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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