Ticket locked to agent on customer replies

[curiouso]

We're experiencing a minor problem with our OTRS installation.

When an agent has answered a ticket from a customer, the customers reply is locked to the agent that composed/replied to the original ticket.

Is there a simple way to disable this? A lot of our support/customer tickets will be handled by different employees, meaning that a customer reply being locked to a specific agent isn't optimal for us.

I apologize if I missed a simple setting within OTRS!

[crythias]

This is how it works in order to prevent race conditions. Once an Agent interacts with a customer, or attempts to do much with the ticket, the ticket is locked so someone else doesn't do this at the same time. If you want, simply unlock the ticket after you're done. Or SysConfig look for force lock

[curiouso]

Thank you for your reply.

The lock function when composing an answer works just fine, but in this case an agent composes a reply to a ticket - it is sent and correctly unlocked.

The problem for us occurs when the customer replies to the above ticket - it is then locked to the agent who originally answered the ticket - and the agent haven't even begun composing an answer yet, the system automatically locks it to the agent that originally answered the customers ticket.

[Steffen32]

I seem to experience the same behavior on a newly installed v. 5.0.5: Tickets are automatically locked to the agent upon reply from the customer, and are not available to other agents without unlocking it manually.

This did not seem to be a matter back in OTRS 3.2.x.

Any help will be truly appreciated.

[crythias]

It may be a bug ... check bugs.otrs.org

[curiouso]

There doesn't seem to be a bug that matches it - I'll look into making a bug report then.

But just to be sure, when a customer replies, the ticket is supposed to be open for all agents (with permissions to view the queue of course), right?

I had hoped it would just have a been a setting we missed.

[crythias]

Customer Response by web or email?

[Giulio Soleni]

Hi,
I do not precisely understand you here:

an agent composes a reply to a ticket - it is sent and correctly unlocked.

does it mean that the agent replies to the ticket and then - without closing it - he/she manually unlocks it?
If that's the case, I think it's a strange condition ... normally the agent may reply and close the ticket (and the ticket is automatically unlocked as well upon its closure), or may change the ticket owner and lock the ticket to another colleague, or else may move the ticket on another queue, and in that case the ticket may be unlocked as well... but normally as an agent I do not manually unlock a ticket right after I provide a reply to my customer and the ticket remains locked to me while it's in a "open" state, during all its lifecycle.

Honestly I do not remember either the behavior of the system under such conditions, but I think that you may adapt it to your needs using an ACL

EDIT: it is my suggestion to use the responsibility feature though)

EDIT: tested on a 4.0.8 (the only environment available to me right now) I see that a reply of the customer on an opened but unlocked ticket, actually leave the ticket unlocked.

On the other hand if you notice that a closed ticket (thus unlocked) gets automatically locked as soon as the customer provides a new reply... that's a setting that is configured per-queue.
On the configuration settings of any queue you may find the parameter "Ticket lock after a follow up" which may be set to Yes or No.
As specified, when this parameter is set to "Yes", if a ticket is closed and the customer sends a follow up, the ticket will be automatically locked to the old owner.

[Steffen32]

On the other hand if you notice that a closed ticket (thus unlocked) gets automatically locked as soon as the customer provides a new reply... that's a setting that is configured per-queue.
On the configuration settings of any queue you may find the parameter "Ticket lock after a follow up" which may be set to Yes or No.
As specified, when this parameter is set to "Yes", if a ticket is closed and the customer sends a follow up, the ticket will be automatically locked to the old owner.

This is the setting that I was looking for.

Thanks alot!

[curiouso]

Hi,

On the other hand if you notice that a closed ticket (thus unlocked) gets automatically locked as soon as the customer provides a new reply... that's a setting that is configured per-queue.
On the configuration settings of any queue you may find the parameter "Ticket lock after a follow up" which may be set to Yes or No.
As specified, when this parameter is set to "Yes", if a ticket is closed and the customer sends a follow up, the ticket will be automatically locked to the old owner.

Thank you! That was exactly the problem - it was solved by changing the setting to 'No'. I'm glad it was that simple, and sorry for missing it.

[chefski27]

Hi,

Based on previous responses, there seem to be a few different things happening:
1. Agents who have a ticket locked to them and who draft a reply to a customer continue to have the ticket locked to them (until they unlock/ticket is closed)
2. Agents who have a ticket locked to them and who draft a reply to a customer have that ticket unlock automatically (this is expected behavior?)
3. After a ticket is closed (and unlocked), there's a configuration parameter for 'Ticket lock after a follow up' which addresses cases in which closed tickets have been followed up on by customers to automatically lock/not lock to previous ticket owners

Is there a setting to ensure that I can get the behavior of case 1. above? That is, is there a way to ensure that a ticket locked to an agent will stay with that agent until the ticket is closed/they unlock it manually?

Any assistance is much appreciated!

Thanks,

[root]

Hi chefski27,

Your case 1 is the default behaviour, unless the queue where the ticket is in, has a configured unlock timeout. I would check the ticket history why a ticket gets unlocked. There could be also other reasons like a Generic Agent, etc.

- Roy