[rt-users] How to flag neglected tickets for support engineer response??

Mon May 12 19:05:32 EDT 2008

We have two main support queues, one for support, one for RMA.  We handle about 50 new tickets a week and usually have just over 100 tickets open at any given time.  So we don't have a lot of support infrastructure, we have two people doing support plus they bring in various other people either from manufacturing for RMAs or from engineering / development for expert advice.

If we could move stuff in to a couple separate queues as they are worked on, that might simplify the support management and help us ensure nothing gets missed.  One of the things we look for in our custom query is how recently a ticket was active (as opposed to when it was opened).  We basically set priority based on that.

Dominic Lepiane

> -----Original Message-----
> From: Kenneth Crocker [mailto:KFCrocker at lbl.gov]
> Sent: Monday, May 12, 2008 3:33 PM
> To: Dominic Lepiane
> Cc: Darren Nickerson; rt-users at lists.bestpractical.com
> Subject: Re: [rt-users] How to flag neglected tickets for
> support engineer response??
>
> Dominic, Darren, & Graham,
>
>
>         Hoe many tickets do you get a week? How many Queues
> do you have? What kind of support infrastructure have you set
> up? Depending on your answers, you might want to consider
> setting up a single queue for receiving ALL requests and then
> run some RT queries to select/sort those requests based on
> whatever criteria is most important and then move thos
> tickets to the support queue where the work can be
> done/documented by a member of the appropriate support group.
> there's a lot of work that goes into setting up the
> groups/privileges that will support a descent support
> infrastructure. I'll be glad to help as we went thru the same
> problems. We now have over 75 support queues that handle
> hundreds of tickets a month with the ability to review &
> prioritize/approve tickets for work as well as a QA Testing
> WorkFlow process as well. Let me know.
>
>
> Kenn
> LBNL
>
> On 5/12/2008 11:24 AM, Dominic Lepiane wrote:
> >> -----Original Message-----
> >> From: rt-users-bounces at lists.bestpractical.com
> >> [mailto:rt-users-bounces at lists.bestpractical.com] On
> Behalf Of Darren
> >> Nickerson
> >> Sent: Monday, May 12, 2008 10:53 AM
> >> To: rt-users at lists.bestpractical.com
> >> Subject: [rt-users] How to flag neglected tickets for support
> >> engineer response??
> >>
> >> Folks,
> >>
> >> We've been using RT for some time now, and have managed to get by
> >> with pretty much a stock configuration. Our support reps
> are starting
> >> to get lost in a sea of tickets though, where only the
> most recently
> >> 'alive' tickets get attended to, and lots of important
> ones drop off
> >> their radar. We're looking to take advantage of some of the fancy
> >> hooks, bells and whistles that are possible due to RT's open
> >> architecture.
> >>
> >> Our objective is to flag tickets that require a support engineer
> >> response somehow. Our criteria for determining which
> tickets require
> >> a response might be, for example, tickets where the last
> comment or
> >> correspondence was not from someone in the RT group "Support". In
> >> theory, that would mean that the customer (or other interested
> >> parties in the cc: list) were the last ones to update the
> ticket, and
> >> the ball is now in our court.
> >>
> >> Our preliminary research suggests that we might be able to invoke
> >> RT::Search::FromSQL from rt-crontool and use that to
> locate tickets
> >> matching the above condition, and "do something" to those
> tickets.
> >> We're not sure what "do something" means, but it might
> mean setting a
> >> custom field (Ruslan says custom statuses are bad ;-)) or
> something
> >> similar. Where we really hit a wall is how to prioritize
> these items
> >> in the "RT at a glance" page as needing a response from us. Is it
> >> possible to colorize the tickets red, perhaps?
> >>
> >> Essentially what we need is a 'Customer Pending' and 'Support
> >> Pending' designation that will allow us to flag "Support Pending"
> >> tickets for support engineer attention. This seems like a common
> >> problem ... does anyone have any recipes/solutions/tips that might
> >> help? All advice welcomed!
> >>
> >> -Darren
> >>
> >
> > Hi Darren,
> >
> > We have the same problem here.  Large amounts of tickets
> are pending and we need to be able to identify which ones are
> customer-last-commented vs. staff-last-commented.  Currently,
> we do this outside RT and have MySQL queries run from a PHP
> web page that query the RT database for this info.  And it is
> a big ugly query (see below).
> >
> > This was all done before I started here (I didn't do it!)
> so if there's some sane way of handling this in RT, I'm all
> ears.  Barring that, maybe this query can help you.
> >
> > "SELECT
> > `Tickets`.`id` AS '".$db_col1."',
> > `Tickets`.`Subject` AS '".$db_col2."', DATE_SUB(`Tickets`.`Told` ,
> > INTERVAL 8  HOUR  ) AS '".$db_col3."',
> > DATE_SUB(`Tickets`.`LastUpdated` ,  INTERVAL 8  HOUR  ) AS
> > '".$db_col7."', $hours_waiting AS '".$db_col8."',
> `Users1`.`RealName`
> > AS '".$db_col4."',
> > SUBSTRING( MAX( CONCAT( LPAD(Transactions.id,8,'0'),
> Users2.EmailAddress   ) ) , 9 ) AS '".$db_col10."',
> > $pgr_last AS '".$db_col9."',
> >
> IF(UNIX_TIMESTAMP(`Tickets`.`Told`)<UNIX_TIMESTAMP(`Tickets`.`LastUpda
> > ted`),1,0) AS '".$db_col11."', IF(!$pgr_last,
> >    IF($hours_waiting > 20,1.0,IF($hours_waiting >
> 8,2.0,IF(ISNULL(`Tickets`.`Told`),2.0,3.0))),
> >    IF($hours_waiting > 200,1.5,IF($hours_waiting >
> 48,2.0,IF($hours_waiting > 24, 3.0,
> IF(ISNULL(`Tickets`.`Told`),2.0,4.0))))
> >    ) AS Priority
> >
> > FROM  `Tickets` , `Queues`, `Users` AS `Users1`, `Users` AS
> `Users2`,
> > Transactions WHERE ( `Tickets`.`Status`  =  'new' OR
> > `Tickets`.`Status`  =  'open'
> > ) AND
> > `Tickets`.`Queue` =`Queues`.`id` AND
> > `Queues`.`Name` = 'PGR Support' AND
> > `Users1`.`id` = `Tickets`.`Owner` AND
> > `Users2`.`id` = `Transactions`.`Creator` AND
> (`Users2`.`EmailAddress`
> > NOT LIKE '%@ptgrey.com%' OR `Users2`.`EmailAddress` LIKE
> > '%@ptgrey.com%') AND Transactions.ObjectId = Tickets.id AND
> > ((Transactions.Type = 'Correspond') OR  (Transactions.Type
> = 'Create'
> > )) GROUP BY Tickets.id ORDER BY Priority, '$db_col8' DESC";
> >
> >
> >
> > Dominic Lepiane
> >
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