Request Tracker (RT), the best ticket system on Linux

Request Tracker, commonly abbreviated to RT, is a ticket-tracking system written in Perl used to coordinate tasks and manage requests among a community of users. RT's first release in 1996 was written by Jesse Vincent, who later formed Best Practical Solutions LLC to distribute, develop, and support the package.RT is open source (FOSS) and distributed under the GNU General Public License.

Actually the stable release is the 3.8.X, and team is working on the 4.X series.

I'm using RT from 2004, we have handled with it more than 100K tickets and i must say me and my company are very satisfied of this software, so i feel i can write this hub in favor of this great piece of software.

Technology

RT is written in Perl and runs on the Apache and lighttpd web servers using mod_perl or FastCGI with data stored in either MySQL, PostgreSQL, Oracle or SQLite. It is possible to extend the RT interface using plug-ins written in Perl

Due to all of these requirements RT is usually run on Linux, in theory you could use it also on other *nix systems or on windows, for testing it quickly you could also download a VMware appliance already configured and ready to run (version 3.6 old stable, but you'll get an idea of what can you do with RT).

RT has many interfaces for creating and updating tickets. A web interface is available for both logged in users and guest users. It is easily tailored by granting or denying specific permissions to users as well as by adding custom fields and data to tickets. Template callbacks allow the modification of the software's web pages without requiring extensive knowledge.So it's possible to customize the aspect of your TTS just working on templates, and give to it your enterprise look and feel.

Email is another primary interface to RT and is often the only interface many guest users see. The email system includes support for auto-responses, attachments, and full customization of the rules which govern to whom and when email is sent. Emails are stored in RT as correspondence on a ticket, and the software can make a distinction between public replies and private comments to show them as appropriate.

For Email what work behind the scene is usually the couple fetchmail+procmail , most Linux administrator are familiar with these 2 old tools, in few words:

Fetchmail does just 1 work : retrieve email, this can be done for just 1 email address or any number of them, for example we are using a lot of different address to give a first filter to where the information should arrive (e.g. servicedesk-database@myenterprise.com, servicedesk-net@myenterprise.com, help-myapp@myeterprise.com etc.), not all user know all email address, usually they just know 1 or 2 but with this we have a first help in getting the problem tgoing to the right person.

Procmail does 1 thing filter email : you could filter all incoming email that arrive From: yourcustomerA toward a group of persons, or all email that have a keyword in the subject toward another, and so on. Procmail it's a simple but powertool tool.

Using these 2 tools together you can create a smart approach to incoming email and get the things resolved in less time.

At last there is also a full REST API and a command-line tool provided as another way to interact with RT. I've found the command line really useful for scheduling jobs, for example we have a daily job that retrieve all TT open and not touched by X days and send to the owners of these TT a reminder, also raising their priority.

I've already named some of the many features of RT,some basic feature include:

Tickets have the following fields:

People on a TT:

• Requestor : the one opening the TT
• Owner ; the one in charge of resolving it
• CC : on a Ticket are Users who are interested in the resolution of the ticket. A CC is like the Requestor in that they receive Correspondence but not Comments.
• AdminCC : is like a joint Owner of a Ticket. A ticket's AdminCCs are Users, typically Staff, who receive both Comments and Correspondence.

Dates on a TT:

• Created : it's the date when the TT has been created on the TTS.
  
• Stars : it's the date when someone has worked on the TT.
• Due date: The DueDate of a Ticket is the target date for the resolution of the ticket.The PriorityEscalation procedure uses the DueDate to calculate the change of priority over time.
• Closed : it's the date when the owner of the TT put it in resolved state.
  

States of a TT:

• New : a TT just created
• Open : a TT where some action has been done
• Stalled : a TT that cannot be worked for some reason
• Resolved : a TT that has been resolved by the owner.
• Rejected : a TT not valid
  

Other than these fields, you have also relation between TT, so you can say a TT is related to another, or a requirement to closing another or custom fields.

Custom fields, like the name say can be anything you want, list of item, open text area to be filled, images, or anything, you can also choose to have some of these fileds as mandatory to open or close a TT.

And even more features like

• Dashboards and relationship graphs to show you the big picture New in 3.8!
• Seamless PGP support for encrypting, decrypting, signing, and verifying outgoing and incoming email New in 3.8!
• Richtext editing to easily format your correspondence New in 3.8!
• Time tracking and reporting, including support for service level agreements
• Integration with your existing user login system
• A self-service interface for non-users to interact with their tickets
• Integration with our knowledge base software RTFM

So you are not yet sure about RT ?

Last things i can say is that there is a great community available to give support and that over time has buitl a great repository of information at the url http://wiki.bestpractical.com.

There is a live demo you can test : http://rt.easter-eggs.org/demos/

And also check who is using RT in the world, this should assure you of the goodness of this project: http://www.bestpractical.com/rt/who.html

So if you are setting up a small group of 2-3 people or a service desk with 100 or more people, and need to organize their work in a structured way i really suggest to you to check up this software.