OTRS the RT way

December 31, 2010 · 2 min · pommi

I have used RT (Request Tracker) for quite a while. Starting with RT 2.0.15 + MySQL. Later upgraded that version manually (with a couple of nasty PHP scripts) to RT 3.6.x + PostgreSQL. It worked and stayed consistent. I’ve never been very happy about RT. It now contains about 80K tickets and it is slow. I have been reading a lot of forum/mailinglist threads about migrating from OTRS to RT and RT to OTRS because RT or OTRS should be faster. Unfortunately I’ve not found a real conclusion.

While starting a new project I gave OTRS a try. Just because I think it doesn’t really matter if you use RT or OTRS. I liked the way some things worked in RT, so I created some patches to make OTRS work a little bit like RT.

Empty body check

First of all the body part in OTRS is required for some reason. This is annoying. For example when a ticket is resolved and a customer replies to thank you, you just want to close the ticket. Or when you just want to change the owner of a ticket. This patch disables the emtpy body check:

Download: pommi.nethuis.nl/…/otrs-3.0.4-remove-empty-body-check.patch

RT-like Dashboard

OTRS: RT-like Dashboard In RT you are responsible for your own tickets. The RT 3.6 dashboard shows you the most recent open tickets you own. And it shows the most recent unowned new tickets. OTRS shows all open tickets, instead of only the ones you own. OTRS also shows all new tickets including the ones that are already locked.

This patch adds a new module called DashboardTicketRT. It’s a customized DashboardTicketGeneric module to make your dashboard work like RT. After you have applied the patch, you can use this module with the following steps:

  1. Login as admin
  2. Go to Sysconfig
  3. Go to Frontend::Agent::Dashboard (Group: Ticket)
  4. In TicketNew change:
    • Attributes: StateType=new; to StateType=new;OwnerIDs=1;
    • Module: Kernel::Output::HTML::DashboardTicketGeneric to Kernel::Output::HTML::DashboardTicketRT
  5. In TicketOpen change:
    • Attributes: StateType=open; to StateType=open;StateType=new;OwnerIDs=UserID;
    • Module: Kernel::Output::HTML::DashboardTicketGeneric to Kernel::Output::HTML::DashboardTicketRT
    • Title: Open Tickets / Need to be answered to My Tickets / Need to be answered
  6. Restart your server

Download: pommi.nethuis.nl/…/otrs-3.0.5-dashboardticketrt.patch

Instant Close / Spam

OTRS: InstaClose link To work a little bit more efficient this patch adds an InstaClose and InstaSpam link to each ticket. With a single click you can close a ticket or move a ticket to the Junk queue. The patch adds a new module called AgentTicketInsta. You must add this code to Kernel/Config.pm to enable it:

$Self->{'Frontend::Module'}->{'AgentTicketInsta'} = {
 Group       => [ 'admin', 'users' ],
 Description => 'Instant Ticket Actions',
 Title       => 'Insta',
};

Download: pommi.nethuis.nl/…/otrs-3.0.4-instant-close-spam.patch

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