which can also be edited.

By default, these are:

In the left column

10 highest priority tickets I own: This section displays what you need to do. Each ticket will display its number, subject, queue, and status from this page. Click any ticket's number or description to display its basic information page (see also the Tickets interface section of this chapter).
10 newest unowned tickets: Here you'll see the list of tickets which have been created, but not yet assigned to anyone, sorted with the newest ones at the top. Each ticket has an associated Take link which you can use to assign the ownership of the ticket to yourself, and start working on it.
Bookmarked tickets: New in 3.8 (CHECKME) is a facility where you can bookmark any ticket while you're looking at it, no matter its queue or owner, by clicking on an empty star (like the FireFox 3 bookmark star) in the top right corner of the page. Tickets you've bookmarked in this way will be displayed in this panel.
Quick Ticket Creation: This panel lets you enter the bare minimum of information about a new ticket, to create one quickly when necessary. If you need to enter more information about a new ticket, including things like CCs, select a queue from the top 'eyebrow' bar of the page, and click the "New Ticket In" button; this will give you the complete New Ticket screen.

In the right column

Reminder - New in 3.8, if you have set a reminder for yourself in a ticket. You will see the title of the reminder and which ticket it belongs to. Click on the Title of the reminder to follow it.
Quick search: This panel contains a list of all the queues you're permitted to access, logged in as the user you are. They're in alphabetical order, and show the number of New, Open and Stalled tickets.
Dashboards: The Dashboards panel (see ManualDashboards) will contain a list of any Dashboards which have been created for the entire RT installation, your user group, or your personally created dashboards.
Refresh: This pulldown menu, on the lower right side of the screen, lets you select whether the homepage is automatically refreshed or not. The default is no. Other options are refreshing the page every 2, 5, 10, 20, 60, and 120 minutes. Click the Go! button to select the displayed auto-refresh delay.

Top navigation bar

New ticket in: Use this to quickly start creating a ticket (for more detail, see the Creating a new ticket section in this chapter). Choose a queue from the drop-down menu and click the "New ticket in:" button to begin.
Search: type a search term in the text box and click the Search button to find tickets. This box can do some magic, for example you can type in a ticket number, and jump directly to that ticket. Check out ManualSimpleSearch for more on the magic and ManualSearchTickets for more ways to search tickets.
Preferences: click this link to edit your personal information on RT. On a basic level, this is information such as email address, name, password, phone numbers, location, and signature. This is also where you start working with personal groups and delegating rights, features which we'll explain later in this chapter. This link will not appear if you have not been granted the ModifySelf right.
Logout: click this to log out of RT. You can leave yourself logged into RT without breaking anything, but logging out is a good habit to get into for security purposes.

Left side navigation bar

This is the RT main menu. The options will expand into a menu tree as you select various tasks. Your current location in this tree will always be boldfaced. Some of these options may not be displayed if you do not have the appropriate rights.

Home: the home page: where you are now. You can always get back to the home page by clicking Home in the upper left of the screen. You can even click this if you're on the home page, as an easy Refresh link.
Tickets: clicking this brings you to the ticket search page (see also the 'Common tasks: Searching' section of this chapter).
Tools: the Tools menu lets you configure RT for your personal tastes.
RTFM: clicking this takes you to RTFM, RT's integrated knowledgebase, if it's installed. (documented separately).
Configuration: This link takes administrators to the section of RT where they can configure users, queues and scrips, and make global setup changes to the installation.
Approval: sometimes, a ticket may require the approval of someone in your organization before it can be resolved. This section shows the status (pending, approved, denied) of approval requests. Most users won't need to worry much about Approvals; there is more detail in ManualAdministration.

Tickets interface

The fundamental object in RT is the ticket; a ticket groups all of the information about, and transactions related to, an issue you're using RT to track.

First, you should know some of the various ways to navigate to an existing ticket:

from the Home page, click a ticket subject under 10 highest priority tickets I own or 10 newest unowned tickets. Or, you can Take an unowned ticket, which has the extra side effect of assigning ownership to you.
search for a ticket, from the search box on the Home page or by clicking Tickets in the left side navigation bar. Then click the ticket.
click a queue name on the Quick Search panel and then click a ticket.
clicking a ticket's URL from within an email message.

Display

Any way you navigate to a ticket, you'll arrive at that ticket's Display page first. screenshot

The Display view, the first of 8 possible views of the ticket, (pictured above) provides an overview of the ticket.

Two panes come up on the Display view: Ticket Metadata on top, and History below.

As you can see, it includes information like Basics, People, Reminders, Dates, and Links, each in it's own sub-pane.

The number and title of the ticket it above the top command bar, and the number is also in the left-side menu, in bold. If you picked the ticket out of a list, then that menu will also contain navigation links to move around that list, First, Prev, Next, and Last.

In the upper right corner of the main window, ticket pages will generally offer (some of) the options Reply, Resolve, Open, Take, Comment, and Extract Article. Reply and Comment will be covered shortly, in the Replying and Commenting section of this chapter. Resolve means to close a ticket because work on it is finished, Open will change a ticket's status to "open", Take makes you the ticket's owner, and Extract Article is part of RT's integration with the knowledgebase RTFM (if that's installed).

If anyone owns a ticket, the Take option disappears; likewise, once a ticket is resolved, the Resolve option disappears. If a resolved ticket is reopened with the Open option, Open disappears and Resolve reappears.

The Display page sometimes has an Attachments box (not a hyperlink), which lists ticket attachments, organized by name and then by date.

History

This panel on -- or separate view of -- the ticket shows everything that's ever happened to the ticket, including comments, replies, attachments and status and ownership changes. screenshot

Basics

This is where you change the ticket's subject, status, time worked, time left, priority, final priority, and queue. A ticket's subject is what it sounds like; "time worked" and "time left" refer to the (total) number of minutes worked on this ticket only. If you're unclear on status, priority, or queue, refer to the RT Concepts section of ManualIntroduction.

After changing information on the Basics page (or any other), don't forget to click the Save Changes button. screenshot

( == WIP == )

This is also the page where you can change values in a custom field. Your organization may create its own fields, and they come up on a ticket's Basics page. They work like any other field: you type things in them or select things from them. To create your own custom fields, see ManualAdministration.

Dates

ManualTicketDates

People

This page deals with a ticket's owner, requestor, Cc(s), and Admin Cc(s). To review these roles, see the RT Concepts section of ManualIntroduction.

To reach a ticket's People screen from within a ticket, click People in the left side navigation bar: screenshot

There are two ways to add a watcher. If you know a potential watcher's email address, you can add one directly. Otherwise, you can search for them, then add whoever you've found.

To search for users before adding them as watchers:

look under Find people whose
choose User Id, Email, Name, or Organization from the first drop-down menu
choose contains, doesn't contain, is, or isn't from the second drop-down menu
type your search term in the text box
click the Go! button

If RT finds a user, her username will appear in the Add new watchers area, the lower half of the gray box. You've now found your user, and you're ready to configure her as a watcher. NOTE: RT searching is case sensitive: Searching for "foo" will not find a person with the name "Foo"; searching for the group "support team" will not find the group named "Support Team".

To search for groups before adding them as watchers:

look under Find group whose
choose Name or Description from the first drop-down menu
choose contains, doesn't contain, is, or isn't from the second drop-down menu
type your search term in the text box
click the Go! button

If RT finds a group, the group name will appear in the Add new watchers area, the lower half of the gray box. You've now found your group, and you're ready to configure it as a watcher.

To add new watchers:

locate the Add new watchers section of the page
for each watcher you're adding, choose Requestor, Cc, or AdminCC from the Type drop-down menu
type the new watcher's email address in the Email text box, if it's not already filled in
click the Save Changes button

For each email address, RT will search for an existing user to match it. If there is no match, RT will create a new non-staff user. (If the user is already filled in from a search, it won't be automatically created)

To remove a watcher:

locate the Current Watchers section of the page
check the box next to the watcher(s) to delete
click the Save Changes button

To assign a ticket or change its owner:

change Owner drop-down menu to the person of your choice
click the Save Changes button

To change a ticket's owner to yourself, click Take from within a ticket. Generally, you can only take a ticket that is owned by Nobody. There is no intermediate "Are you sure you want to do this?" page, but if you wrongly take a ticket, you can always give it back. Once a ticket is taken, the Take option disappears from the ticket's interface.

Relationships/Links

Relationships in RT include Depends on, Depended on by, Parents, Children, Refers to, and Referred to by. If we just lost you, see the RT Concepts section of ManualIntroduction. For the sake of space, relationships are sometimes called Links in RT, such as in the left side navigation bar from within a ticket.

To reach a ticket's Relationships page:

from within a ticket, click Links in the left side nav bar

You can add or delete relationships here, or merge duplicate tickets. In this screen shot, the relationships/links page for ticket #4, you'll see that ticket #4 refers to ticket #1. screenshot

To merge two identical, duplicate tickets:

look under New Links
enter only one ticket number in the Merge Into: text box
click the Submit button

If someone tries to use the ticket ID of a ticket you've merged into another one, RT automatically redirects to the correct, newly-merged ticket.

To add a relationship (Depends on, Depended on by, Parents, Children, Refers to, Referred to by):

look under New Relationships
enter ticket numbers (or other data) into the appropriate fields, separating multiple entries with spaces
click the Submit button

To delete a relationship:

look under Current Relationships
check the box next to the relationship to delete
click the Submit button

To add a relationship to an RTFM article, see Replying and Commenting in this chapter.

Jumbo

This page shows editable versions of the Basics, Dates, People, and Relationships screens on one page, plus Update Ticket fields for adding comments or replies. This screen is useful if you must modify several aspects of a ticket at once. Be sure to click the Save Changes button when you're done.

NOTE: For the rest of this chapter, when we say something like "from within the ticket's History page..." that means you should click History to get there, if you're not there already. If you don't see a History link to click, that likely means you're not in the ticket yet. If you're already in the History page, you don't have to click History again, of course. See the Tickets interface section earlier in this chapter if this is confusing you.

Common tasks

Now that you know your way around RT's web interface, there are probably many tasks you can figure out on your own. However, we wanted to make sure you had a step-by-step guide to the most important and common tasks such as using RT's search functionality and working with tickets.

Searching for tickets

ManualSearchTickets

Creating a new ticket

To create a new ticket, start by selecting its queue:

from any page, select the queue of your choice from the New ticket in drop-down menu near the top of the screen
click the New Ticket in button

The next page will be the Create a new ticket page, defaulting to the Show basics view with the following fields:

Queue: this should already be filled in for you.
Status: generally, you'll leave this at the default, new. However, you might sometimes need to create a ticket to record a past occurrence or a problem that's already being worked on, so you might choose one of the other options from the drop-down menu.
Owner: you can give the ticket an owner or leave this blank and let someone claim it later.
Requestors: the default email address will be yours. Fill in any others if needed.
Cc and Admin Cc: if you don't know what these are for, see the RT Concepts section in Chapter 1: Introduction.
Subject and Attach file should look familiar to most email users and work basically the same way.
Describe the issue below means you should explain why this ticket exists.

If you click Show details or scroll to the bottom of the page, you'll be brought to the optional but potentially useful fields Priority, Final Priority, Time Worked, Time Left, fields for dates (Starts and Due), and fields for each relationship (Depends on, Depended on by, Parents, Children, Refers to, Referred to by). These, too, are explained in the RT Concepts section in ManualIntroduction.

When you're done filling in fields, click the Create button to make the ticket. Clicking Show Basics brings you back to the top of the page.

Replying and commenting

There are two ways you can respond to a ticket. By default, a reply is public and a comment is hidden from the requestor. Comments and replies are listed permanently under the ticket's History.

To say something about a ticket, first make sure you are within one of the ticket's pages (Display, History, Basics...) then click Comment or Reply in the upper right of the page. To quote the text of an existing comment or reply, click Reply or Comment next to an existing reply or comment, from within the ticket's History, to quote the text of the existing reply or comment inline.

You'll see drop-down menus for Status and Owner. You probably won't need to change the defaults here.

There will also be a text box for how many minutes the ticket has been worked on. Fill this in if you want to or if you are supposed to be logging your time.

The Update Type drop-down menu will be automatically set to Comments (Not set to requestors) or Response to requestors, depending on whether you clicked Comment or Reply as your first step. You can select the other option if you've changed your mind.

As for the other fields, we'll assume you have a working knowledge of email. RT correspondence has some fields that should be familiar to email users, such as Subject, CC, BCC, Attachments, and Message. The Subject field may be automatically filled in with the name of the ticket.

NOTE: email addresses in the CC and BCC fields of replies and comments will not automatically receive future updates.

Enter your comment or reply in the Message field, and when everything's done, click the Submit button

You'll be brought back to the ticket's Display page, with a status message on top that says your comment or reply has been sent/recorded, or that there is a problem and it hasn't.

To add a signature that will appear by default at the bottom of all your comments and replies:

click Preferences in the upper right, or in the left side navigation bar
type your (preferably short) signature in the Signature field
click the Submit button

Reply and comment integration with RTFM

RTFM is RT's integrated knowledgebase system. If you are using RTFM, you should know that when you reply to or comment on tickets in RT, you can search for and include (editable) RTFM articles in the reply or comment. The ticket will now have a new relationship: Refers To (article of your choice). This screen shot shows the relevant part of the Reply or Comment screen, located under Attach in the Message portion of the page:

[screenshot]

If you know the name or number of the article you'd like to include, enter it in the Include RTFM article text box and click the Go button.

To find an RTFM article to include in the reply or comment, enter a search term in the Search for RTFM articles matching text box and click the Go button. Assuming there are search results, click the Go button next to the article you'd like to include.

Modifying a ticket

Listed alphabetically by item that could be changed:

due date (or any other date):
- from with a ticket's Dates page, type the new date in the Due: text box
- click the Submit button
final priority:
- from within a ticket's Basics page, type a new number in the Final Priority field
- click the Save Changes button
history: we're sorry, a ticket's history cannot be changed.
owner:
- from within a ticket's People page, change Owner in drop-down menu to the person of your choice
- click the Save Changes button
priority:
- from within a ticket's Basics page, type a new number in the Priority field
- click the Save Changes button
queue:
- from within a ticket's Basics page, select a new item from the Queue drop-down menu
- click the Save Changes button
- NOTE: that when you change a ticket's queue, queue-specific values such as custom fields will disappear. They will not be deleted, but they will be hidden.
status:
- from within a ticket's Basics page, select a value from the Status drop-down menu
- click the Save Changes button
subject:
- from within a ticket's Basics page, type new data in the Subject field
- click the Save Changes button
time left:
- from within a ticket's Basics page, type a new number in the Time Left field
- click the Save Changes button
time worked:
- from within a ticket's Basics page, type a new number in the Time Worked field
- click the Save Changes button

Modifying people

To assign a ticket or change its owner:

from a ticket's People page, change Owner in drop-down menu to the person of your choice
click the Save Changes button

To add new watchers:

from a ticket's People page, locate the Add New Watchers section of the page
choose Requestor, Cc, or AdminCc from the Type drop-down menu
type the new watcher's email address in the Email text box
add up to two more watchers, for a total of up to three
click the Save Changes button

To remove a watcher:

from a ticket's People page, locate the Current Watchers section of the page
check the box next to the watcher(s) to delete
click the Save Changes button

Modifying relationships

To add a relationship (Depends on, Depended on by, Parents, Children, Refers to, Referred to by):

from within a ticket's Relationships (or Links) page, look under New Relationships
enter ticket numbers (or other data) into the appropriate fields, separating multiple entries with spaces
click the Submit button

To delete a relationship:

from within a ticket's Relationships (or Links) page, look under Current Relationships
check the box next to the relationship to delete
click the Submit button

To merge a duplicate ticket into an identical ticket:

from within a ticket's Relationships (or Links) page, look under New Relationships
enter only one ticket number in the Merge Into: text box
click the Submit button

If someone tries to use the ticket ID of a ticket you've merged into another one, RT automatically redirects to the correct, newly-merged ticket. Merging tickets also merges all ticket data such as watchers, relationships, and history.

Updating many tickets at once

Sometimes, you may need to make a change to several tickets at once. There's an easy way to do this: locate the tickets you want (see the Searching section of this chapter for help) -> click Update all these tickets at once

You'll be sent to a Bulk ticket update page where you can add a comment or reply to all the tickets, or change the tickets' owner, requestors, Cc, Admin Cc, subject, priority, queue, status, start date, due date, and resolved date. The power!

Click the Submit button when you're done.

Resolving a ticket

If a ticket has been completed and doesn't need any more work, you can resolve it by clicking Resolve in the upper right of one of the ticket's pages (Display, History, Basics...).

This takes you to a comment form (see above Replying and Commenting section) but sets the Status drop-down menu to Resolved.

You're encouraged to use the Message text box to explain why you're resolving the ticket.

When you're done, click the Submit button.

You'll be brought to the ticket's Display page and told the comment has been recorded and ticket has been resolved (or not, if there is a problem).

Changing your own user information

To change your own name, email address, phone numbers, location, or signature:

click Preferences in the upper right of the screen or in the left side navigation bar
type new information in the desired fields
click the Submit button

To change your own password:

click Preferences in the upper right of the screen or in the left side navigation bar
type the new password in the New Password text box
type it again in the Retype Password text box
click the Submit button

Personal groups

Users can grant their rights to others by creating a personal group and delegating the rights to the members of that group. This is convenient if you're going on vacation or need to pass the buck for any reason.

First of all go to:

click Preferences
click Personal Groups

To make a new personal group:

click New group in the left side navigation bar
type your group's name and description in the Name: and Description: text boxes
click the Submit button

To add members to a personal group:

click the name of a personal group
click Members in the left side navigation bar
select user(s) or group(s) from the Add members box
click the Submit button

To delete members from a personal group:

click the name of a personal group
click Members in the left side navigation bar
check the box next to the user(s) or group(s) to delete
click the Submit button

To change a personal group's name or description:

click the name of a personal group
make changes
click the Submit button

To disable a personal group:

click the name of a personal group
clear the Enabled checkbox
click the Submit button

Unlike disabled users and queues, disabled personal groups will still be visible in listings. That removes a step from the process of re-enabling them when necessary.

To re-enable a personal group:

click the name of a personal group
check the Enabled checkbox
click the Submit button

Delegating

Once you have a personal group, you can delegate rights.

In order to delegate rights, you'll need to have the right "Delegate Rights."
If you've been granted a right and you delegate it to someone, then someone revokes your right, that also revokes your delegate's right.
If you've been granted a right globally, you can't delegate it for just one queue and vice versa.

[screenshot]

To delegate rights to a personal group:

click Preferences
click Delegation
locate the right(s) you'd like to delegate
check the box next to the right(s) and under the correct personal group(s)
click the Submit button

To stop delegating rights to a personal group:

click Preferences
click Delegation
locate the correct right(s)
clear the checkbox next to the right(s) and under the correct personal group(s)
click the Submit button

Logging out

You can leave yourself logged into RT without breaking anything, but logging out is a good habit to get into for security purposes. Logging out is standard:

click Logout in the upper right hand corner of the page.

Some RT configurations don't have a Logout button, so don't panic if you don't see one.