[rt-users] Controlled CC's (newbie questions)

[Braam van Heerden]

Greetings,

I am a new RT user, evaluating it for use in our scenario, and my questions may have been answered before, but unfortunately the ht://dig interface and the wiki doesn't return anything useful.  The ht://dig interface doesn't return any results for me at all.

We want to set up RT to be used for support at a sister company.  I have downloaded and installed the RPM version (3.4.5-2).  I have created a queue named "support" and gave the address "support at company.com" to it.  I have disable the automatic creation of users, we will only be working with named contacts at the specific clients.  Only they are allowed to submit support tickets, either via email or on the portal.

We have for example,

- Client A
	- Contact A.A
	- Contact A.B
	- Contact A.C

- Client B 
	- Contact B.A
	- Contact B.B
	- Contact B.C

Now, what we would like to do is the following:

1) A contact can open a ticket for that specific client either via email or via the web interface.
2) The ticket must have a severity field that indicates the SLA clauses that gets activated by the incident.
3) We have set up a Trac database to track development tickets.  Either the helpdesk personnel or the system will create a Trac ticket if it is deemed necessary.  Only pure support tickets will go into RT.
4) A client's contacts may not see tickets from other clients.
5) Clients may only see replies, not comments.
6) We would like all the contacts for a client to be automatically CC'ed whenever any of them opens a ticket, and also have them CC'ed on the replies (not comments).  Therefore if Contact A.A logs an incident, Contact A.B and Contact A.C is immediately CC'ed on this.  However, none of Client B's contacts may see the tickets.

My thoughts so far:

1) and 2) I have working perfectly already.
3) will be done either manually (not an issue for us), or I could try to write a scrip to do that when a certain button is selected (still looking at the available options here).
4) and 5) The permissions system seems to do separation well.
6) This is the major stumbling block for me.  It appears I can make all the contacts CC'ed on all tickets, but that would inform client B of the issues at client A.  I then thought of creating two separate queues, naming them e.g. "Support (Client A)" and "Support (Client B)", with email addresses clienta at support.company.com and clientb at support.company.com, but the management insists on using a single email address.  Also, multiple queues involve a lot of management when a new client is added, or an old client no longer has a support agreement.

Has anyone done something like this before, that can give me some configuration tips on how to achieve this in the best way possible?

Thanks :)

Braam van Heerden
Conversant Systems (Pty) Ltd