[rt-users] Randomizing / Masking Ticket Numbers / or Intelligently concatenating multiple numbers as ticket number.

[Jeffrey Pilant]

Reza writes:
>Thinking out of the box, a Random Number is not necessary if we can mask 
>it from email responses.   In my specific case, I do not want non-staff 
>to access RT.  Only support agents.
>
>Is some sort of ID number absolutely necessary in the subject field and 
>can this be removed?  I guess a more technical question is how RT tracks 
>the email thread?   Is it through the headers, or a basic primitive 
>Subject field comparison ?
>
>Then again... I'm thinking...  a ticket number is so much easier if its 
>relayed to support agents by caller if they decide to simply call for 
>support.

If you set up RT to only let privileged users add content, then even of non-staff see the numbers and email address, they will get bounced messages if they try to use it.

As far as I know, the ticket number is required in the subject line.  However, if you modify the mail reader and sender to encrypt that number, you could make it harder to tell what it is.

Your use case mentioned confidentiality as a need compromised by ascending numbers.  I am not sure how that can occur.  Can you explain in more detail?

Alex Hall writes:
>To my knowledge, yes, mail is routed through use of the subject line. 
>When you create a queue, you give it a tag that is used in email subjects, 
>and that is combined with the ticket ID to form the basis for how RT knows 
>which queue/ticket a given message goes to.

My understanding is that the subject holds the hostname and the ticket id.  No queue name at all.  If you manage to direct it to a queue, it will redirect to the queue the ticket is in instead, if it is the wrong queue.

Jeff Voskamp writes:
>The increasing ticket number is baked into the Ticket table definition:
>`id` int(11) NOT NULL AUTO_INCREMENT,
>
>There's probably bits of code that assume this works this way.

Actually, there is not.  If you create a ticket number in the DB that skips a bunch of numbers, it will happily ignore all those skipped entries.  This is actually a good thing as it can be used to merge other data bases of tickets into the system without screwing up the main system beyond jumping the sequence number.

/jeff


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