August 28, 1998Handling requests with a trouble ticket system at DESY Zeuthen1 Wolfgang Friebel Motivation The req/reqng request tracking system Enhancements Problems left Experiences

August 28, 1998Handling requests with a trouble ticket system at DESY Zeuthen2 Motivation n Stimulated by an introductory talk to Remedy n Remedy license bought by DESY, usage straightforward n Installation at Zeuthen planned for months, estimated manpower for installing, configuring and administering led to further delays n Idea to try a quick and dirty interim solution (to cope with the requests while several admins were abroad) n Knew only about gnats and req n Selected req as it did fit best our work model

August 28, 1998Handling requests with a trouble ticket system at DESY Zeuthen3 Living without a request tracking system n Users trained to use to ”uco” to report problems n Additional problem reports by phone, to individuals n All admins receive the and work on some problems n Solutions are posted back to the users and to “uco” Works only for small group of admins, obvious drawbacks Ideally, a trouble ticket system should n be invisible or transparent to end users n put as few additional load to admins as possible n allow for efficient coordination of the work on requests

August 28, 1998Handling requests with a trouble ticket system at DESY Zeuthen4 The req/reqng request tracking system n Replaces the mailing list “ uco “ by a mail filter of the same name The filter n stores requests as s in repositories (active and resolved) n adds headers (user, priority, request date, owner, status, …) n sends the modified mail containing a request ID to “ uco-dist “ The administrator n reviews the request queue and performs actions on it: view a requestnotify a userchange the subject take itcomment a requestchange the user give it to somebodychange its status/prioritykill (remove) a request merge requestsresolve requestssearch a request

August 28, 1998Handling requests with a trouble ticket system at DESY Zeuthen5 The req/reqng request tracking system (2) n Almost completely written in perl5 n Powerful searching capabilities by indexing requests with glimpseindex n Now maintained at

August 28, 1998Handling requests with a trouble ticket system at DESY Zeuthen6 The req/reqng user/admin interfaces n interface reply to , possibly adding X-request-Do : headers inserting actions in the preformatted Subject : line Re:[Ztn #38] my problem becomes Re: [take Ztn #38]... n Command line interface programs q (query) req (do) uco (query for users) Graphical interface tkreq WWW interface wwwreq

August 28, 1998Handling requests with a trouble ticket system at DESY Zeuthen7 Enhancements at DESY n NFS based access replaced by client/server solution n Interfaces rewritten for client/server solution n Administrators get defined in a configuration file n Enhanced interface (subject line actions) n Search with glimpse integrated in cmdline interface

August 28, 1998Handling requests with a trouble ticket system at DESY Zeuthen8 Problems left n Mixture of req and reqng code n Problem area field defined but not used yet n Repository not well enough organized (many small files in a directory, replace it by an archive) n Interfaces still with bugs n Command line interface not yet fully implemented n DESY version not well maintained n no interface to Remedy Action Request System yet n No escalation procedures yet

August 28, 1998Handling requests with a trouble ticket system at DESY Zeuthen9 Experiences n In use since May 98, 400 trouble reports up to now n Usage statistics within the last month (96 total, 46/33/9/8 resolved same day/ 1 week/unresolved)

August 28, 1998Handling requests with a trouble ticket system at DESY Zeuthen10 Experiences(2) n Basically no overhead for administrators n Not even known to users (no automatic acknowledgement, not confronted with request number) n Main advantage: admins precisely know status of request n Searching/Indexing facility not used (yet) (admins get posted all solutions, do still remember) n Admins get much better organized and informed n Saves lots of $$$ (commercial solutions quite expensive)