[rt-users] RT 4

[Robert Grasso]

>
> I don't know about you and/or your users, but I practically never use
> the RT web interface to answer tickets - I use email nearly 100% of
> the time, precisely because I have much better tools available for
> writing email (including, but not limited to, support for temporary
> saves and therefore crash resistance).  Attempting to address this
> issue in RT is, in my opinion, simply not the right place to do it.
>
>

our support team is not in the IT staff. We use to sell CAD softwares, using finite elements methods, aimed to compute electrical
machines (engines etc). The people in our support staff are skilled physicists. But from an IT point of vue, they are ordinary
non-IT people. They are those kind of people that enjoy Microsoft because "Microsoft makes IT so easy, so seamless". So nowadays
when they are in front of some kind of software (Web software ? desktop software ? there is no difference to them - they are not
interested in our technological debates), they use it expecting that it is easy and seamless and comfortable : shortly said,
Microsoftish software (and don't begin a debate with me on this : I do hate MS - but our people enjoy it : I cannot do anything
against this - and you can't either).

And so, yes, they DO type their answers into RT - and if some of them don't when they are afraid of losing a long email, they are
angry against RT : RT supplies an input field, so well, it must supply the usual comfort functions supplied by MS-Outlook. This
seems obvious to them.

Microsoft has accustomed so many people to consider that IT IS this colorful window with buttons and the mouse, now KDE and Gnome go
this way too (Gnome is hiding every possible technical aspect it can - it's a pain to me and geeks and a joy for non-IT people). I
can hear your arguments about the technical limitation of a browser and such. But usual people can't and don't want to. Usual people
want to use softwares (whatever software) without any kind of hassle - our support staff are these kind of people, and the
workaround that you use and suggest is an unpleasant fix to them, they dislike and reject it even if they use it, and "the comfort
functions should be added, because this is the way IT goes nowadays" (I was reporting here my people's opinion).

Don't forget also that our people mainly use MSIE : thus I cannot consider your argument about extensions, which are only for
Firefox (there are very few extensions for MSIE). Don't forget, too, that an extension can stop being maintained : this is happening
now, some interesting extensions don't seem to be maintained in FF 2.0. Being an IT administrator, I cannot have official and
important softwares used by many people rely on extensions - this is definitely not acceptable.

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Robert GRASSO
System Engineer

CEDRAT
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Tel: +33 (0)4 76 90 50 45 Fax: +33 (0)4 76 90 16 09
mailto:Robert.Grasso at cedrat.com
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