[rt-users] Duplicate ticket creation from CC's

[Kevin Freels]

Greetings!

Errata: RT 3.6.5 on FC8

I have a user who is the admin of one of the queues. He is asking about
a problem he is having with duplicate tickets being created, and here is
the scenario:

1) User Adam sends email to RT to create ticket, CC's Bill and Carl.
Email subject is "PROBLEM".
-- RT, Bill, and Carl all get the email.

2) RT generates ticket #1 with Subject "RT #1: PROBLEM", sends
notification to Adam.

3) Bill "RepliesAll" to Adam's email *original* email, so email is sent
to RT and Carl from Bill. Email Subject is now "Re: PROBLEM".
-- RT, Adam, and Carl get the email.

4) RT generates ticket #2 with Subject "RT #2: Re:PROBLEM", sends
notification to Bill.

5) Carl "RepliesAll" to Bill's email, which is a reply to Adam's first
email (Subj" Re: PROBLEM"). Email Subject is now "Re: PROBLEM".
-- RT, Adam, and Bill get the email

6) RT generates ticket #3 with Subject "RT #3: Re:PROBLEM", sends
notification to Carl.


Do you see where this is going?

Now there are three tickets in the RT queue:

#1: PROBLEM (from Adam)
#2: Re: PROBLEM (from Bill)
#3: Re: PROBLEM (from Carl)

I understand that if you merge these, all the people will get all the
replies to the merged ticket. However, this could be problematic (and
painful) if the CC list is big and people are energetic. But it is a
pain to have to keep merging new tickets into the original, and my user
says this is not the way RT should handle it. I explain that a unique
ticket is created by each user/subject combination sent to RT, but he
believes this is "kludge" behavior (his word, not mine). 

So, what's the best way to avoid the duplicates?

My answer was "Don't CC them on the original email, but rather create
the ticket, then add them as CC's *on* thie ticket. But due to the
constraints of the environment, users do not always have access to the
RT GUI to do this when/after they create a ticket; most of our tickets
are created via email.

As always, any help is *greatly* appreciated!!!


....k 
-=-=-=- 
Kevin Freels
Director of Information Technology
Sendmail, Inc.
kfreels at sendmail.com  510/594.5572