Adding Templates to OTRS

We’re currently investigating using OTRS, with the ITSM modules, as a possible ticketing system.  In version 3.0, they’ve got the ability to add ticket templates.  Templates are nice in that they allow you to create semi-complete tickets just by choosing a template.  That is one of the features that FrontRange’s ITSM product have in Version 7 that we were really looking forward to having.  Currently, in FRS’s ITSM (version 6) we’re using QuickActions to do basically the same thing.

There is a great Youtube video that describes what to do to get templates working in the default form.   The problem is that the example template code that OTRS has in the AgentTicketPhone.dtl file discussed uses a button to choose the template text.  That’s all well and fine for some browsers, but doesn’t work in all of them, due to using the onclick function.  Seems that Safari and some other browsers just ignore that. Plus, in my opinion, it would be pretty ugly, and reminiscent of a 1990′s webpage, to have a dozen different buttons to click on.  Maybe if they were each a different color and blinked…

Anyway, after some Trial and Error, I was able to get a cleaner method working – in IE, Firefox, Safari, and other browsers.  I replaced the button(s) with a dropdown menu.  This is simply a select tag, with an option representing each template form.  It then uses the onchange function, rather than the onclick function, fire off the appropriate form.  This means that all of the major browsers seem to be all right with it.  I tested it in IE, Firefox, Opera, Safari, and Chrome and they all worked as expected.

What I’ve done is create a custom theme, then copied and altered the AgentTicketPhone.dtl file to add my changes.  This means that during upgrades, my changes won’t be overwritten, since they’re not made in the default file.

Anyway, the way the example is written in the file is:

As you can see, it uses the onclick function and each template would require its own button.

What I’ve done, is add a dropdown via the select tag and its options and used the onchange function:

Things to note are:

1> Make sure to add the id=”some_name” to your select tag, or the GetElementByID() won’t work, since there won’t be an ID to get.

2> The option values are actually the names of each form that I’ve added at the bottom of the page.  That means that there’s a form at the bottom with id=”PassReset” and one with id=”VirusMalware”.   These forms contain the fields and values that you want to use to automagically populate the ticket.  Changing the fields and values is covered in the video.

 

Installing/Configuring the OTRS Ticketing System

I’ve been tasked with installing/configuring the open-source version of the OTRS ticketing system, with the ITSM modules, for evaluation here at work.  So far, I’m really happy with it.  I have the basics setup and ready to go and I must say that it seems easier to configure than FrontRange’s ITSM.  Another nice thing – IT’S FREE!  From my experimentation, it appears that since it’s completely web-based, it works on virtually any device with a browser and network access.  On top of that, there’s an iPhone app available too.  FRS’s ITSM product is .Net-based.   That means that it doesn’t really work with non-Windows devices.  ITSM Version 6 had a fairly robust web client available that could be used by the Mac people.  ITSM Version 7, on the other hand, drops that web client.  That means that Mac users are basically SOL, unless they use the free iPhone app.  “Ah”, you say,  “that’s simple enough.  Just download it and go!”.  Well, if only it was that easy.  To use the mobile client, you have to purchase the Mobile server module(s) – and the licenses to go with it.

OTRS Pros so far:
IT’S FREE!
Initial install was straightforward.
A lot of configuration options.
Very flexible, due to the above.
Good support in the forums.
Totally web-based, so it works with virtually any browser.
Has an iPhone app available.

OTRS Cons so far:
A lot of configuration options = A LOT of configuration options.
Looks slightly “clunky” compared to FRS’s ITSM.  A certain amount of that can probably be corrected fairly easily – somewhere within the configuration options.
No tech support number to call – without paying for support.
No true Workflow engine to assist with ticket routing, etc.

We’ll see what else comes up as I move forward.

 

Installing/Configuring Evision’s Argos Report Server

Installed Evision’s Argos Report Server.  It was a pretty easy, lightweight install.  I put it on a virtual server and encountered no problems with the install.  The initial setup went smoothly, outside of problems getting an Oracle connection successfully setup.  Most of that was probably due to my inexperience in dealing with Oracle products.  Once I figured out how to get the ODBC driver successfully installed, along with a working tnsnames.ora file, it was pretty easy.

The person that is actually creating reports, etc. says that he’s really impressed with it so far.  Only time will tell how it works out.

New Project – UPDATE

MS System Center is dead.  The cost savings just didn’t warrant all of the work necessary to switch.  Basically, we wouldn’t save any real money, but would have to do a whole lot of work.

On to the next project.

New Project

I’m on a team that’s starting to assess whether to move away from our current products to the Microsoft System Center suite of products.  I’m in the process of gathering numbers for what we currently spend.  Then, we move on to see what the equivalent would cost with System Center.  It should be an interesting investigation.

ITSM 6.3.2 and IMAP/SSL

Found out that the email listener in FrontRange ITSM 6.3.2 doesn’t work with IMAP over SSL.  There is evidently something buggy about FSMTService.exe.  I was able to get a hotfix from FRS that was basically just a fixed version of FSMTservice, and it solved the problem.  What I was getting originally were errors like:

“Error occured while connecting to the email server. Reason: NO Logon failure: account currently disabled. “

and

“Error occured while connecting to the email server. Reason: NO The parameter is incorrect.”

and

“Error occured while connecting to the email server. Reason: NO The referenced account is currently locked out and may not be logged on to.”

After it would throw some errors, FSMT would crash.  You could restart FSMT and it would work for a minute, throw errors, then crash again.  The fact that there were multiple different errors made it harder to track down.  Eventually the Support Tech was able to find a Knowledge Base (KB) article in their system that described a different error with IMAP/SSL, but we decided to give it a try and see if it solved my issue.  Lo and behold, it did!

Evidently, the issue is fixed in ITSM 3.6.4, but the hotfix will fix older versions.

Original 6.3.2 version of FSMT: 6.0.1001.811

Fixed version of FSMT: 6.3.1001.913

ITSM and Checking IMAP over SSL

We’re in the process of moving our users from Exchange 2003 to Exchange 2010.  In that process, we’re needing to move our ITSM mailboxes to 2010 also.  As of right now, it’s looking like the version of ITSM that we’re on (6.3.2) doesn’t appear to like the fact that the Exchange server will be serving up IMAP over SSL.

In the course of troubleshooting this, I’ve learned how to at least test that I’m able to connect to the IMAP server, via SSL.  With a non-SSL IMAP connection, you can just use telnet -

machine:~$ telnet mydomain 143.  That should be enough to confirm that you can get a connection to the server.  With an SSL-enabled connection though, you of course need to connect via an SSL connection.  Linux to the rescue!  I run a Linux desktop, so I have an SSL client at my fingertips.  I’m able to simply run openssl and connect to the IMAP server, over SSL.  Simply open a terminal and run openssl’s client – machine:~$ openssl s_client -connect mydomain:993

Since the problem that I’m seeing appears to be a connection issue, I haven’t gone beyond simply checking the connection, but I would assume that, at that point, you should be able to run the usual IMAP commands.

Adding PHP to IIS 7.5

Got php up and running successfully on IIS 7.5 (Windows Server 2008R2) today.  Will post the step-by-step instructions shortly.  I’m hoping that this will allow me add the ability to create web forms that can submit tickets directly ITSM.  We’ll see how it pans out.

UbuntuOne

I was hoping, now that UbuntuOne has a (beta) Windows client, that I’d have a good cross-platform cloud spot to save files to.  Well, that’s not working out so far.  the syncing, on BOTH the Windows side AND the Linux side is painfully slow, if it happens at all.  I’ve had to kill the sync daemon on the Linux side to get it to acknowledge that it is indeed not “up-to-date” and download what’s missing.  On the Windows side, it just seems to creep along taking FOREVER to update – even with tweaking the available upload/download speed settings.  As much as I’d like to, I don’t think that I can even blame this on the Windows client.  Another that that I’ve noticed that there seems to be a noticeable slowdown, on both machines, when running the UbuntuOne client.

The other issue is the apparent lack of encryption of the stored data.  I know that’s pretty common for most of the cloud options, but it would be nice to have.

I guess I’ll stick to my personal server folder with SSH access and encryption/decryption locally.

9/11

Listening to the reading of the names, and the vast diversity it represents, points out what’s so great about this country.