Mailing List Archive: RFC: Formal Ticket Tracking System for outages.org

RFC: Formal Ticket Tracking System for outages.org

Jul 3, 2008, 8:58 AM

Post #1 of 6 (195 views)

Let me un-thread this, so no one misses it.

It has been proposed (by me :-) that we actually set up a ticket
tracker for keeping tabs on outages, with companion -notify and
-discuss mailing lists, as below.

Opinions on this idea, and volunteers to set it up or host it are
hereby (unofficially) solicited.

----- Forwarded message from "Jay R. Ashworth" <jra at baylink.com> -----

Date: Wed, 2 Jul 2008 17:21:46 -0400
From: "Jay R. Ashworth" <jra@baylink.com>
To: outages at isotf.org
Subject: Re: [outages] Wiki stuff

On Wed, Jul 02, 2008 at 10:13:27PM +0100, John Fox wrote:
> Ive quite enjoyed the off topic discussion. Where can i sign up for
> that as well as the outages stuff?

Ok, I'll expand and formalize my suggestion.

I think that the best approach to this would be to set up an OTRS (or RT)
install which receives the mail for outages@, and which automatically
subscribes all tickets to outages-notify@ *and* outages-discuss at .

The Mailman instance can then handle outages-notify (a broadcast list
which only the OTRS can post to) and outages-discuss, a general
subscription list, where everyone can talk about the tickets, but OTRS
won't hear it.

Users who only want notices subscribe to -notify, users who like the
chat subscribe to -discuss, people who have actual content to
contribute about the outage (which we can all hash out what we mean
by), can actually reply to the OTRS postings to -notify (which must
not mung Reply-To), and those posts will go on the ticket and also to
the two lists.

How's that sound, folks?

Cheers,
-- jr 'why yes, I am a systems analyst with 25 years in email' a
----- End forwarded message -----

We have one solid yes, and one 'sounds good if we can do it'; any other
opinions?

Virendra, Gadi, Jared? I'm sort of swinging your club here, I hope you
don't mind. What do you folks think?

Cheers,
-- jra
--
Jay R. Ashworth Baylink jra at baylink.com
Designer The Things I Think RFC 2100
Ashworth & Associates http://baylink.pitas.com '87 e24
St Petersburg FL USA http://photo.imageinc.us +1 727 647 1274

Those who cast the vote decide nothing.
Those who count the vote decide everything.
-- (Joseph Stalin)

RFC: Formal Ticket Tracking System for outages.org [ In reply to ]

jasongurtz at npumail

Jul 3, 2008, 10:43 AM

Post #2 of 6 (201 views)

Permalink

> It has been proposed (by me :-) that we actually set up a ticket
> tracker for keeping tabs on outages, with companion -notify and
> -discuss mailing lists, as below.
>
> Opinions on this idea, and volunteers to set it up or host it are
> hereby (unofficially) solicited.

I am in support of this idea for the following reason:

There has been a small history of what I will call marginally on topic.
These discussions, though somewhat interesting, don't accomplish much more
than to raise my--already heavy--email load. With a ticketing system and
companion -notify list this would not be an issue.

The valid scope of what belongs on the list is clearly a matter of
consensus/opinion and will likely never be satisfactorily addressed for
everyone. With a ticketing system, outages that are in-scope may be
subscribed to, with discussion taking place in the comments while those
that are out of scope are only a single notification and much less of a
bother.

Note: I'm familiar primarily with Bugzilla, but I can only assume that
OTRS and RT have similar subscription/commenting features.

Thanks,

~JasonG

--

RFC: Formal Ticket Tracking System for outages.org [ In reply to ]

amon at vnl

Jul 3, 2008, 11:30 AM

Post #3 of 6 (193 views)

Permalink

On Thu, Jul 03, 2008 at 11:58:39AM -0400, Jay R. Ashworth wrote:
> Users who only want notices subscribe to -notify, users who like the
> chat subscribe to -discuss, people who have actual content to
> contribute about the outage (which we can all hash out what we mean
> by), can actually reply to the OTRS postings to -notify (which must
> not mung Reply-To), and those posts will go on the ticket and also to
> the two lists.
>
> How's that sound, folks?

Sounds reasonable. I'd send the -discuss messages to an mbox
to read 'whenever' and could leave the -notify ones in my high
priority inbox. Looks like a win to me.

RFC: Formal Ticket Tracking System for outages.org [ In reply to ]

jra at baylink

Jul 3, 2008, 12:31 PM

Post #4 of 6 (195 views)

Permalink

On Thu, Jul 03, 2008 at 01:43:09PM -0400, Jason Gurtz wrote:
> The valid scope of what belongs on the list is clearly a matter of
> consensus/opinion and will likely never be satisfactorily addressed for
> everyone. With a ticketing system, outages that are in-scope may be
> subscribed to, with discussion taking place in the comments while those
> that are out of scope are only a single notification and much less of a
> bother.
>
> Note: I'm familiar primarily with Bugzilla, but I can only assume that
> OTRS and RT have similar subscription/commenting features.

Well, my initial approach was to add the notify list to each ticket, so
that all comments added to the actual ticket would go to notify.

It sounds like you are suggesting that *only the initial Ticket Open
message* go to notify, and anyone who wants to know about specific
tickets can log into OTRS, and add themseves to that ticket, do I have
that right?

Me personally, I'm the sort of person who might want to see *all*
ticket traffic on my blackberry, instead of only the Open messages...

but it's possible that this could be handled by OTRS itself; as a
signed-up user, I could watch the queue in question, and let that
mechanism send me the messages, while -notify only got the initial
Ticket Open messages. I have to go check the manual, I'm not a wizard
on OTRS yet.

Cheers,
-- jra
--
Jay R. Ashworth Baylink jra at baylink.com
Designer The Things I Think RFC 2100
Ashworth & Associates http://baylink.pitas.com '87 e24
St Petersburg FL USA http://photo.imageinc.us +1 727 647 1274

Those who cast the vote decide nothing.
Those who count the vote decide everything.
-- (Joseph Stalin)

RFC: Formal Ticket Tracking System for outages.org [ In reply to ]

anarcat at anarcat

Jul 3, 2008, 12:37 PM

Post #5 of 6 (193 views)

Permalink

On Thu, Jul 03, 2008 at 03:31:45PM -0400, Jay R. Ashworth wrote:
> Me personally, I'm the sort of person who might want to see *all*
> ticket traffic on my blackberry, instead of only the Open messages...
>
> but it's possible that this could be handled by OTRS itself; as a
> signed-up user, I could watch the queue in question, and let that
> mechanism send me the messages, while -notify only got the initial
> Ticket Open messages. I have to go check the manual, I'm not a wizard
> on OTRS yet.

I know you can be a "Watcher" in RT, which allows you to follow all the
comments/replies on a given queue.

In general, I have had a better experience with RT than OTRS, btw, but I
do not want to start a flamewar around that, you guys choose whatever
you want (or rather, the person/org hosting/managing the service should
get to choose, obviously).

A.

--
C'est trop facile quand les guerres sont finies
D'aller gueuler que c'?tait la derni?re
Amis bourgeois vous me faites envie
Ne voyez vous pas donc point vos cimeti?res?
- Jaques Brel
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RFC: Formal Ticket Tracking System for outages.org [ In reply to ]

jra at baylink

Jul 3, 2008, 1:07 PM

Post #6 of 6 (191 views)

Permalink

On Thu, Jul 03, 2008 at 03:37:15PM -0400, The Anarcat wrote:
> > but it's possible that this could be handled by OTRS itself; as a
> > signed-up user, I could watch the queue in question, and let that
> > mechanism send me the messages, while -notify only got the initial
> > Ticket Open messages. I have to go check the manual, I'm not a wizard
> > on OTRS yet.
>
> I know you can be a "Watcher" in RT, which allows you to follow all the
> comments/replies on a given queue.

Yeah, I knew that was there.

> In general, I have had a better experience with RT than OTRS, btw, but I
> do not want to start a flamewar around that, you guys choose whatever
> you want (or rather, the person/org hosting/managing the service should
> get to choose, obviously).

My experience of RT is that it doesn't handle well any situation that
can't be described as "Internal ticketing for my department in my
company" -- in particular, I tried to find a way to use it in the
consulting business I worked for, and it didn't have enough degrees of
freedom to get the work done... at least, without integrating Asset
Tracker, and defining each customer as an Asset, which was a bit too
icky for me.

It *appears* OTRS would handle that better, but I can't be sure, since
I'm not done deploying it myself. Anyone who has OTRS or RT gurus
laying about; point them at this thread.

Cheers,
-- jra

--
Jay R. Ashworth Baylink jra at baylink.com
Designer The Things I Think RFC 2100
Ashworth & Associates http://baylink.pitas.com '87 e24
St Petersburg FL USA http://photo.imageinc.us +1 727 647 1274

Those who cast the vote decide nothing.
Those who count the vote decide everything.
-- (Joseph Stalin)