[rt-users] (no subject)

[Greg Evans]

Hello,

Not sure if this made it to the list last time, so I am resending, I
apologize in advance if it already got to many of you and it is a duplicate.

Hello Mike and everyone else,

I wanted to follow-up on our conversation below regarding users, etc.

I obviously don't want massive data duplication so it would seem that the
best way to do this would be to import all of our internet customers into RT
as users with basically no permissions, set them up in a group and all of
that normal business.

All of my users are in our radius file and accessible via NIS, which is
great and I am pretty sure that I can figure out how to import them from
that using standard myself syntax and a exported .csv or similar file.

The problem that was brought to my attention is that I would need to do this
daily. Is there a way that you or someone would know of that would allow me
to import only the new data each day? My boss thought that using NIS would
be better, and I think that I would agree with that.

Please remember, I am not much of a programmer, but I would like to see if
this is possible and maybe an example if someone knows how to do it :)

Regards,

Greg
 
 

> -----Original Message-----
> From: Mike Peachey [mailto:mike.peachey at jennic.com] 
> Sent: Thursday, February 07, 2008 7:09 AM
> To: Greg Evans; RT Users
> Subject: Re: [rt-users] Ideas on best way to do this?
> 
> Greg Evans wrote:
> > Hey Mike,
> > 
> > Thanks for the reply.  I am attaching a screenshot of what 
> I created for my
> > tickets previously with custom fields and all of that. 
>  >
> > Maybe with my SS you can tell me if I am at least on the 
> right track there?
> 
> Well, with regards the last four custom fields, you certainly are, 
> that's pretty much what they're designed for, but FirstName, 
> LastName, 
> e-mail address and telephone number will start to cause you massive 
> issues due to data duplication.
> 
> Although you would be manually linking the tickets together, 
> each time 
> you raise a ticket for the same user, you have to re-enter the same 
> information, and if any information changes, it won't be reflected on 
> previous tickets, so if you look at an old ticket and want to 
> call the 
> customer, you'd have to check the most recent ticket for the 
> most recent 
> phone number, instead of just getting the number from the 
> user's (always 
> up to date) information.
> 
> Also, you are then creating masses of data within the 
> database that is 
> unnecessary and in violation of data normalisation guidelines. You 
> should only need to store each piece of information about one object 
> once, not once per ticket.. so you're massively increasing 
> the amount of 
> data to store and it will eventually have an impact on the total size 
> and speed of the database as a whole.
> 
> If you create a user for each customer as they advise you of an issue 
> (either manually, or through a myriad of automagical ways), 
> then you can 
> add as much information as you need to about the user in the user 
> information fields, add as many user custom fields as you 
> want for extra 
> information about that user and then ANY time you are looking at a 
> ticket belonging to that user, you are linking straight to the user's 
> account and their full information, even if you change it.
> 
> Tickets should only need to hold information that changes for each 
> ticket raised.
> Users should only need to hold information that changes for each user.
> 
> Then, turn off the e-mailing of replies to users and bingo - 
> a scalable, 
> usable, logical system.
> 
> 
> > You seem to know a lot about RT and how it works
> 
> I didn't used to, I've just been tweaking it for so long I've 
> been past 
> most of the code and added a lot of my own.
> 
> > , and I am admittedly not a
> > programmer by any means LOL!  
> 
> Me either, I wish I was, then it wouldn't take so long :p
> 
>  > But do you know if it is possible for RT (I
> > couldn't find it when I searched Google) to automatically 
> enter the time
> > worked based on the time elapsed between when the ticket 
> was opened and when
> > it was updated? I guess(?) that if an issue remained 
> unresolved and the
> > customer called back it would have to add time to said 
> ticket on each
> > update?  I will keep searching for this on my own, but 
> figured it couldn't
> > hurt to ask.
> 
> I don't see why not. I might be wrong about the *best* way to 
> do it, but 
> it certainly seems you could add a custom scrip action to do it.
> 
> Pseudocode:
> 
> "On Ticket->Update, Ticket->Worked = Ticket->Updated() - 
> Ticket->Created()"
> 
> Although, you might need to convert the times into Unix time, then do 
> the sums and then convert back again.
> 
> > Thanks for all of your help. I am going to take those 
> suggestions and
> > implement them as well to make sure that if this needs to scale up
> > eventually, which I am sure it will, that I don't get 
> caught in a nightmare
> > that I cannot get out of.
> 
> Good plan. Just make sure to keep an eye out for others who know less 
> than you, because without those who know more to help out 
> those who know 
> less, RT would never be the great, widely-used system it is.
> 
> 
> -- 
> Kind Regards,
> 
> __________________________________________________
> 
> Mike Peachey, IT
> Tel: +44 114 281 2655
> Fax: +44 114 281 2951
> Jennic Ltd, Furnival Street, Sheffield, S1 4QT, UK
> Comp Reg No: 3191371 - Registered In England
> http://www.jennic.com
> __________