[rt-users] Sending notification / alert mails without creating comments

[Jim Brandt]

This draft documentation describes how to send notifications without 
logging a comment or reply:

https://github.com/bestpractical/rt/blob/4.0/add-rt-crontool-docs/docs/automating_rt.pod

On 7/29/13 8:51 AM, Jim Berry wrote:
> Craig,
>
> On the wiki there was a reference to an rt-remind script at
> http://www.cs.kent.ac.uk/people/staff/tdb/rt3/rt-remind, which we
> downloaded and modified for our purposes. We have several cron jobs
> which use it to nag/notify owners, requestors, and managers (hourly,
> daily, or weekly, depending on the situation). Not optimal, but it has
> worked for us.
>
> Jim
>
> -----Original Message-----
> From: rt-users-bounces at lists.bestpractical.com
> [mailto:rt-users-bounces at lists.bestpractical.com] On Behalf Of Craig Ringer
> Sent: Sunday, July 28, 2013 11:04 PM
> To: RT users
> Subject: [rt-users] Sending notification / alert mails without creating
> comments
>
> Hi all
>
> I've been trying to do something that I expected to be simple with RT:
> Send reminders to subscribers on a ticket *without* creating any comment
> or correspondence on the ticket. Send an email silently, in other words.
>
> It turns out that much of RT::Action::SendEmail expects to have a
> current transaction and crashes ungracefully if there isn't one - it
> doesn't test to see if it gets a value for TransactionObj, but it fails
> at several points if the transaction is undef. It doesn't really seem to
> provide a way to tell it what group(s) you want notified except by
> examining the transaction either.
>
> I can write a completely separate action to do the job but I'll have to
> duplicate much of the code in RT::Action::SendEmail to do so, and that
> seems like a maintenance nightmare. The module isn't easily extended by
> a subclass in this way because many of the interesting bits are in the
> Prepare method anyway.
>
> How do others handle sending reminders and alerts, like SLA reminders?
> Do you just live with the annoying comment spam in tickets? Send mail
> directly, bypassing most of RT's mail handling code?
>
>
> I'm trying to find a way to reduce the amount of code duplication I need
> to do to send mail that's consistent with how RT expects other outbound
> mail to look - appropriate headers, etc.
>
> RT::Action::SendEmail::SendMessage(...) has the comment "TODO: Break
> this out to a separate module" in master and has had for a very long
> time. Willing to consider a patch that does so and tries to split
> RT::Action::SendEmail up into smaller, more easily wrapped/overridden
> methods too?
> --
>   Craig Ringer http://www.2ndQuadrant.com/
>   PostgreSQL Development, 24x7 Support, Training & Services
>

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