Best practice: add external email to ticket

[ndis]

Hi,

we do often have a situation like described below:

- customer sends inquiry to an email address assigned to an OTRS queue
- ticket is generated automatically
- our presales staff answers, there are more questions and follow-ups within OTRS
- finally everything is sorted out and we have to send a quotation for what ever has been discussed before

And this is the spoiler. The quote has to be created within our ERP system, that will (typically) send it as a PDF attached to an email. We can just do so without this beeing releated to the ticket, but that's not very good. On one hand, there might be refering questions of the customer and they will not be part of the ticket, on the other hand the whole communication simply isn't finished, so it's to early to close the ticket.

I am looking for the best practise, to send the email from our ERP system, but let it be part of the ticket, as if an agent would have sent it from OTRS and atached the PDF manually. (Doing this would be a solution, of course, but it's taking to much time, since the PDF would have to be saved temporarily first, and then added to a ticket manually.)

Any hint is welcome.

Thanks
ndis

[crythias]

on the one hand, the ERP could cc the ticket system if it includes the ticket# hash in the subject.
Further, if ERP had a reply to of the ticketing system, any replies would be in the ticket, so that works, too.

Any other thing would be as you've stated, generate PDF from ERP, attach to reply in ticket, send out.

[ndis]

Thanks Crythias.

The second option (attaching the PDF) is a nightmare, since it requires to many steps to do so, so the first option is what we do right now.

Since the mail client within our ERP does not support to change the "reply-to" address, we have to use a feature of our ERP not to send the email directly, but to pass it to the systems main email client, that is Outlook right now. Here we can change the reply-to, add OTRS in cc and add the ticket number to the subject. Having three manual steps will end up having (more or less but for sure some) mistakes like typos. I hoped to find some addon for Outlook, that will be able to connect to OTRS if the ticket number is given. Is there any (commercial) connector or integration available?

Cheers
ndis

[crythias]

Since the mail client within our ERP does not support to change the "reply-to" address, we have to use a feature of our ERP not to send the email directly, but to pass it to the systems main email client, that is Outlook right now. Here we can change the reply-to, add OTRS in cc and add the ticket number to the subject.

OK. I understand this. Basically the equivalent of a mailto: link on a web page.

I hoped to find some addon for Outlook, that will be able to connect to OTRS if the ticket number is given. Is there any (commercial) connector or integration available?

I do not know. But ...

Let's say your ERP system has the proper Ticket Number slug in the subject and CC's your ticket email as it sends out to the customer. It can still have the do not reply in it ... but by default, this email looks like a customer followup, not an agent send. But ..
PostMasterFilter
Filter
From noreply@erpsystem
Set
X-OTRS-FollowUp-Article-Type: email-external
X-OTRS-FollowUp-Sender-Type: agent

And there you have it... it looks like it came from an agent.