Getting Started with RT

Request Tracker is the ticket tracking system that is used by many groups at MIT.

On this page:

Logging in

When you visit http://help.mit.edu in your browser, you'll see the RT Login page (shown at right). RT uses Touchstone to authenticate users, so you can log in with Certificates, Kerberos (where available), or your MIT username and password. (The username and password box you see on the login page is for RT usernames and passwords. By default, you don't have an RT password. You can contact staff if you need one set up, but Touchstone authentication should suffice.)

Setting Preferences

The first time you use RT, you should set your preferences as described in "Setting your RT preferences".

RT Home Page

A sample RT home page is shown at the right hd:(click for larger version). It contains several important features that we will refer to throughout this document:

1. The menu bar
2. The New Ticket button and queue
3. The search box
4. The saved searches box
5. The quick ticket creation box
6. The Quick Searches

Creating a ticket

The easiest way to create a ticket is to use the New ticket in button at the top right of the page. Select the appropriate queue from the drop-down menu (if you set your preferences correctly, this should be the queue you normally work in) and click New Ticket in. This will take you to the Call Center screen and will generate a ticket number for you. If you're in a hurry, this allows you to give the ticket number to the customer immediately, and then fill in the details later.

You can also create a ticket using the Quick Ticket Creation box on the home page. In addition to the queue, you can set the requestor, the Subject, and the initial history entry. This feature is useful for creating a ticket when you have just finished working with the customer.

In both cases, after creating the ticket, you will be taken to the Call Center screen. This screen will be covered later in this document.

Search Box

To quickly view a specific ticket, you can type the RT ticket number into the search bar at the top of the RT screen. This will be available from any page within RT. You can also search for the requestor's email address through this search bar.

Saved Searches

Based on your role within CS, you may already see some saved searches in this box. They will appear under the heading "My Saved Searches". These searches have been created by your supervisors – they may be used every day, or they may be tracking a specific on-going issue. Consult your supervisor for more information on how you should use these saved searches.

You can also use the Search page in RT to add your own personal saved searches. If you have any suggestions for saved searches that would benefit other staff or students, please suggest them to your supervisor.

Quick Searches

The Quick search queues are set through the preferences page. Once you select the queues in the preferences section of the preferences, they will appear on the right hand side of your RT home screen. Here you can see the number of new, open and waiting tickets in each of the queues and:

• View all new open and waiting cases by clicking on the name of the queue
• View all the new tickets, open tickets or waiting tickets individually by clicking on one of the respective numbers.

Searching RT

The easiest way to perform a search for a particular ticket is to click on the Tickets link in the menu bar. If you set your preferences correctly, this should take you to the "Simple Search" page. Regardless of your preferences, you can also get to Simple Search by hovering over the Tickets link in the menu bar, and choosing Simple Search from the drop-down menu. The Simple Search page is displayed at the right.

You can search by ticket number on this screen, but it's generally faster to enter the ticket number in the box at the top right of every RT page.

Smart Searching

When searching, it's important to narrow the search by date, queue, or requestor. If you don't have any of these pieces of information, your search will take a very long time.

Note that for all fields on the lower half of the page (everything except "Ticket Number"), the default operator is AND. This means that tickets must match all criteria you specify. It's important to have a good balance so that your search is general enough to get the ticket you want, but specific enough that it won't take forever. Generally, it's best to try limiting by date, queue, and status first, before trying the various text-matching fields (e.g. Subject, etc).

• Requestor Name: This matches the requestor's full name. It's generally faster to search by e-mail address, or to search the MIT directory by name to determine the customer's e-mail address.
• Requestor email: Be sure to enter a fully-qualified e-mail address with a domain name. For example, if you simply enter joeuser, you'll get tickets that match joeuser@mit.edu and joeuser@hotmail.com, and these may not be the same person.
• Requestor phone: You can enter some or all of the phone number. For best results, only enter digits and dashes.
• Creation date: This field gives you a drop down of certain relative date ranges. These are the most commonly used date searches and will generally meet your needs. If you need more granular control over date ranges, you'll need to use Query Builder.
• Creator: This is the username of the person who created the ticket. It's generally not helpful to use this unless you know that a specific consultant created the ticket.
• Status: You can select specific statuses (including multiple statuses, using the Ctrl (Windows) or Command (Mac) keys) to match. Generally, it's best to combine new, open, and waiting when looking for open tickets, or resolved when looking for closed tickets.
• Subject content: This will match part of the subject line of the ticket.
• History entry content: This will search history entries of a ticket. Only the first ______ characters of the ticket's history are indexed, so this may not be helpful with tickets with long history entries.
• Queue: This indicates which queues to search. Multiple queues may be selected. You generally never want to specify -Any queue- as it will take a very long time to complete.

When starting a new simple search, it's important to note that it will default to searching your default working queue and only new, open or waiting tickets. So please check to make sure the queue you're searching in is selected (you can select more than one queue) and if you're looking for cases that could be resolved or rejected, please include those status types as well.

Search Results

Sample search results are displayed below. hd:(larger version) Note the ticket number column (1) and the search results menu (2).

Also, note the column headings:

• # - Ticket number - unique RT ticket number.
• Subject - For most tickets, the Subject line of the e-mail the user sent. For RCC tickets, this should contain the ticket type and dorm number
• Requestors - email address of the ticket requestor (person needing help)
• Status - Open, New, Waiting, Resolved, Rejected
  • New means the ticket is brand new (or should be treated as such)
  • Open means the ticket is being worked on and at least one communication has been sent to the user
    • New and Open are used as synonyms for RCC queues
  • Waiting means we're waiting for a response from the client
  • Resolved - case is considered resolved and should be closed
  • Rejected - used for SPAM
• Created - Relative time since the ticket was created
• Queue - What queue the ticket is currently in
• Last Contact - how long ago we sent mail to the client
• Last Updated - last time anything was done with the case
  • usually indicates the last time the client sent mail or we sent mail to the client
• Priority and Time left - Not generally used in the CS queues

The Subject and # columns are links that will display the actual ticket.

Using the query builder to create saved searches

To build your own saved search, first use the simple search to create the parameters and find the results. Once the search completes, you'll see some links at the top right of the page, one of which is Edit Search. Click on that link to go to the query builder page, where you should see the parameters for your search in the Query box on the upper right. Below that, you'll see the "Saved Searches" box. Type a name for the search in the Description field and click Save. The search will now appear on your home page.

Suggesting a saved search

If you think a search would be helpful to the entire group, first perform the simple search, then on the results page, click on the Advanced link at the top right of the page, and copy the text in the Query box into an e-mail to your supervisor.

Displaying the ticket Information

If you set your preferences to use the "Call Center Update Screen" by default, then your ticket display should look similar to the image near the bottom of this page.

To view the ticket information, either 1.) click on the ticket number from any search results page or 2.) type the ticket number into the search box at the top of the page. You can also 3.) click on the link from any email pertaining to the ticket you'd like to display.

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If the ticket is not displayed in the Call Center View, you can click on the Call Center link along the top. The Call Center View should have a text box in the right hand column to update the ticket. This view contains the most amount of information in one screen.

Updating the ticket

The easiest way to update a ticket is to use the Call Center View. This view will show you all of the ticket custom fields: Dorm, Room number, Operating System, etc..., the ticket history on the lower right and a text box to add any new entries in the upper right.

Please make sure the custom fields contain accurate information. A correct phone number, dorm and room number are very important to be able to communicate effectively with the customer.

Adding a comment or replying to the customer

The text box in the upper right hand corner is where you should type most updates to the case.

1. Select the appropriate update type (reply or comment)
2. Type your message in the box
3. Click Update Ticket (in the upper left-hand corner) to complete the update.

Difference between Reply and Comment

Within the RT web based application, replies are visible by anyone with read access to the queue as well as the requestor of the ticket. Comments are only visible to the consultants with access to the queue, not to the requestor.

When the Send Email button is checked or when corresponding through an email client rather than the RT frontend, RT will email certain recipients based on whether an update is a reply or a comment.

• Replies will be emailed to the requestor, adminCCs and Ccs (if they exist.)
• Comments will be emailed to the ticket and queue adminCCs.

How to add an additional recipient or change the recipient list

(this is useful when forwarding information to rccsuper@mit.edu)

To add an additional recipient, press the People link in the top right of a ticket's detail view.

Now, under add new watchers, type the email address of the person you wish to add.

If you want to stop sending emails to the original recipient, uncheck the box next to their name under "Modify who receives mail for this ticket."

Make sure to press the Update Ticket button in the bottom right after making any adjustments.

Reply to or comment a ticket using email

All mail you receive regarding a case should always come from AND be sent to one of these email addresses:

This allows RT to handle all correspondences and forward each one to the appropriate receivers. Because of this, replying to any mail you get from RT will put your reply into the case as long as the subject line is preserved.

If you are corresponding through email, be sure that the subject contains [hd:help.mit.edu #<ticket number>]
Example:
To: joeuser@mit.edu
Cc: rcc-east@mit.edu
Subject: your IP address [hd:help.mit.edu #123456]

Note: Please see our section about RT Rejected Mail for more information on using the correct subject line.

Depending on which email address you send to (comment or regular) will determine if the requestor also gets an email.

• Sending to the comment address will put your update in the ticket history and email your comment to the RCCs assigned to that queue, but it will not send mail to the requestor. The requestor will also not be able to see that particular update in the ticket history.

• Sending to the regular address will put your update in the ticket history, email your comment to the requestor and email your comment to the RCCs assigned to that queue. The requestor will be able to see that particular update in the ticket history.

Additional Recipients

When adding a correspondence to a ticket by sending email to RT, additional recipients can be added by simply using the CC or BCC fields when composing the message.

See Also

• Request Tracker Landing Page