Introduction

Tickets in RT have several date fields:

Created
Starts
Started
Last Contact
Due
Closed
Updated

Starts and Due dates work like expected (planned) time boundaries, while Started, Last Contact, Closed, and Updated are set after things happen. How this works is described below.

Description

Created

This is the first date that is set during creation of a ticket and cannot be changed using the UI.

Starts

Starts date is used to indicate the time when staff expects to begin to work on the current ticket. Editable and optional.

Started

RT uses Started date to indicate the time when a user actually begins work on the ticket. This date is set to "now" automatically when status of the ticket is changed from initial(e.g. 'new') to any other non-initial values. So if the server is configured to 'auto open' tickets on correspond, then it's set on correspond. However, if somebody opens it before any correspondence then it's also set.

Try next tests:

create a ticket, click the open action and look on the dates box
create a ticket, click the resolve action and look on the dates box

Starts vs. Started

There are no restrictions on these dates, so work on ticket could begin (started) earlier than it was expected (starts) or vice versa.

Last Contact

Is set when inbound user replies to a ticket or can be set manually. Last time that requestors were notified by someone.

Due

Due date defines a deadline for the ticket. You can implement SLA or projects' deadlines using this field. Editable and optional.

Updated

This date is set automatically to now when ticket is changed in any way.

Changing dates

Users who have the correct rights can set Starts, Started, Last Contact, and Due dates. These dates and others can be set automatically as described above.

To change a date, open a ticket and click on title of the 'Dates' box or 'Dates' subtab in the menu. From this page, you can adjust dates of the ticket.

To change any of these dates, type the new date in the text box or use the calendar popup to pick a date, then click the Submit button.

NOTE: Acceptable date formats such as mm/dd/yy or dd/mm/yyyy vary by organization and country. If you're not sure, ask an administrator how to enter dates. Administrators can consult with manual for a date parsing perl module.

Dates can also be changed from the bulk update option. See ManualTicketsBulkUpdate.

Unset (delete) Date

To delete date or clear date, simply remove the date from the text box and save. This will change the date field to "not set".

Searching by dates

It's possible to search using not only absolute dates like '2009-11-30', but also relative dates like '7 days ago'. This is described more in details at Ticket SQL.

Working with date in scripts

If you need to search for the dates in script, consult official docs. To display the correct local time shift use Timezone => ‘user’ in your functions. Example:

 $date->Set(Format => ‘ISO’,Value => $ticket->Created);
 say $date->LocalizedDateTime(Timezone => ‘user’);
 say $date->ISO(Timezone => ‘user’);

Up: ManualUsingWebInterface

ManualTicketDates

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