RT HowTo

About RT

RT, also known as Request Tracker, is a popular issue-tracking program from [| Best Practical Solutions, Inc.]

More in-depth information is available here: http://requesttracker.wikia.com/wiki/UserManual

This page is about how to use RT. For information on setup or maintenance see RT Install.

What's an "issue tracker"?

An issue tracker is software that keeps track of things that need doing, who is doing those things, and the status of that work. RT's database tracks "tickets". A ticket is created when someone sends email to rt@freegeekseattle.org complaining about something we are doing wrong ;^)

How it works

Tickets

Records in RT are organized as "tickets". A Requestor creates a ticket in order to request action on some issue.

Anatomy of a ticket

A ticket is basically an item in RT's database. It contains several fields, organized into sections:

The Basics

Status and Priority

Status reflects the progress made on the requested issue. All tickets start out with Status == New. Other status values are Open, Stalled, Rejected, Resolved or Deleted. Priority is an integer that specifies how important the ticket is. Bigger numbers mean higher priority. 0-10 means mosquito bites. 90-100 means Hair On Fire.

Queue

Queues are a way of organizing tickets. Queues can be set up in different ways. FGS' queues are set up according to department: there's a queue for Donations, for Board, for Projects, for Grants, etc. Each of these queues is associated with a Group which has access to the queue.

People

Like most web apps, RT has user accounts, and you need to have an account and to log in in order to do anything with it (apart from creating tickets, which only requires email.) It also has Groups, which are used to manage permissions. If you don't deal with donations or grants but are a member of the board (unlikely, I know, but it's an example) then you'd be a member of the group Board but not a member of the other two groups. You would see tickets in the Board queue in your default view, but you would not see tickets in the other two queues.

Requestor

The Requestor is the person who 'opened' the ticket. This person is 'requesting' that something be done.

Owner

The Owner is someone who takes responsibility for the ticket. If you are logged in to RT you can become the Owner of a ticket by "taking" it- just click on the link labelled "Take" in the ticket view.

CC and Admin-CC

These are other people who will receive updates on the ticket's status. Admin-CC can also change ticket status.

Dates

RT tracks the date the ticket was created and several other relevant dates. If you have permissions to modify a ticket (i.e., you are it's owner or an admin-cc) then you can set reminders for yourself and/or the other cc's or requestors on the ticket.

Links

Many tickets are related to other tickets. For example, if user root owns a ticket called "Finish configuring RT" and another ticket called "set up RT emails", then the latter might be marked as a child ticket of the former, and the former might be marked as a Dependency of the latter. Tickets can also be marked as "referring to" one another; that is, ticket 1 might be set "Refers To ticket 2", and ticket 2 would automagically get status "Referred To By ticket 1".

History

This section contains date-stamped records of all the changes in the above fields, plus comments left by people working the ticket and all emails sent through and received by the RT system regarding that ticket.

Workflow

A ticket is born

Tickets are created in a few different ways.

Email

Tickets can be created when someone sends an email to an account designated for that purpose. RT checks the emails and extracts certain information from them in order to fill out certain fields. For example, the From: address becomed the value of the Requestor field. It's helpful to feed RT's email system from a Web form so that the user (who probably isn't intimately familiar with RT's database interface) can put the relevant information into separate fields in order to fill out the ticket nicely. RT can automagically extract some information from regular text emails, but not much.

Web interface

If a user is logged in to RT, then that user can simply click on the "quick ticket" or "create ticket" link in order to be confronted with a form to fill out. The user's ID will be the Requestor. Choose a queue and write a description of the issue. Optionally, you can set a due date, reminders, alternate contact, and other information. Hit "Save Changes" and the ticket will show up in the desired queue with status "New".

A ticket is opened

Another logged-in user might see the ticket in his view. Views are organized according to a database query. You can write your own custom views using SQL, or you can use the Quick Search or Simple Search (visible from Home). You can specify a default queue in the Preferences screen. Once the ticket shows up, just click on it to see the text. To modify anything in the ticket (other than Status) click Open. You can Take the ticket without opening it or after opening it. If you intend to work on the ticket's issue at all, you should Take the ticket. It can always be reassigned later (someone might even Steal it from you.)

A ticket is taken

Once you have looked at the ticket, decide whether or not you will work on it. If not, just go back to the queue and leave it Open. If so, Take the ticket. When you have taken the ticket you will become its Owner. If you change your mind, you can either change the Owner field to "Nobody in Particular" (or to another user if their ID shows up in the Owner list) or get another user to Steal it from you.

A ticket is stalled

Sometimes (usually?) you won't be able to fix whatever the issue is right away. If this is the case you can defer the ticket's due date by changing the Status to Stalled. When you do this you should choose a new Due Date. Stalled tickets will disappear from your view until the new due date, at which time their status reverts to Open. If you don't set a new due date then the ticket might disappear forever (or until you change your view)!

A ticket is resolved

When you have fixed the issue, change the ticket's status to Resolved and write a reply. Make sure that the drop-down over the Reply section says "Reply to Requestors" instead of "Comment". Comments are for internal use only (i.e., "this requestor is a jackass") and are not sent. Sometimes the requestor will mark the ticket resolved- when this happens you won't always get the message if you are using the default view, as the ticket will drop out of that view.

Views

RT tracks everything in a database, and the lists of tickets on the front page are based on database queries. If you know SQL you can use its full power to specify the exact view you want (for example, all tickets where Owner=me@freegeekseattle.org, Status=new OR open OR stalled (due date < two weeks away) AND subject LIKE "fruitcakes"). There is a Web form you can use called Query Builder- click on Tickets on the left sidebar to get there. It's fairly self-explanatory but very sophisticated. Learning to properly specify views is the key to success with RT.