[rt-users] Misspelled Requestors

[Schultz, Eric]

> 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!

Rather than doing this, I would fix the code so that the page is
presented again to the user creating the ticket, when they try to enter
a requestor that does not exist.  That way, they can't create a ticket
until they get it right :-)

Eric Schultz
United Online