Learning RT

RT is used for a number of different purposes at FREE GEEK; see the page on RT for more information on that. Here, we'll discuss a few common functions that staff or volunteers might want to be familiar with.

The ticket

Everything in RT is based on the ticket, which can be thought of as a task. Every ticket will be in a queue - this shows what sort of thing it is, or what it relates to. The TechSupport queue holds technical support requests, the HardwareGrants queue holds grant requests, the Technocrats queue holds things the Technocrats need to do, and the staff subcommittee queues hold tickets relating to the things those committees need to get done.

There are many characteristics a task can have, including an owner, a priority, a due date, and a status. When a new ticket is created, it has no owner and no due date.

• The owner is the person responsible for the ticket. (See Claiming a ticket, below.)
• The priority is often used to determine how pressing the task is. If the priority of a ticket is over 50, the group should bring it up at their meeting.
• The due date can help with prioritizing as well, though some people never use it.
• The status is important, because if it's not kept up to date, the todo list will never get any shorter. (See Closing a ticket, below.)

RT at a glance

When you log in on RT, you will come to your home page, titled "RT at a glance". This has several sections. The left has navigation stuff; you will usually just use Home (to get to this page) and Tickets (which will get you to a ticket search). That and the top are consistent throughout RT. The top has the tool that will let you make a new ticket (be sure to select the proper queue), and a search form.

The main body of the page can set up to show useful and relevant information in a number of ways. Exactly what appears will depend on what level of access you have to the RT system, but typically the default setup will include a list any tickets you have bookmarked, the 10 highest priority tickets you currently own, a list of the newest unowned tickets (not terribly useful to most), some fields for quickly creating a new ticket, and to the right you will see a list of any reminders you have set up and an overview of all the queues you have access to.

Looking at queues

If you click on one of the queue headings on the right of your home page, you will see the list of all currently active tickets in that queue. Which queues appear in the list will depend on what you have been granted access to in the RT system. You will not be able to look at a queue or add to it unless you have permission to do so.

The headings in that list can be clicked on to sort by that category, so if you wanted to see which tickets in a queue belonged to you, you could click on Owner to see that, or you could click on Last Updated to see what has been languishing for months without any update. You can see more information about a ticket by clicking on its title.

Updating a ticket

When you're looking at a ticket, you can update it. You can change any of the important fields, like priority or even title, or you can make a comment on it (if, say, a phone call came in relating to an item, you could record that in a comment). You can also make a reply to the person who made the ticket, called the requestor. The reply might be a status update ("Ok, i did such-and-such. Check and see if that works for you.") or a request for more information ("I can only move forward on this if you give me the phone number for that person.") Communicating with a requestor that way makes a record, so you can see when you acted on it and so it doesn't look like the ticket is lying idle.

The reply and comment options are at the top of the page, under the search form. Each of the colored headings under that (The Basics, People, Dates) are links to pages where you can change those fields.

Claiming a ticket

Near reply and comment

Closing (Resolving) a ticket

Closing a ticket in RT is called "resolving" it. There are three ways to do this.

1. Click on the "Resolve" link at the top of the ticket to give yourself a space to make a comment.
2. Click on "Reply" to send a message to the requestor and change the status button to "Resolved".
3. Click on "Basics" and change the status to Resolved.

Once the ticket is resolved, it no longer appears in the queue's list, but can be found by an appropriate search.

If you are not able to resolve a ticket in a queue for which you believe you should have that right, contact a member of the RT admin group.

Deleting a ticket is very different, and access to that function is only available to RT administrators. This is used only for tickets created by spam, or test messages.

Customising the homepage

The contents of "RT at a glance" can be customised using the Edit links attached to the various elements, and which elements are present can be configured on the "master" customisation page, accessible through the Edit link at the top-right of the white space containing all elements. On the customisation page the lists on the left indicate elements available to be added to your home page and the lists on the right indicate what is currently selected for display. The top set is for the larger frames appearing at the left on your home page, the bottom set for the smaller summary frames on the right. You can add an element by selecting it on the left and pressing the right arrow button. You can modify the order in which they appear on the home page by selecting an element you've added and using the up and down arrow buttons next to the list.

Saved Searches

Saved searches can be created for when you will repeatedly need to view a set of tickets fitting a certain criteria. For example, if you are working in Tech Support you will likely be repeatedly viewing a list of all New or Open tickets in the TechSupport queue, but won't want Resolved tickets cluttering the list while you're trying to find what needs to be worked on.

When you're looking at a search results page (any list of tickets; clicking a queue title from the quick search list on your homepage is actually running a search for all tickets in that queue), you can click on Edit Search above the list of results to reach the Query Builder. With the Query Builder you can thoroughly tweak the conditions of your search, specifying a queue, status, ticket creator, and so on. More flexible searches can be created using the AND and OR aggregators, but setting them up can be a bit tricky and may require some patience and practice. Following the earlier example, if you wanted to view all Tech Support tickets that are either New or Open you would construct the following search:

Queue = 'TechSupport' AND ( Status = 'new' OR Status = 'open' )

Once you have your criteria set up, provide the search a descriptive title in the Saved searches panel to the right and hit Save. You can now add this search to your RT home page or recall this set of criteria by returning to the Edit Search page and selecting it from the saved search drop-down. One thing to consider when setting up a saved search is that when the results appear on your home page they will be restricted to a certain number of tickets (you -can- set this number yourself), so you may want to check the sorting criteria and ensure the first results returned are the ones you're going to want quickest access to.