1. IT Partners Conference Oliver Thomas 19 April 2005
Request Tracker
IT Partners Conference
Oliver Thomas
19 April 2005

2. IT Partners Conference
Overview
What is RT?
A Case Study
RT on help.mit.edu
What’s next? 2
IT Partners Conference
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3. IT Partners Conference
Part 1: What is RT?
Request Tracker is one of several open source trouble ticket systems
Feature rich and highly customizable
Active open source developer and user community
In use at many universities and companies 3
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What is RT?
Several instances of RT in use at MIT
For an open source tool highly scalable and database independent*
Commercial support and custom development available
Several add-on components
RTFM, a simple knowledge base
RTIR, an incident response system 4
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What is RT?
Some unexpected feature gaps
Customer management and meta data
Lack of integrated reporting
No workflow management system*
Not highly optimized; large instances require tuning
Limitations of a web interface compared to a thick client 5
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Part 2: A Case Study
Matlab license renewal requests processed via RT
Successful example of (partial) process automation
Almost entirely done through user-side scrip(t)ing 6
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Matlab Workflow
Pre-processing
Client fills out a web form for Matlab and Tool Boxes
Server script parses & generates license file to pass to RT
RT creates ticket and using scrips and templates populates custom fields including license file and PLP fields
RT also creates a “refers to” link based on requisition number to SAPweb
Ticket is kept in “internal” queue not visible to customer 7
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Matlab Workflow
Verification (manual)
VSLS staff verify req and order
Windows license/PLP generated at Mathworks if necessary
Same for license for older version
Order delivery
VSLS staff change subject from "order" to "license”
Move the ticket to the “Completed”
Triggers RT to send out custom with license info
“Completed” queue is accessible to customers 8
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Matlab Workflow
Post-processing
Using saved search, generate an Excel spreadsheet containing critical data for SAP uploads
A few manual steps to clean up extra fields and add SAP-related tags
Submit spreadsheet for upload to SAP to release requisitions
Using the update multiple tickets feature, annotate tickets
After confirmation that file was successfully uploaded close ticket and update history 9
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Part 3: RT on help.mit.edu
Developed extensive additions to RT 3.2 to make RT more useful in a mixed phone and environment
Additions to customizations, per-queue options, and diverse “queue space”
Additions to RTFM
Many mods incorporated into RT 3.4 10
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MIT RT Screen Shots
Home Page
Search Builder
Search Results (Queue Listing)
Ticket Display
Side-by-side Display
Ticket Reply/Comment
Queue Configuration
Queue Configuration (Custom Fields)
User Configuration 11
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MIT RT Home Page 12
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Search Builder 13
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14. Search Results / Queue Listing 14
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Ticket Display 15
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16. Side-by-side Ticket Display 16
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17. Ticket Reply / Comment Screen 17
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Queue Configuration 18
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19. Queue Configuration Custom Fields 19
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User Configuration 20
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What’s Next?
MIT RT queue administrator and developer workshops
Richer and better integrated documentation and training
Casetracker migrations for current Casetracker users
Better and integrated reporting
An internal knowledge base 21
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Request Tracker
MIT RT Project Notebook: web.mit.edu/tooltime
Contact information:
Best Practical Solutions:
Other ticket tracking tools: web.mit.edu/tooltime/others
The End. 22
IT Partners Conference
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