RT: UiO modifications

UiO uses request-tracker to handle user requests for a large number of sysadmin groups. This is a summary of the changes we did to the default installation

http://www.usit.uio.no/it/rt/modifications/

Petter Reinholdtsen pre@usit.uio.no / pere@hungry.com
RT workshop, Oslo, 2006-06-14

Local changes done to UiOs RT installation

LDAP authentication with local users.
LDAP to RT synchronization of groups and user information
Automatic password generation for non-LDAP users
Filtering spam to spam-suspect queue
Ticket administration using email
Mail threading based on SMTP References and In-reply-to (merged)
Automatic ticket priority escalation
Automatic reminders to ticket and queue owners
More consistent date/time display (timezone)
Automatic remove queue addresses as ticket watchers
Emailing stats for each queue
Module for statistics

Most of these are based on code found on the web.

Change summary 1/6

LDAP authentication with local users

Want to authenticate site users using LDAP
Want external (non-site) users as well
Site users have several mail addresses and one username
Hook into email reception and user authentication

LDAP to RT synchronization of groups and user information

Update group members in existing user admin system
Import/synchronize groups from LDAP. triggered by content of group comment.
Want to update primary email address when users move from. Also updates phone number and address based on LDAP phone book.

Change summary 2/6

Automatic password generation for non-LDAP users

New users without LDAP info get a password included in the first email response from RT.
Allow external users to request a new password on the login page by supplying their email address.
Based on scrip example found on the wiki and a modified template

Filtering spam to spam-suspect queue

MailPlugin looking for spamassasin headers, and send ticket into designated spam queue or throw it away (configurable).

Change summary 3/6

Ticket administration using email

Keep those handling tickets using email happy
From:-based "authentication" - sufficient as our mail system make it harder to fake email
And always social ways to hanle offenders.
Only revertable operations allowed over email
Will consider GPG-signing if stronger authentication is needed
BP integrated this functionality into RT, need to test it

Mail threading based on SMTP References and In-reply-to (merged)

Make it easier for those using RT via email to keep track of the messages assosiated with a given ticket.
Now integrated into RT

Change summary 4/6

Automatic ticket priority escalation

Based on script from Tim Bishop, modified to process all queues.
Increases priority to reach FinalPirority by due date
Make it hard to track recently manually changed tickets
BP integrated/developted improved version, to be tested

Automatic reminders to ticket and queue owners

Send email with summary of tickets with high priority
Queue owners are found based on group names (<queue>-owners)
The ticket owner is reminded until the ticket is over due,
then both the ticket owner and the queue owner is reminded

Change summary 5/6

More consistent date/time display (timezone)

RT date presentation is slightly confusing.
Use ISO dates and try to use the same time zone

Automatic remove queue addresses as ticket watchers

Improve handling of emails sent to two different RT queues
Avoid bounces going to the RT admins.

Change summary 6/6

Emailing stats for each queue

Based on script from Tim Bishop, modified to report all enabled queues instead of using a static list.
Keep the administration happy, as they can get a highlevel view on the activity in the organization.

Module for statistics

Using the RT plugin from http://wiki.bestpractical.com/index.cgi?RT3StatisticsPackage
Not locally modified, low maintainence mode.
Our version seem to ignore deleted tickets (spam)