[rt-users] Misspelled Requestors

[Craig Moscicki]

I have a question I am hoping there is a simple answer to a problem  
we are having right now.  We use the LDAP overlay with RT, so users  
can login with their LDAP credentials, and requestors are validated  
against LDAP when we enter tickets.  However, we are running into a  
problem when a HelpDesk employee misspells a requestor when entering  
a ticket.  It takes a long time to create the ticket, but it  
eventually creates it without a requestor, and a small error message  
stating "Could not find or create that user".  That error is usually  
missed, so when a technician goes to work on the ticket, they have no  
idea where to go or who to call about the problem.  I can check the  
rt.log file and get the following entry to find out what was typed in  
the requestor field:

[error]: Could not load create a user with the email address  
'blah_blah_blah' to add as a watcher for ticket 1234 (/opt/rt36prod/ 
lib/RT/Ticket_Overlay.pm:1423)

That means an administrator can go back and figure out who the  
requestor was supposed to be, but HelpDesk staff and Technicians  
cannot.  I believe the new LDAP overlay has a feature to create  
accounts for even non-LDAP users, but we don't want to create  
accounts for those misspellings.  I think an ideal solution for us  
would be to add that rejected username to the ticket as a comment.   
However, I cannot find how to retrieve this information in a scrip  
since it is not created with the ticket.  If anyone knows how we  
could achieve this, or has some other method to capture the  
misspelled requestor info, please let me know.  Thanks!

Sincerely,

Craig Moscicki
SUNY Geneseo
moscicki at geneseo.edu