OfflineEdits

NOTE: This feature was removed in RT v4.2.

This RT tool tucked away in the Configuration tab has long perplexed users.

The tool was designed for a customer who wanted a way to create a text format--the same as the CreateTicket action--of tasks in a meeting and later inject them into the database.

You can "download" formatted copies of existing tickets to update by clicking the "Editable text" link in the top right of a search results page.

Interface

The form is initialized with a blank template in the textarea. Using "Get template from file:" allows you to select a file with a completed template from your local system. Clicking "Go" uploads the the file to the server, and its contents are shown in the textarea for further review. The other form fields allow you to lazily complete (multiple) templates, by supplying values for the Queue and Requestor fields. "Upload" then submits this information.

Note though, that whitespace is important

===Create-Ticket: ticket1
   ...
  Content:
  Foo bar qux
  ENDOFCONTENT
  \n
  
  

The extra newline here (written as an escape above), and lack of space after "Content:" can prevent the ticket content from being parsed and stored (in 3.8.2)

Numbering

Note that if you have provided multiple templates in your form, each must have a unique value for Create-Ticket e.g;

===Create-Ticket: ticket1
   ...
  
  ===Create-Ticket: ticket2
   ...
  
  

Otherwise you will receive the following deceptive error:

Ticket : Could not create ticket. Queue not set

However, the specific value supplied for this header does not seem to matter; even "42" is okay.

Custom Fields

It seems that at some point since 2005, Offline edits has gained the ability to handle custom fields by name. The syntax is:

CustomField-FieldName: Value

Tips

If you are creating many tickets from scratch and have an existing data source, you might consider using a word processor's "mail merge" facilities to generate the form for input.

Outstanding questions

• Is it possible to specify the "creation date" i.e; when the data was logged, as opposed to inserted? My efforts to set "Created:" have been thwarted thus far.

• Is it possible to create several interlinked tickets with this interface, given that the actual ID is not known?

Alternatives for Importing Existing Data

• Mbox2Rt

See Also

• RT::Action::CreateTickets
• [[[Template Fields|Template_Fields]]]