[rt-users] Dealing with people who send email to HelpdeskandCCothers

[Jay R. Ashworth]

On Sat, Mar 05, 2005 at 08:31:07PM -0000, Max Bowsher wrote:
> Jay R. Ashworth wrote:
> > On Fri, Mar 04, 2005 at 03:59:34PM -0800, Pei Ku wrote:
> >> It's kinda weird that you have to manage Watcher list via RT Web
> >> interface, the but actual communication amongst the people can be
> >> done either via the web interface or email. It would be nice if I can
> >> do all that via email, but I don't think it's possible (without some
> >> heavy hacking made to RT).
> >
> > I'm not sure I think it *is* all that weird: if you think of RT as a
> > 'brilliant' mailing list manager (which is what you're sort of using it
> > as in that environment), then setting up groups through the web sounds
> > less weird.
> >
> > I still think there might be a way to have the RT mail intake code to
> > look for In-Reply-To Message-ID, though.
> 
> With a certain amount of code tweaking, it is quite possible.
> 
> I run an RT instance which has no direct contact with requestors - instead 
> the response team are members of a mailing list, and RT listens to the 
> mailing list traffic, picking up on message ids to assign messages to 
> tickets.
> 
> I wish I could post some code, but it's all tangled up with other local 
> modifications, and I'm unlikely to get time to untangle it for at least a 
> week.

That sounds like fun, actually.

Specifically the point I was making was that if RT logged the
Message-ID of messages which start tickets (or, better, all of them)
in a table with the associated ticket number, then it could check the
In-Reply-To ID on new messages, looking for a ticket that the message
could be in reference to, and treat it as being attached to that ticket
even if it can't find any of it's other headers.

(I'm working this implementation out as I go along; could you tell? :-)

I'm tempted to say *all* MUA's generate a parseable IRT header these
days; this might be a generally useful extension to the mail interface,
since it makes the system even more proof against failing to notice
that a message is on an already open ticket.

Cheers,
-- jra
-- 
Jay R. Ashworth                                                jra at baylink.com
Designer                          Baylink                             RFC 2100
Ashworth & Associates        The Things I Think                        '87 e24
St Petersburg FL USA      http://baylink.pitas.com             +1 727 647 1274

      If you can read this... thank a system adminstrator.  Or two.  --me