ManualApprovals

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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

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

The "CreateTickets" ScripAction allows you to create automated workflows in RT, creating new tickets in response to actions and conditions from other tickets.

Format

CreateTickets uses the RT template configured in the scrip 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

As shown, you can put one or more

===Create-Ticket:

sections in a template. 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. Note that each Value must come right after the Param on the same line. The Content: param can extend over multiple lines, but the text of the first line must start right after Content:. Don't try to start your

Content:

section with a newline. After each ticket is created, it's stuffed into a hash called

%Tickets

making it available during the creation of other tickets during the same ScripAction. The hash key for each ticket is

create-[identifier]

, where

[identifier]

is the value you put after

===Create-Ticket:

. 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
 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, CASESENSITIVE => 0);
    $groups->WithMember($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,
    );

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

*  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; forces the owner if necessary
   +   Requestor       => Email address
   +   Cc              => Email address
   +   AdminCc         => Email address
   +   RequestorGroup  => Group name
   +   CcGroup         => Group name
   +   AdminCcGroup    => Group name
       TimeWorked      =>
       TimeEstimated   =>
       TimeLeft        =>
       InitialPriority =>
       FinalPriority   =>
       Type            =>
    +! DependsOn       =>
    +! DependedOnBy    =>
    +! RefersTo        =>
    +! ReferredToBy    =>
    +! Members         =>
    +! MemberOf        =>
       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.  Defaults to
                          'text/plain'
       UpdateType      => 'correspond' or 'comment'; used in conjunction with
                          'content' if this is an update.  Defaults to
                          'correspond'

       CustomField-<id#> => custom field value
       CF-name           => custom field value
       CustomField-name  => custom field value

Fields marked with an

*

are required. Fields marked with a

+

may have multiple values, simply by repeating the fieldname on a new line with an additional value. Fields marked with a

!

have processing postponed until 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 hyphens 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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