Create Network Outage Ticket

[mbartle]

Would like to be able to create several types of ticket templates (Outage, Circuit Flap, Peering Down, etc) and be able to create one ticket that I can send to several customers. An example would be an outage on a network that affects several customers. I can only thing that someone has done this or something similar. Any help would be greatly appreciated.

Malcolm

[crythias]

I don't generally think so, but if you create a distribution list email address, it would work. You should be very careful that otrs is the only authorized sender to that email address. (or that you control the senders). You don't want one of your customers to be able to send to all of the other recipients (or know who they are).

[mbartle]

Distribution list would not work as we would have to create on whenever there is a network problem as our network is vast and each problem affects different users. Something along the lines of creating a ticket and being able to select multiple customers to send that ticket to. No way of setting this up?

[crythias]

Not that I know of. Not any way that'd be practical, especially not gui based.

There's a possibility you could use soap to select login, email from customer table where zip code=x and then pipe that through ticket creation, and that will create a lot of tickets, but there's no practical way to do what you're asking.

Your options:
1) a bunch of individual tickets with individual ticket numbers and individual email addresses
2) a single ticket with a single distribution list email address
3) a single ticket with a bunch of email addresses? Note that even if this is what you want, otrs would make the list of emails as plain text in to or cc. All recipients get the email address of all the recipients. This is a spam harvester's dream, and not fair to your users.

[mbartle]

Long time between responses, sorry about that.
Is there a way of creating distribution lists within OTRS?
Sorry about all the questions but we have been testing other systems and it seems that OTRS is our ticket system of choice and I have been tasked to set it up.

[crythias]

Is there a way of creating distribution lists within OTRS?

Not necessarily as such, though 3.x does allow you to send to members of a group in Notifications (Event), so if CustomerGroups are enabled, and the customers are members of a group, and ...

Admin Notification allows for sending a non-ticket related email to groups (click the also include customers in groups [x]).

[mbartle]

That looks like what I was looking for. Just one thing, is there a way to have the Notifications (Event) show up on the main tab under 'Tickets'?

[mbartle]

Hmmm, created a Group and gave a customer RO and RW to that group. Added a Notfication (Event) and selected the Recipient Group that I created. Filled out what was needed and Submitted but no email was received by members of the group.
Am I missing something?

[crythias]

Probably notification event ignores customers, then.

[mbartle]

Probably notification event ignores customers, then.

then, what? Is there not something I can tweak to make this work. Looks very promising.

[crythias]

Version?

[mbartle]

OTRS 3.0.11
ITSM 3.0.5

[crythias]

CustomerGroups are not covered in the code for NotificationEvent

The code that covers this (not tested) is in Kernel/System/Ticket/Event/NotificationEvent.pm around line 359:

Code: Select all

    if ( $Param{Notification}->{Data}->{RecipientGroups} ) {
        RECIPIENT:
        for my $Group ( @{ $Param{Notification}->{Data}->{RecipientGroups} } ) {
            my @GroupMemberList = $Self->{GroupObject}->GroupMemberList(
                Result  => 'ID',
                Type    => 'ro',
                GroupID => $Group,
            );
            for (@GroupMemberList) {
                my %UserData = $Self->{UserObject}->GetUserData( UserID => $_, Valid => 1 );
                if ( $UserData{UserEmail} && $UserData{UserID} != 1 ) {
                    my %Recipient;
                    $Recipient{Email} = $UserData{UserEmail};
                    $Recipient{Type}  = 'Agent';
                    push @Recipients, \%Recipient;
                }
            }
        }

Now, the admin Notification code allows for including CustomerGroups ...

You'd have to make sure CustomerGroupSupport is enabled and add it in the sub new section of NotificationEvent.pm (see Kernel/Modules/AdminEmail.pm for example)

Code: Select all

    if ( $Self->{ConfigObject}->Get('CustomerGroupSupport') ) {
        $Self->{CustomerUserObject}  = Kernel::System::CustomerUser->new(%Param);
        $Self->{CustomerGroupObject} = Kernel::System::CustomerGroup->new(%Param);
    }

The code from AdminEmail.pm that handles CustomerUsers looks like this:

Code: Select all

            if ( $Param{NotifyCustomerUsers} ) {
                for my $GroupID ( $Self->{ParamObject}->GetArray( Param => 'GroupIDs' ) ) {
                    my @GroupCustomerUserMemberList = $Self->{CustomerGroupObject}->GroupMemberList(
                        Result  => 'ID',
                        Type    => $Param{GroupPermission},
                        GroupID => $GroupID,
                    );
                    for my $GoupCustomerUserMember (@GroupCustomerUserMemberList) {
                        my %CustomerUserData = $Self->{CustomerUserObject}->CustomerUserDataGet(
                            User  => $GoupCustomerUserMember,
                            Valid => 1,
                        );
                        if ( $CustomerUserData{UserEmail} ) {
                            $Bcc{ $CustomerUserData{UserLogin} } = $CustomerUserData{UserEmail};
                        }
                    }
                }
            }

Which should be adapted properly (adjust variables, change the $BCC to push on to Recipients or something) for Kernel/System/Ticket/NotificationEvent.pm. Probably you may choose to ignore the outermost check if for ParamNotifyCustomerUsers, which means customer members of a chosen group will always get NotificationEvents if you make this change.

This change will not survive updates.

[mbartle]

Some more feedback but before I do that I must say thank you for all the time you have given me on this.

Just to clarify, I cannot use the admin notification because it does not detailed enough. The NotificationEvent is perfect. It presents the fields that we were looking for and is detailed enough to send to our end customers.

You stated that, "The code that covers this (not tested)", does that mean that it could work with some modification?
I'm not sure why they would have included the "RecipientGroup' field in the NotificationEvent if it wasn't meant to be used.
Also, I noted that there is a new version (3.1) coming out, is this problem addressed?

Malcolm

[mbartle]

My end goal would be to have a new entry in drop down menu called 'Notification Event'.
In here, Agents could create notifications to send to customers and could check status of Notifications and see them in the Dashboard also.
Customers would be able to login and see the notifications but not be able to modify them.

Malcolm

[crythias]

Notification (Event) is not what you think it is.
1) Recipient group is agents by default, not customers. Customer Group is not considered important because
2) Notification (Event) is based upon a trigger/change that happens to a ticket, which an agent should take notice.

It's not a notification of an external event that's ongoing.

Your options:
1) a bunch of individual tickets with individual ticket numbers and individual email addresses
2) a single ticket with a single distribution list email address
3) a single ticket with a bunch of email addresses

[mbartle]

Oh, sorry. I saw a light at the end of the tunnel and ran for it, to bad it was an oncoming train.
Well, now that you know what I am looking for, is it possible to do? It seems that some of the parts are there but just need to reworked. Not asking you to do it, but just if it is possible?

[crythias]

You might as well put a notice on your website or the Message of the Day.
"Please note that if you're in zipcode xxx"

[mbartle]

Thanks alot for your help. It will take some tweaking but I believe you have me going in the right direction.

Regards,
Malcolm