Q: Can I change my RT queue's email address ?

• Can I change my RT queue's email address ?
• How do email addresses for Request Tracker queues work ?

Context

• Request Tracker (RT) an help.mit.edu
• Request Tracker queue administrators

On this page:

Answer

As a queue administrator, you can change the email addresses for your queue. You can find instructions on how to do this in section 2 below. To prevent errors that could compromise your queue's ability to receive email, please review the background and caveats in section 1.

1. How queue email addresses work

Correspondence and Comment addresses

Each Request Tracker queue has two email addresses: a Correspondence address (also sometimes called a Reply address) and a Comment address. The two addresses work fundamentally the same way in that mail sent to either will append to the ticket that is referenced in the subject line, and if no ticket is referenced a new ticket will be created in the queue. However, beyond that there are several significant differences, including how notifications are configured for correspondence and comment history entries. The table below lists the differences. Note that it assumes default scrips set up for MIT RT queues. If you have changed notification scrips on your queue, it may behave slightly differently.

Server addresses and Moira aliases

Email addresses you set up for your queue exist on the Request Tracker server. They end in address@help.mit.edu, for example tooltime@help.mit.edu. It is standard procedure for queue email addresses to have a corresponding Moira list as an alias to allow Requestors to send mail to address@mit.edu instead, for example tooltime@mit.edu. Queues used by departments with their own subdomains may also have aliases of the form address@subdomain.mit.edu, for example tooltime@media.mit.edu.

What's important is that mail eventually reaches the server address on help.mit.edu. RT does not care whether email was routed via aliases and subdomains, just which RT addresses it is ultimately received by.

It is common to have the local part of the email address match in these situations (tooltime@mit.edu -> tooltime@help.mit.edu) but this is just convention. The alias can be changed independently as long as it contains a valid RT server address, and multiple aliases can route to the same RT server address.

How the server address is created from the queue configuration

RT will use the configured queue correspondence and comment addresses as the From addresses in replies and comments it mails out. For this reason, it is usually desirable to have the configured queue email addresses match the common alias rather than be the actual server address. The actual server address is generated from the configured addresses by taking the local part (everything in front of the @ sign) and appending @help.mit.edu to it. The server /etc/aliases file is updated with this information once per hour via a cron job at the 5-minute mark.

2. How to change your queue's email addresses

1. Log in to RT
2. Go to the Tools menu and browse to Configuration, then Queues
3. Select your queue from the list
4. On the Basics tab of your queue's configuration screen find the two fields labeled Reply Address and Comment Address
5. Enter new reply and comment addresses into each field; use the addresses that you will be advertising to your customers and colleagues
6. If you have aliases set up (this is the common case) wait until right after the 5-minute mark of the next hour to update the aliases; you will need to change both the alias name and the address it redirects to

• If you do not update your aliases' membership (the server addresses they redirect to) they will stop working after the RT server updates its mail configuration (mail sent to them will not reach your RT queue).
• If you do not update your aliases' names they will continue to work, but replies going out from RT will have an incorrect From address in them.

Because of these dependencies it is recommended you change your queue addresses only rarely, and if you need to, do so during a time that's not a busy email traffic time for your queue.

An example to make it a little clearer

Scenario:

We have a queue called "My First Help Desk" which currently has two externally publicized email addresses: my-first-helpdesk@mit.edu and my-first-helpdesk-comment@mit.edu. Both of these are Moira lists, or aliases, which contain the RT server email addresses my-first-helpdesk@help.mit.edu and my-first-helpdesk-comment@help.mit.edu. We would now like to change our queue addresses to something more professional, such as professional-helpdesk@mit.edu and professional-helpdesk-comment@mit.edu.

Steps:

The time is 10:30 AM.

1. Log into RT.
2. Go to the Tools menu and browse to Configuration, then Queues.
3. Select the queue My First Helpdesk by clicking on its name.
4. On the Basics tab:
   • The Reply Address field currently contains: my-first-helpdesk@mit.edu
   • The Comment Address field currently contains: my-first-helpdesk-comment@mit.edu
     1. Change the Reply Address field to: professional-helpdesk@mit.edu
     2. Change the Comment Address field to: professional-helpdesk@mit.edu
        
        The time is 11:05 AM.
        
        
5. The RT server automatically reloads its list of queue email addresses. The old server addresses my-first-helpdesk@help.mit.edu and my-first-helpdesk-comment@help.mit.edu are removed. The new server addresses of professional-helpdesk@help.mit.edu and professional-helpdesk-comment@help.mit.edu become valid.
6. Go into Moira via http://web.mit.edu/moira.
7. Find the first email alias my-first-helpdesk.
   • Change the list name to professional-helpdesk using the Edit button.
   • Remove the list member my-first-helpdesk@help.mit.edu.
   • Add the list member professional-helpdesk@help.mit.edu as type STRING.
8. Find the second email alias my-first-helpdesk-comment.
   • Change the list name to professional-helpdesk-comment using the Edit button
   • Remove the list member my-first-helpdesk-comment@help.mit.edu.
   • Add the list member professional-helpdesk-comment@help.mit.edu as type STRING.
9. Optional: Re-create the old address as an alias
   • If you want mail to the original email address for the queue to continue to work, you need to...
   • Create a new Moira list my-first-helpdesk
   • Add your queue alias Moira list professional-helpdesk to your new Moira list my-first-helpdesk
   • Now email to my-first-helpdesk@mit.edu will forward to professional-helpdesk@mit.edu and continue to go into your queue
10. Done.