[rt-users] Using RT to track system changes..

[Dustin Puryear]

We are looking at RT for use in both tracking client and internal technical 
issues as well as tracking changes that we make to systems. The first use 
is obviously what RT was designed to do. As for tracking system changes, 
that is another matter altogether. Essentially, we would like to have a 
standardized system whereby when we make a change to a server, be it UNIX 
or Windows, we can either send an email or submit a change entry via the 
web to a database. I'm thinking that we can RT for just this.

Has anyone done anything like this? How did this work out for you? Have you 
used any other software to do something like this? If so, what?

Right now we use a combination of high-level management logs (ie., 
installed LDAP service for...) in a spreadsheet for each client down to 
system-level change logs (ie., chmod xxx to file xyz so that..) via a local 
script on each machine that dumps to a text file. This works, but isn't 
scaling very well. I'd like something that is searchable, allows comments, 
file uploads, and so forth. RT does all this, but isn't really designed for 
it. So, there may be issues I'm thinking.

One thing I would like to see is a way for one of us to send an email 
through rt-mailgate that creates a closed ticket item. Say, a tech. sends 
mail to clientname-change at example.com and then rt adds this item to the 
queue clientname-changes as a closed ticket. (Alternatively, we could just 
periodically go through all tickets for queue clientname-changes and 
resolve them.) Does this sound viable? I'm thinking we would then have a 
nice, searchable database of changes made to systems that can be added to 
via a webpage or email.

Any further ideas or suggestions on this idea? I doubt this is too 
original, so if anyone else has done this, please step forward!

Regards, Dustin

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Dustin Puryear <dustin at puryear-it.com>
Puryear Information Technology
Windows, UNIX, and IT Consulting
http://www.puryear-it.com