[rt-users] Need help on an approval queue (coding customaction)

[Kenneth Crocker]

Nelson,


	Thanks for the spreadsheet. IT helps a great deal when it comes to 
debugging. It looks like you grant your AdminCc role a lot of "global" 
rights. If/when you have a lot of queues, this will prove troublesome , 
i.e. a AdminCc will have rights on queues you may not want that person 
to mess with. We have 75 queues and we don't let any AdminCc have some 
of those rights (create, own, modify) globally because that would give 
them the ability to interfere (even accidentally, like replying to an 
email and accidentally putting in the wrong ticket id - ends up in a 
queue he isn't responsible for) on tickets where he isn't wanted. So 
most of theose rights we grant to that role on a queue-by-queue basis. 
We already ran into those problems.
	Also, you seem to have granted some rights to individual users. Not 
really a good idea unless you never expect to have very many users (like 
never more than 10). If some of those users are also in some of those 
roles that have global rights, then you have compounded the difficulty 
in debugging due to redundant privileges. YOu make take away the right 
in one instance but it will remain because of the OTHER instance. So, I 
would advise you to analyze the usage situation in your setup and 
re-apply those rights accordingly. Remember, once a right is granted 
globally to a role or system group, it hardly ever needs to granted 
again at a lower level.
	Now to what I think the problem is. Understanding rights is hard 
enough, but with Approvals, the conditions under which they apply are 
not consistent, at least that is my experiance as well as others I've 
seen in the list. This is what we did,
	We took away the ability to create tickets thru email from all queues 
except one. That became our "Approvals" queue. We have an AdminCc and 
user-defined group for that queue and they can own and modify the 
tickets in that queue. If the problem is easily resolved by them, they 
do it. If it requires work by someone else, THEY and only THEY move the 
ticket to the appropriate queue along with their comments. The receiving 
queue has IT's own AdminCc and group that have rights to JUST that queue 
and they work on the ticket until resolved, etc. We like this workflow 
for several reasons:
	1) The granting and exercise of privileges is more consistent.
	2) All tickets get one ID number and that's it. That way ALL comments, 
modifications etc. stay with the ticket and it makes following the audit 
trail much easier (as opposed to seeing one ticket number be approved 
and another being worked on). The history stays with the ticket.
	3) We force the review of all tickets instead of having them arrive, 
helter-skelter into any queue (maybe even the wrong queue) so work 
doesn't get mismanaged. All tickets are prioritized compared to ALL 
work, not just the work in one queue.
	We haven't had one problem with permissions or correspondence or 
anything relating to approvals with this method. That's all I can tell 
you. Some Like the RT method and have gotten it to work. I guess that's 
why they make different flavors of ice cream (mine is TIn-roof sundae 
;-). Hope this helps.

Kenn
LBNL

On 4/11/2008 7:55 AM, Nelson Pereira wrote:
> Here is my Permissions list setup in Excel for every queue/group/role
> etc...
> This way I can track everything....
> 
> Regards,
>  
> Nelson Pereira
> 
> -----Original Message-----
> From: Kenneth Marshall [mailto:ktm at rice.edu] 
> Sent: Friday, April 11, 2008 10:54 AM
> To: Nelson Pereira
> Subject: Re: [rt-users] Need help on an approval queue (coding
> customaction)
> 
> On Fri, Apr 11, 2008 at 10:47:52AM -0400, Nelson Pereira wrote:
>> Also, what is an Actor as far as RT is concerned?
>>
> The person/user who make the update or change.
> 
> Ken
> 
> 
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