[rt-users] Can custom fields be used this way?

[Jim Segrave]

We want to make a simple internal tracking system for provisioning
requests. These requests involve several iterations of data being
passed back and forth between our provisioning team and our NOC, and
we'd like to use a system to track these requests. An example (we have
several provisioning setups which have the same back & forth behaviour
as this one, each involves different bits of data being added to one
ticket as it goes along.

0) Customer orders leased line, needs some IP addresses, routeing, etc.

1) Provisioning team opens a ticket in the Leased-line queue and uses
   custom fields to indicate the telco (one of n choices), line speed
   (one of n), interface type (one of n), number of IPs needed,
   details of the customer and location

2) NOC staff see request notificiation and verify that the request is
   doable (router ports exists, etc). Noc staff adds address
   assigments ot another custom field of the *same* ticket.

3) Provisioning gets data on the line from the Telco - line ID, ATM
   circuit VPI/VCI, expected delivery date. This is added to
   additional custom fields, these will be free-form single values

4) NOC does configuration setup on router and sets the custom field to
   indicate this is done.

5) Provisioning arranges site call to set up customer end router and
   adds this to the ticket.

6) NOC brings line up. If successful, ticket is closed as resolved.

Each of the transitions from step 0..6 should generate an email to the
relevant parties. At any time, staff should be able to open the ticket
and see all the information which is currently gathered, in a single
standardised format for any given provisioning process.

>From our point of view, we could use the web interface to create a
ticket - there's no need to process any inbound e-mail. But from
looking at the documentation, there doesn't appear to be a way for
anyone to change the custom fields once the ticket has been
created. We don't want the incremental data to be buried in follow up
comments, we want it to be part of the main body of the ticket.

Can this be done, or are we looking at the wrong tool?


-- 
Jim Segrave           jes at nl.demon.net