[rt-users] How to email entire ticket history and attach items from tickets

[Rick Zoerner]

Hi,

I have set up an approval process for invoices that is working perfectly up to the paying part. However, to finish it up I have 2 tasks I can't figure out on my own.
1)   I need to be able to send the entire "History" of the ticket in an email, and,
2)   Attach any and all attachments from a particular custom field (of a type=attach multiple documents).

So far, for this project, I have:
   1- created a custom lifecycle using status changes to move a CapEx through stages of authorization, acquisition, approval for payment and payment.
   2- created custom templates for each status. Each status change triggers an email using a template customized  for that person/stage in the process (i.e. "Manager Approval", "IT Approval", "Finance Approval", "Acquire", "ApproveToPay", "Coding", "Pay").
   3- set up custom fields in the ticket to hold all the attachments needed during the process in a consistent location. Quotes, invoices, etc.

The history display is particularly important because it is the audit trail of all the approvals. Each approval level is just a drop-down custom field in the ticket (approved/denied). It is the history that shows who flipped it to "Approved" and the date/time stamp of when they did.

It works great for everybody in the sequence except the final stage - paying the invoice(s). 
Finance has to open the ticket, print the web page to capture the history (audit trail), then find the attachments and open/print each of them, then look at the field where coding listed how to book the payable (GL account and dollar amount), etc.

Since I am already sending them an email with a link to the ticket in it when the status changes to "pay"... I would like to include in that email the full history, a couple other custom fields I can capture easily (like the coding, the original justification, etc.), and attach the invoices - one-stop shopping for A/P. I just can't find anything to help me figure out how to call out the entire ticket history.

Thanks in advance to anyone who has a ready answer for this - I'm NOT a programmer at all, so I've spent several days looking through the documentation and only barely able to understand a fraction of it. Please speak to me as to a child - in Perl that would be an overly generous appraisal of my ability.

-Rick