[rt-users] Customer Management with RT?

[Rainer Duffner]

Am 22.08.2007 um 23:14 schrieb Kenneth Crocker:

> Aaron,
>
>
> 	I'm not sure I understand your question. By csr I guess you mean  
> the customer/user.


CSR=Customer Service Representative.
An euphemism for "help desk monkey" ;-)


> That person initiates the ticket either thru E_mail or the web. A  
> Superuser can change anything, but superuser rights are not  
> required for this. ModifyTickets would suffice. YOu haven't  
> describes the privileges you have set up.
>
>


I don't know if what Aaron want's to do is possible completely with RT3.
At the end of the day, RT is a tool to handle incidents and, as the  
name suggests, requests from customers.
Having "notes" and other things in there is probably not impossible  
(with Asset-Tracker, there's even more stuff).
But it somehow defies the original purpose in that tickets get  
opened, worked upon and closed.

RTFM could perhaps be modified to store per-customer info that is not  
tied specifically to a ticket. Or AssetTracker (haven't played with  
it recently - the project still lacks a homepage to channel support- 
request and user-to-user communication).

That said, there's no question that RT needs to get more "customer- 
centric" (or "project-centric"), in the sense that (e.g.) there are  
often cases where one wants to have a way to get a per-company view  
of tickets (because e.g. project-management at customer-company wants  
to see how many and what kind of tickets all the 3rd-party developers  
and contractors have opened in the name of his company).

One could create a queue per company and make some people privileged  
users without the right to view comments - but with many projects/ 
companies/customers, it will get _very_ convoluted.

There was a thread some months ago about RT 4 (by Jesse) - most of  
the brainstorming is in that thread.

The trick with all this is to not let RT become into some silly CRM- 
like tool that has many options and features but makes dealing with  
tickets difficult and slow. All the above stuff has nothing to do  
with what people in helpdesks have to do (take ticket, answer, wait  
for feedback, next), yet those other feature are what differentiates  
Helpdesk-solutions to those who decide about procurement/installation  
(management, etc.).




cheers,
Rainer
-- 
Rainer Duffner
CISSP, LPI, MCSE
rainer at ultra-secure.de