Email alerts for escalation of tickets

[chaitanyacda]

Greetings,

There is a need for us to configure our OTRS installation to send email alerts to agents if their tickets are on verge of escalation. Searching on google, I found some documents and how to, and found that I already have the configuration in place but it still does not work. Following is the configuration in /opt/otrs/Kernel/Config/GenericAgent.pm

Code: Select all

 'send escalation notifications' => {
       Escalation => 1,
#       # new ticket properties
       New => {
           Module => 'Kernel::System::GenericAgent::NotifyAgentGroupOfCustomQueue',
       },
   },


    # GenericAgent job that triggers escalation forewarn and escalation start events.
    #   Activate this if you want to use these events in your system.
    'trigger escalation events' => {
        Escalation => 1,
#        # new ticket properties
        New => {
            Module => 'Kernel::System::GenericAgent::TriggerEscalationStartEvents',
        },
    },

I think I am missing something here. Is there anything more required?

[reneeb]

Is a cronjob running that calls the GenericAgent? see <OTRS_HOME>/var/cron/generic_agent.dist

[chaitanyacda]

Yes the cron job is running the script /opt/otrs/bin/GenericAgent.pl with the option -c db --force.
If there is something wrong with this option.

[reneeb]

Any log messages when the cronjob should run? Can you run the perl script manually?

[chaitanyacda]

I ran it manually and some of the users received emails. But it does not send mails when run automatically. I will keep you posted with it when I have some information on it.

[crythias]

btw, -c db is only going to run the database (web) version of the generic agent.

make sure you also have
*/20 * * * * $HOME/bin/otrs.GenericAgent.pl >> /dev/null

from otrs/var/cron/generic_agent

[chaitanyacda]

Thanks for the confirmation. I have that cron job running too. But I am getting emails when the tickets have already escalated. The purpose of this is to inform agent on ticket escalations, hence I would like to configure it to send email alerts at least 15 mins before the ticket escalates. Is this possible? And what is the default time buffer when the escalation email alerts are initiated? Can this time buffer be changed?

[crythias]

hence I would like to configure it to send email alerts at least 15 mins before the ticket escalates. Is this possible? And what is the default time buffer when the escalation email alerts are initiated? Can this time buffer be changed?

Probably not possible to alert before the alert. That's what it's designed for.

default time buffer is every 20 minutes, I guess... that's when it runs, checks if the ticket has escalated, sends the notification.

[chaitanyacda]

I mean I will run this script every minute without much affecting the system performance. But when it is run, can it detect the tickets which are to be escalated in coming half an hour and send the alerts for those? I am currently running the script every minute so that I have maximum amount of email alerts.
Though our team does not need those alerts, couple of other teams need emails to be sent and hence I would like some way of alerting agents for tickets which are to be escalated shortly. I don't mind if the alerts are sent an hour before the ticket escalates. This time buffer can be any logical number, I'm open on that.

[crythias]

can it detect the tickets which are to be escalated in coming half an hour and send the alerts for those?

No. Like I said, that's what the escalation itself is for.

[chaitanyacda]

Okay. So, an example or scenario to another of my doubt that I would like to clear. Just for information, I am running the ticket escalation alerting script every minute just to ensure I do not miss on the tickets.

The scenario of the doubt:

Suppose, one ticket#123456 of mine is going to escalate in about 5 minutes. The script runs the next minute and sends me an alert that ticket#123456 is going to escalate in about 4 minutes.
Now when the script runs the next minute, will I get the alert for escalation in 3 minutes? Is this possible? Or once the alert for ticket#123456 is sent, it is not parsed in the escalation alerting script?

Thanks and Regards
Chaitanya

[crythias]

I don't know the answer to this, so I won't respond to it. You will find out if it happens when you implement it.