[rt-users] Custom attributes of a queue

[Todd Chapman]

On Wed, Sep 07, 2005 at 11:07:35AM -0700, Jason Grigsby wrote:
> In our configuration, we have a queue per customer. Our customers have a 
> contracted monthly retainer for a number of hours per month. I would like to 
> track the number of hours that a customer per queue and then modify our 
> interfaces to show how much of that retainer has been used for the present 
> month. Our support team would use this to determine whether or not the 
> incoming request was likely to put a customer over their contracted hours.
> 
> What I would like to do is associate with a queue the total hours on the 
> retainer for a month. I would then subtract the worked value from each 
> transaction during a given month to determine how much time has been used on 
> that retainer.
> 
> The challenge I've run into is that there doesn't seem to be a way to add an 
> attribute or characteristic to a queue. In other words, when you add custom 
> fields to a queue, it is really adding custom fields to the tickets in that 
> queue, not adding the custom fields to the queue object itself.
> 
> FWIW, we also have a group for each customer (in addition to the queue) and 
> the group name and queue name do match so if we needed to, we could store 
> the retainer hours number in a group custom field. However, the object 
> assocation between a group and a ticket transaction seems much more complex 
> which is why I'm looking for a way to put the information on the queue 
> itself.
> 
> I would love some suggestions on directions to explore on how to get this 
> accomplished.
> 
> Thank You,
> 
> Jason

Jason,

What you need to do is store the hours for the queue as an attribute
of the queue. Attributes are a good way to store info about any RT object
when there is no field to do the job for you.

RT could also support Queue custom fields. Someone needs to submit a
patch for that.

Either way you will need to write some custom code, callbacks,
and custom components.

-Todd