Ticketsmith
From DotProjectWiki
Contents |
1 Important - Future / Status
TICKETSMITH IS NOT SUPPORTED AND PROVIDED AS IS - FEATURE REQUESTS / BUG REPORTS WILL NOT BE ADDRESSED.
Until release 3.x Ticketsmith will be distributed with the base dotProject installation at which point it will moved, as is, to an add on module. Category:AddOn Modules
The current functionality is pretty limited by today's help desk standards, there is minimal (if any) integration to much of dotProject's functionality (such as permissions / projects / tasks etc). This is because Ticketsmith is a completely third party module which was incorporated as a special request some time ago, and the licence is too restrictive for us to be able to do anything with it. Combined with that is the fact that development of it, even as a stand alone module, probably has stalled. Having said that - we've not been looking too hard as we've been intending to drop it from the core for sometime now.
dotProject will only incorporate Ticketing (or Help Desk) functionality as an add on as that sort of activity is not a generic Project Management intrinsic. It may be a requirement for some organisations or entities, but it is not strictly part of the ongoing discipline of PM - if anything we will be looking towards issue management which is subtly different from Ticketing, but no decisions have been made on that as yet.
If you're looking for ticket management (interrupt driven / support orientated task allocation) then you could follow the above link and look at the Help Desk module or you might be better off looking for a specialised application.
2 What is It?
It is basically a ticket or support system which relies mostly on tickets being lodged via email to an email address that is then processed into Ticketsmith via the program gateway.pl. For more details on gateway.pl please see below.
2.1 Handling Tickets
Tickets are bought into Ticketsmith either:
- by email - via gateway.pl
- by new ticket option on the Tickets screen
Once a ticket is received into Ticketsmith you can click on the pencil icon (on the left hand side of the screen) and you can then set the following options:
| Status | The hardcoded options are Open / Processing / Closed / Deleted |
| Priority | The hardcoded options are Low / Normal / High / Highest / 911 |
| Owner | User to whom the ticket is assigned |
You then have some options at the bottom of the ticket:
| Post followup (emails client) | When you use this option you are presented with an entry box to type up a reply to the ticket - this will then forward the response to the email address that the original ticket was lodged from, along with a copy to any CC's |
| Post Internal Comment | This option allows you to enter an internal note that is not forwarded to the original lodger of the ticket |
2.2 gateway.pl
gateway.pl provides a gateway between your SMTP mail network and Ticketsmith by filtering tickets lodged to your nominated address into a Ticketsmith / Ticket entry in the database.
Incoming email is only supported by the Ticketsmith module (this is not helpdesk - but Ticketsmith in the core system). Incoming email is processed by gateway.pl which is a Perl script designed to accept email which is sent to it via a procmail rule or by a .forward rule in your email setup. Usually on a windows system you will have to modify gateway.pl and php.ini to set mail transport agents and the SMTP host.
Outgoing email is support by various modules using the standard class defined in the classes directory.
In particular, with tasks, email is forwarded to the assignees on a task (if the appropriate box on the task add/edit form is ticked) BUT not to the user who is editing or creating the task - even if that person is also in the assignee list. This behaviour is controlled by the basic programming of the module and there is now an optional patch on our Sourceforge site to modify this behaviour to send the same notification to the ticket "owner" when they are assigned to the ticket.
Outgoing email is sent from Ticketsmith automatically when a follow up is recorded - this is sent to the ticket submitter and/or any cc addresses included. If you include your own address then you will get a copy of the email.
Settings on outgoing email are controlled by your php.ini file for things like, for example, mail transport agent and default from addresses.
