Using RT

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CSS Help Desk: Correspondence, Tickets, How to
Introduction to RT, Using RT

Logging In

Go to https://rt.css.washington.edu/. You should be prompted to enter your UWNetID and password. After entering these, you are logged in.

Home Page

RT at a glance

Immediately after logging in, you should see the RT at a glance screen.

If instead you see the RT Self Service screen or if there are no queues listed in the "Quick search" box on the right, then RT does not yet recognize your account as belonging to a CSS employee. Contact the computing staff and we will set it up. Creating a new ticket in the "computing" queue is one way to do this.

NOTE: You'll find that many items are clickable hotlinks in the RT interface, such as ticket numbers and queues. Clicking on these items takes you pretty much where you might expect it would.

RT at a Glance

Let's start with the center section of the page on the white background.

10 highest priority tickets I own: This section displays what you need to do. Each ticket will display its number, subject, queue, and status from this page. Click any ticket to display its basic information page or click Update to respond or comment on a ticket.
10 newest unowned tickets: Here you'll see the list of tickets which have been created, but not yet assigned to anyone.
Quick search: There'll be a list of queues under this heading. You'll be able to see how many tickets in each queue are new or open. This is another way to see what needs to get done. Click on any queue for more detail.
Don't refresh this page: This pulldown menu, on the lower right side of the screen, lets you select whether the homepage is automatically refreshed or not. The default, obviously, is no. Other options are refreshing the page every 2, 5, 10, 20, 60, and 120 minutes. Click the Go! button to select the displayed auto-refresh delay.

Top navigation bar

New ticket in: Use this to quickly start creating a ticket. Choose a queue from the drop-down menu and click the New ticket in: button to begin.
Search: type a search term in the text box and click the Search button to find tickets containing that term in the Subject-Field. You can also type in a ticket number, and jump directly to that ticket.
Preferences: click this link to edit your personal information on RT. On a basic level, this is information such as email address, name, password, phone numbers, location, and signature. This is also where you start working with personal groups and delegating rights, features which we'll explain later in this chapter.
Logout: click this to log out of RT. You can leave yourself logged into RT without breaking anything, but logging out is a good habit to get into for security purposes.

Left side navigation bar

These are the basic options. They will expand into a menu tree as you select various tasks. Your current location in this tree will always be colored yellow.

Home: the home page: where you are now. You can always get back to the home page by clicking Home in the upper left of the screen.
Tickets: clicking this brings you to the ticket search page.
Assets: clicking this takes you to Asset Tracker, RT's integrated inventory system.
RTFM: clicking this takes you to RTFM, RT's integrated knowledgebase. (documented separately).
Approval: sometimes, a ticket may require the approval of someone in your organization before it can be resolved. This section shows the status (pending, approved, denied) of approval requests. Most users won't need to worry much about Approvals.
Preferences: click this link to edit your personal information on RT. On a basic level, this is information such as email address, name, password, phone numbers, location, and signature; this is also where you start working with personal groups and delegating rights.

Tickets interface

First, you should know some of the various ways to navigate to an existing ticket:

from the Home page, click a ticket name under 10 highest priority tickets I own or 10 newest unowned tickets.
search for a ticket, from the box on the Home page or by clicking Tickets in the left side navigation bar. Then click the ticket.
click a queue and then click a ticket.
clicking a ticket's URL from within an email message.

Display

Ticket Display

Any way you navigate to a ticket, you'll arrive at that ticket's Display page first.

The Display page provides an overview of the ticket. As you can see, it includes information like Basics, Dates, Custom Fields, Links, and People (we'll go into more detail about that information later). The ticket's History, while not visible in this screenshot, is also available on the Display page. Note the ticket's number and name near the top of the screen. The ticket's number is also in yellow in the left side navigation bar.

Ticket pages will generally offer (some of) the options Reply, Resolve, Open, Take, Comment, and Extract Article in the upper right. Reply and Comment are covered later, Resolve means closing a ticket because work on it is finished, Open will change a ticket's status to "open", Take makes you the ticket's owner, and Extract Article is part of RT's integration with the knowledgebase RTFM. Once a ticket is taken, the Take option disappears; likewise, once a ticket is resolved, the Resolve option disappears. If a resolved ticket is reopened with the Open option, Open disappears and Resolve reappears.

Often, a block of information on the Display page will have its own ticket page, which you can reach from the Display page by using the clickable section headers within the ticket display like Basics, Dates, etc. You can also always reach a ticket page from within a ticket by clicking the correct item (Basics, Dates, etc.) in the left side navigation bar. We'll start explaining those options soon.

The Display page sometimes has an Attachments box (not a hyperlink), which lists ticket attachments, organized by name and then by date.

History

Ticket History

The History page shows everything that's ever happened to the ticket, including comments, replies, and addition of attachments.

Basics

This is where you change the ticket's subject, status, time worked, time left, priority, final priority, and queue. A ticket's subject is what it sounds like; "time worked" and "time left" refer to the number of minutes worked on this ticket only. If you're unclear on status, priority, or queue, refer to Introduction to RT#RT concepts.

After changing information on the Basics page, don't forget to click the Save Changes button.

This is also the page where you can change values in a custom field such as location or equipment. Custom fields work like any other field: you type things in them or select things from them.

Dates

From this page, you can adjust several dates relating to a ticket.

Starts: the date work should begin on a ticket (optional; the 'Scheduled' date)
Started: the date work began on a ticket
Last Contact: the date the ticket was last modified
Due: the date by which you must resolve the ticket and have a pint. Or, if you prefer, a banana.

To change any of these dates, type the new date in the text box and click the Submit button.

You can also read Ticket Dates which describes the meaning of all date fields tickets have and Relative Date Searching to learn the powerful abilities you have available in the Query Builder.

NOTE: Dates can be entered as mm/dd/yy. Times can be entered in either 24-hour time or 12-hour time (remember to specify am or pm).

People

This page deals with a ticket's owner, requestor, Cc(s), and Admin Cc(s). To review these roles, see Introduction to RT#RT concepts.

To reach a ticket's People screen from within a ticket, click People in the left side navigation bar:

There are two ways to add a watcher. If you know a potential watcher's email address, you can add one directly. Otherwise, you can search for them, then add whoever you've found.

To search for users before adding them as watchers:

look under Find people whose
choose User Id, Email, Name, or Organization from the first drop-down menu
choose contains, doesn't contain, is, or isn't from the second drop-down menu
type your search term in the text box
click the Go! button

NOTE:* RT searching is case sensitive: Searching for "foo" will not find a person with the name "Foo"; searching for the group "support team" will not find the group named "Support Team".

To search for groups before adding them as watchers:

look under Find group whose
choose Name or Description from the first drop-down menu
choose contains, doesn't contain, is, or isn't from the second drop-down menu
type your search term in the text box
click the Go! button

If RT finds a group, the group name will appear in the Add new watchers area, the lower half of the gray box. You've now found your group, and you're ready to configure it as a watcher.

To add new watchers:

locate the Add new watchers section of the page
for each watcher you're adding, choose Requestor, Cc, or AdminCc from the Type drop-down menu
type the new watcher's email address in the Email text box, if it's not already filled in
click the Save Changes button

For each email address, RT will search for an existing user to match it. If there is no match, RT will create a new non-staff user. (If the user is already filled in from a search, it won't be automatically created)

To remove a watcher:

locate the Current Watchers section of the page
check the box next to the watcher(s) to delete
click the Save Changes button

To assign a ticket or change its owner:

change Owner drop-down menu to the person of your choice
click the Save Changes button

To change a ticket's owner to yourself, click Take from within a ticket. Generally, you can only take a ticket that is owned by Nobody. There is no intermediate "Are you sure you want to do this?" page, but if you wrongly take a ticket, you can always give it back. Once a ticket is taken, the Take option disappears from the ticket's interface.

Jumbo

This page shows editable versions of the Basics, Dates, People, and Links screens on one page, plus Update Ticket fields for adding comments or replies. This screen is useful if you must modify several aspects of a ticket at once. Be sure to click the Save Changes button when you're done.

NOTE: For the rest of this chapter, when we say something like "from within the ticket's History page..." that means you should click History to get there, if you're not there already. If you don't see a History link to click, that likely means you're not in the ticket yet. If you're already in the History page, you don't have to click History again, of course. See #Tickets interface if this is confusing you.

Common tasks

Now that you know your way around RT's web interface, there are probably many tasks you can figure out on your own. However, we wanted to make sure you had a step-by-step guide to the most important and common tasks such as using RT's search functionality and working with tickets.

Searching

Search in RT is fairly intuitive, but there are some features worth noting:

Searches, by default, are sticky. That is, if you return to the Search page during a session, it will display the most recent search (unless you click on the "new query" link).
Searches are, by default, limited to 50 results per page.
Searches are iterative - you build them up. If you search for tickets owned by Jane, then search for open tickets, you'll get open tickets owned by Jane.
Iterative searches do work with incompatible conditions, that is, x OR y. If you search for tickets owned by Jane, and then for tickets owned by Alice, you'll get tickets owned by Jane OR Alice. Thanks to Lorens Kockum for pointing this out. (This is only true if OR is selected as the aggregator.)
When RT displays multiple search results, it will also display Previous, Next, First, and Last links for navigating through the matching tickets.
Clicking queue links takes you to a search page that displays search results for new and open tickets in that queue. That search can then be further refined.

Simple ticket search:

type your search term in the text box in the upper right of the screen
click the Search button

If you get too many results, you can still pinpoint what you need by searching again to narrow the results down.

More advanced ticket search:

click Tickets in the left side navigation bar

Query Builder

You'll be presented with the Query Builder screen, where you can search by all the attributes of a ticket. For instance, you could search for tickets you own by selecting your own name from the Owner drop-down menu, or search for only high priority tickets. Click the Add button after adding criteria. To remove criteria, select it in the Query box and click Delete.

You may also alter the number of search results returned per page, how the results are sorted, and which columns to display in the list of results. Click the Search button when you're done.

To bookmark a search so you can return to the results later:

click Bookmarkable link
add the page to your Bookmarks, Favorites, or whatever applies for your browser

To clear previous search results and start a new search:

click New Search in the left side navigation bar

To search for new and open tickets in a queue:

from the Home page, click a queue name under Quick search

You'll be taken to a search page populated with a search for new and open tickets in that queue. Enter more search terms to refine the search.

To search for users:

from within a ticket's People page, look under Find people whose
choose User Id, Email, Name, or Organization from the first drop-down menu
choose contains, doesn't contain, is, or isn't from the second drop-down menu
type your search term in the text box
click the Go! button

To search for groups:

from within a ticket's People page, look under Find group whose
choose Name, or Description from the first drop-down menu
choose contains, doesn't contain, is, or isn't from the second drop-down menu
type your search term in the text box
click the Go! button

Saving Searches using the "Saved Searches" module

After you've added all of the criteria you want for a query, before clicking Search, first select where you'd like to save this search (the Privacy pulldown). You can save for only yourself "My Saved Searches", or for a group you are a member of "<Group Name>'s saved searches". Type in the description, then click Save. Later, you can load the query from the Load saved search pulldown. You must have the correct permissions to show saved searches and to edit them.

Relative Date Searching

Consider needing a bookmarkable search which lists what you've resolved in the last month or what is due in the next week. Manually entered dates make the search outdated soon after creation. RT allows for some relative date/time phrases.

Examples:

Tickets resolved in the last month

Resolved → After → -1 month

Tickets created in the last week

Created → After → -1 week

Tickets due in the next week

Due → After → Today AND Due → Before → +1 week

Tickets created between an hour and three hours ago

Created → After → -1 hour AND Created → After → -3 hour

Creating a new ticket

To create a new ticket, start by selecting its queue:

from any page, select the queue of your choice from the New ticket in drop-down menu near the top of the screen
click the New Ticket in button

The next page will be the Create a new ticket page, defaulting to the Show basics view with the following fields:

Queue: this should already be filled in for you.
Status: generally, you'll leave this at the default, new. However, you might sometimes need to create a ticket to record a past occurrence or a problem that's already being worked on, so you might choose one of the other options from the drop-down menu.
Owner: you can give the ticket an owner or leave this blank and let someone claim it later.
Requestors: the default email address will be yours. Fill in any others if needed.
Cc and Admin Cc: if you don't know what these are for, see Introduction to RT#RT concepts.
Subject and Attach file should look familiar to most email users and work basically the same way.
Describe the issue below means you should explain why this ticket exists.

If you click Show details or scroll to the bottom of the page, you'll be brought to the optional but potentially useful fields Priority, Final Priority, Time Worked, Time Left, fields for dates (Starts and Due), and fields for each link (Depends on, Depended on by, Parents, Children, Refers to, Referred to by). These, too, are explained in Introduction to RT#RT concepts.

When you're done filling in fields, click the Create button to make the ticket. Clicking Show Basics brings you back to the top of the page.

Replying and commenting

There are two ways you can respond to a ticket. By default, a reply is public and a comment is hidden from the requestor. Comments and replies are listed permanently under the ticket's History.

To say something about a ticket, first make sure you are within one of the ticket's pages (Display, History, Basics...) then click Comment or Reply in the upper right of the page. To quote the text of an existing comment or reply, click Reply or Comment next to an existing reply or comment, from within the ticket's History, to quote the text of the existing reply or comment inline.

You'll see drop-down menus for Status and Owner. You probably won't need to change the defaults here.

There will also be a text box for how many minutes the ticket has been worked on. Fill this in if you want to or if you are supposed to be logging your time.

The Update Type drop-down menu will be automatically set to Comments (Not sent to requestors) or Response to requestors, depending on whether you clicked Comment or Reply as your first step. You can select the other option if you've changed your mind.

As for the other fields, we'll assume you have a working knowledge of email. RT correspondence has some fields that should be familiar to email users, such as Subject, CC, BCC, Attachments, and Message. The Subject field may be automatically filled in with the name of the ticket.

NOTE: email addresses in the CC and BCC fields of replies and comments will not automatically receive future updates.

Enter your comment or reply in the Message field, and when everything's done, click the Submit button

You'll be brought back to the ticket's Display page, with a status message on top that says your comment or reply has been sent/recorded, or that there is a problem and it hasn't.

To add a signature that will appear by default at the bottom of all your comments and replies:

click Preferences in the upper right, or in the left side navigation bar
type your (preferably short) signature in the Signature field
click the Submit button

Reply and comment integration with RTFM

RTFM is RT's integrated knowledgebase system. If you are using RTFM, you should know that when you reply to or comment on tickets in RT, you can search for and include (editable) RTFM articles in the reply or comment. The ticket will now have a new link: Refers To (article of your choice). This screen shot shows the relevant part of the Reply or Comment screen, located under Attach in the Message portion of the page:

If you know the name or number of the article you'd like to include, enter it in the Include RTFM article text box and click the Go button.

To find an RTFM article to include in the reply or comment, enter a search term in the Search for RTFM articles matching text box and click the Go button. Assuming there are search results, click the Go button next to the article you'd like to include.

Modifying a ticket

Listed alphabetically by item that could be changed:

due date (or any other date):
- from with a ticket's Dates page, type the new date in the Due: text box
- click the Submit button
final priority:
- from within a ticket's Basics page, type a new number in the Final Priority field
- click the Save Changes button
history: we're sorry, a ticket's history cannot be changed.
owner:
- from within a ticket's People page, change Owner in drop-down menu to the person of your choice
- click the Save Changes button
priority:
- from within a ticket's Basics page, type a new number in the Priority field
- click the Save Changes button
queue:
- from within a ticket's Basics page, select a new item from the Queue drop-down menu
- click the Save Changes button

NOTE: When you change a ticket's queue, queue-specific values such as custom fields will disappear. They will not be deleted, but they will be hidden.

status:
- from within a ticket's Basics page, select a value from the Status drop-down menu
- click the Save Changes button
subject:
- from within a ticket's Basics page, type new data in the Subject field
- click the Save Changes button
time left:
- from within a ticket's Basics page, type a new number in the Time Left field
- click the Save Changes button
time worked:
- from within a ticket's Basics page, type a new number in the Time Worked field
- click the Save Changes button

Modifying people

To assign a ticket or change its owner:

from a ticket's People page, change Owner in drop-down menu to the person of your choice
click the Save Changes button

To add new watchers:

from a ticket's People page, locate the Add New Watchers section of the page
choose Requestor, Cc, or AdminCc from the Type drop-down menu
type the new watcher's email address in the Email text box
add up to two more watchers, for a total of up to three
click the Save Changes button

To remove a watcher:

from a ticket's People page, locate the Current Watchers section of the page
check the box next to the watcher(s) to delete
click the Save Changes button

Modifying link

To add a link (Depends on, Depended on by, Parents, Children, Refers to, Referred to by):

from within a ticket's Links page, look under New Link
enter ticket numbers (or other data) into the appropriate fields, separating multiple entries with spaces
click the Submit button

To delete a link:

from within a ticket's Links page, look under Current Links
check the box next to the link to delete
click the Submit button

To merge a duplicate ticket into an identical ticket:

from within a ticket's Links page, look under New Links
enter only one ticket number in the Merge Into: text box
click the Submit button

If someone tries to use the ticket ID of a ticket you've merged into another one, RT automatically redirects to the correct, newly-merged ticket. Merging tickets also merges all ticket data such as watchers, links, and history.

Updating many tickets at once

Sometimes, you may need to make a change to several tickets at once. There's an easy way to do this: locate the tickets you want (see the Searching section of this chapter for help) → click Update multiple tickets

You'll be sent to a Bulk ticket update page where you can add a comment or reply to all the tickets, or change the tickets' owner, requestors, Cc, Admin Cc, subject, priority, queue, status, start date, due date, and resolved date. The power!

Click the Submit button when you're done.

Resolving a ticket

If a ticket has been completed and doesn't need any more work, you can resolve it by clicking Resolve in the upper right of one of the ticket's pages (Display, History, Basics...).

This takes you to an update form (see #Replying and Commenting) but sets the Status drop-down menu to Resolved.

Use the Message text box to explain why you're resolving the ticket.

When you're done, click the Submit button.

You'll be brought to the ticket's Display page and told the comment has been recorded and ticket has been resolved (or not, if there is a problem).

Changing your own user information

To change your own name, email address, phone numbers, location, or signature:

click Preferences in the upper right of the screen or in the left side navigation bar
type new information in the desired fields
click the Submit button

Personal groups

Users can grant their rights to others by creating a personal group and delegating the rights to the members of that group. This is convenient if you're going on vacation or need to pass the buck for any reason.

First of all go to your Personal Groups page:

click Preferences
click Personal Groups

To make a new personal group:

click New group in the left side navigation bar
type your group's name and description in the Name: and Description: text boxes
click the Submit button

To add members to a personal group:

click the name of a personal group
click Members in the left side navigation bar
select user(s) or group(s) from the Add members box
click the Submit button

To delete members from a personal group:

click the name of a personal group
click Members in the left side navigation bar
check the box next to the user(s) or group(s) to delete
click the Submit button

To change a personal group's name or description:

click the name of a personal group
make changes
click the Submit button

To disable a personal group:

click the name of a personal group
clear the Enabled checkbox
click the Submit button

Unlike disabled users and queues, disabled personal groups will still be visible in listings. That removes a step from the process of re-enabling them when necessary.

To re-enable a personal group:

click the name of a personal group
check the Enabled checkbox
click the Submit button

Delegating

Once you have a personal group, you can delegate rights.

In order to delegate rights, you'll need to have the right "Delegate Rights."
If you've been granted a right and you delegate it to someone, then someone revokes your right, that also revokes your delegate's right.
If you've been granted a right globally, you can't delegate it for just one queue and vice versa.

[screenshot]

To delegate rights to a personal group:

click Preferences
click Delegation
locate the right(s) you'd like to delegate
check the box next to the right(s) and under the correct personal group(s)
click the Submit button

To stop delegating rights to a personal group:

click Preferences
click Delegation
locate the correct right(s)
clear the checkbox next to the right(s) and under the correct personal group(s)
click the Submit button

Spam

Specific to CSS: There is a spam filter scanning incoming e-mail from the CLASSRM e-mail address. The filter prevents messages that have an 80% to 100% likelihood of being spam from being passed on to RT. All other messages are passed directly to RT and placed in the Help Desk Queue. Some messages will inevitably be spam, despite the filtering.

If some spam makes it through to the Help Desk queue, you can move it into the spam queue. Until the spam has been moved to the spam queue, it will appear in the "10 newest unowned tickets" display window. Tickets can also be rescued from the spam queue by moving the ticket into the queue it was originally intended for.

Tickets in the spam queue will be periodically reviewed by staff to make a final determination as to whether it should be deleted, or rescued and reassigned to another queue. Only staff with -admin permissions can delete tickets from the spam queue. Monitored by the Computing & Technology Services and Media Services groups.

Logging out

You can leave yourself logged into RT without breaking anything, but logging out is a good habit to get into for security purposes. Logging out is standard:

click Logout in the upper right hand corner of the page.

Adapted from http://wiki.bestpractical.com/index.cgi?action=revisions&page_name=ManualUsingWebInterface&revision_id=46
update this link if you integrate changes from the upstream source

Retrieved from "http://www.css.washington.edu/wiki/Using_RT"

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